David R. Gibson

Last updated
David R. Gibson
Born1969
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Alma mater Eastern College (B.A.)
Columbia University (Ph.D.)
Known for conversation analysis, organizational sociology, social network analysis,
Awards Melvin Pollner Prize
Scientific career
FieldsSociology
Institutions University of Notre Dame
Doctoral advisor Peter Bearman
Other academic advisors Harrison White, Randall Collins

David Richard Gibson (born 1969) is an American sociologist and associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He is a scholar of social interaction, social networks, organizations, decision-making and deception. In a review article, Eviatar Zerubavel described him "as one of sociology's leading conversational analysts". [1] His publication Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis won the 2013 Melvin Pollner Prize for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis.

Contents

Career

Gibson grew up in Philadelphia received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Eastern College. [2] He then attended Columbia University, where he received his M.A. in 1994, and M.Phil. in 1995, both in sociology. From 1997-1999, Gibson was a research associate to Harrison White and Kathryn Neckerman for the project funded by the Citigroup Behavioral Sciences Research Council (chaired by James March) [3] entitled, “Conflict and Cooperation in Work Groups.” He completed a PhD with distinction, in 1999, also from Columbia. Under the supervision of Peter Bearman along with advisors Randall Collins, and Harrison White, he completed his dissertation entitled Taking Turns and Talking Ties: Conversational Sequences in Business Meetings. [4] For his doctoral research, Gibson:

...employ[ed] real-time observational coding of conversational dynamics in various meeting settings in a large corporation yields data amenable to quantitative analysis of (a) the rules underlying conversation (e.g., turn-taking) in group conversations, and (b) the way in which these rules are subverted or exploited by actors negotiating dyadic relationships. Also manipulated are dimensions of formal structure context. This provides a way of integrating the concerns of network analysts with those of ethnomethodologists (Garfinkel) and sociolinguists (Goffman, Schegloff)

— Columbia University webpage, 1999 [5]

Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, Gibson joined the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy as a post-doctoral fellow under the direction of Harrison White for the project titled: “Dynamics From Social Settings: Representations of Interdependent Social Forms”. [6]

Gibson then accepted a position of assistant professor at Harvard University, where he taught from 2001 to 2005, and then moved to the University of Pennsylvania, also as an assistant professor. He was briefly a lecturer at Princeton University before accepting a position as associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame in 2013.

He has served on the editorial boards of the journals Social Psychology Quarterly (2007–2009) and Sociological Theory (2011–2012).

Contributions

According to Douglas Brinkley, in Gibson's 2012 publication Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis, "the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is reinterpreted in this brilliant, analytic exposé... [and] sheds landmark new light on the terse diplomacy between Kennedy and Khrushchev." [1] Likewise, Jane Mansbridge argues that Talk at the Brink "makes a major intellectual and scholarly contribution to our understanding of human behavior...The book's strongest lesson is how open and nonlinear important decisions can be." [7] The book won the 2013 Melvin Pollner Prize for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. The book received additional reviews in the American Journal of Sociology by Phaedra Daipha, [8] in The 49th Parallel by Scott Midgley, [9] in Perspectives on Politics by Frank Harvey, [10] and in Social Forces by Erik Schneiderhan. [11] In 2012, Gibson published a summary of this research in Nature , called "Decisions at the Brink." [12]

His research has been covered by The New York Times , [13] NPR, [14] and Business Insider. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuban Missile Crisis</span> 1962 confrontation between the US and USSR over ballistic missiles in Cuba

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the Cuban Missile Crisis remains a defining moment in American national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale conflict, nuclear war.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conversation analysis</span> Approach to the study of social interaction

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media, and focus on multimodal and nonverbal activity in interaction, including gaze, body movement and gesture. As a consequence, the term conversation analysis has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of interactions. CA and ethnomethodology are sometimes considered one field and referred to as EMCA.

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References

  1. 1 2 Reviews of Talk at the Brink. Princeton Univ Press. 29 July 2012. ISBN   9780691151311 . Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  2. ↑ "Gibson's Bio". Archived from the original on 27 July 2014. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  3. ↑ "James G. March (1928-2018) | Stanford Graduate School of Business". Archived from the original on 2019-05-04. Retrieved 2014-07-23.
  4. ↑ "Department of Sociology Recent Dissertations". Archived from the original on October 17, 2000. Retrieved 2014-07-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  5. ↑ "David Gibson's Research Interests". Archived from the original on February 4, 1999. Retrieved 2014-07-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. ↑ sociology.nd.edu/(PDF) http://sociology.nd.edu/assets/135514/gibson_cv.pdf . Retrieved 23 July 2014.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)[ permanent dead link ]
  7. ↑ "Additional Endorsements of Talk at the Brink". press.princeton.edu. Princeton Univ Press. Archived from the original on 14 February 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  8. ↑ Daipha, Phaedra (2013). "Review of Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis". American Journal of Sociology. 119 (3): 888–890. doi:10.1086/672523.
  9. ↑ "(no title)" (PDF).{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help)
  10. ↑ Harvey, Frank (2013). "Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis. By David R. Gibson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 256p. $35.00". Perspectives on Politics. 11 (2): 697–698. doi:10.1017/S1537592713001175. S2CID   145098361.
  11. ↑ Schneiderhan, Erik (2015). "Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis by David R. Gibson. Princeton University Press. 2012. 256 pages. $35 cloth". Social Forces. 94: e18. doi:10.1093/sf/sot073.
  12. ↑ Gibson, David (2012). "Decisions at the Brink". Nature. 497 (7405): 27–29. doi: 10.1038/487027a . PMID   22763533. S2CID   4421372.
  13. ↑ Middleton, William (2003-11-02). "Popular Mechanics". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  14. ↑ Weeks, Lingon (29 October 2012). "Pumps And Polls: Why Americans Wait In Lines". NPR. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  15. ↑ Zhang, Maggie. "Why People Wait In Hours-Long Lines For Shake Shack, Cronuts, And iPhones". Business insider. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
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