Carle Clark Zimmerman was a distinguished Harvard sociologist, and an inaugural member on the faculty of the university’s Department of Sociology. He studied rural and international social dynamics, working with the American Presbyterian Mission in Thailand (then known as the Kingdom of Siam) in the 1930s. He is best known for his work Family and Civilization, an analysis of the impact of evolving family structures on the health of civilizations

He listed 11 behaviors that indicate a culture is entering the destructive atomistic category.