EATON, JOSEPH W.

EATON, JOSEPH W. (1919– ), U.S. sociologist and educator. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Eaton went to the United States in 1934. After graduating in 1948, he directed the study of the Hutterites, an isolated Mennonite sect of northwestern U.S. and Canada who lived in communities and held property in common. The results were published in 1955 in Culture and Mental Disorders (J. Eaton and R.J. Weil). Eaton published an analysis of prison reform and treatment programs in California (Stone Walls Not a Prison Make, 1962). In 1961 he published Measuring Delinquency and in 1964 Prisons in Israel. He directed a long-range study of Israel's youth organization and national service program financed by the U.S. Office of Education (Influencing the Youth Culture: A Study of Youth Organizations in Israel, 1969). His academic interests were in evaluative research, applications of social theory, and the sociology of social work. He also wrote Card-Carrying Americans: Privacy, Security, and the National ID Card Debate (1986) and The Privacy Card: A Low Cost Strategy to Combat Terrorism (2004). Eaton became professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, in the field of economic and social development and sociology. He remained actively involved in studying the Hutterites and was a consultant for a University of Pittsburgh research project on the causes of schizophrenia. (Zvi Hermon / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)