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David A. Snow is a distinguished professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. [1]
Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Snow received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1976.
Snow has taught at Southern Methodist University; University of Texas, Austin; University of Arizona; and at the University of California, Irvine from 2001 to 2019. At UC Irvine, Snow was co-director for the Center for Citizen Peace Building, which supports research and community-based activities aimed at discouraging conflict and violence. Under his co-direction, the center helped to establish the Olive Tree Initiative. He supported the launching of a Youth and Gang Violence Intervention Training Program which hosted its inaugural class in March 2012. He was a member of the UCI Center for Ethnography; Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies; Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy; and Center for the Study of Democracy.
Snow has been vice president of the American Sociological Association (2010–2011). [2]
Snow researches social movements and social inequality. He has created the "framing perspective" on social movements, which focuses on the negotiable and emergent meanings of social-movement issues, tactics, and participants.[ citation needed ] The framing perspective focuses attention on the signifying work or meaning construction engaged in by movement adherents (e.g., leaders, activists, and rank-and-file participants) and other actors (e.g., adversaries, institutional elites, media, counter movements) relevant to the interests of movements and the challenges they mount in pursuit of those interests. Snow's work problematizes the meanings associated with relevant events, activities, places, and actors, suggesting that those meanings are typically contestable and negotiable and thus open to debate and differential interpretation. From this vantage point, mobilizing grievances are seen neither as naturally occurring sentiments nor as arising automatically from specifiable material conditions, but as the result of interactively-based interpretation or signifying work.
Snow's research on social inequality focuses on the social psychology of extreme poverty and homelessness. In his best-known work in this area, Down on Their Luck (University of California Press 1993, Portuguese translation 1998), Snow and co-author (and former student) Leon Anderson examine the everyday challenges faced by homeless men and women, using data from hundreds of hours of interviews, participant observation, and social service agencies. Among the book’s many honors, Down on Their Luck was listed by the journal Contemporary Sociology as one of the best ethnographies published between 1950 and 2000.[ citation needed ]
Snow has received multiple honors and awards for his work. The Society for the Study of Social Problems awarded Snow the Lee Founders Award for his career contributions to the study of social problems in 2008. In 2011, he earned UCI’s highest campus-level distinction for faculty, Distinguished Professor. In 2012, the UCI Alumni Association granted Snow the Lauds & Laurels Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement. [3] In 2025 the American Sociological Association gave Snow the W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award. [4] [5]
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