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Eviatar Zerubavel (born 1948) is professor of sociology at Rutgers University, a specialist in the sociology of cognition and everyday life, including topics such as time, boundaries, and categorization.
Zerubavel is a grandson of the noted Zionist Ya'akov Zerubavel. Born in Israel in 1948 to parents in diplomatic service, he spent much of his childhood abroad. He studied first at the University of Tel Aviv and then received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, where he studied under Erving Goffman. After teaching at Columbia University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he has spent the bulk of his career at Rutgers University. In 2003 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 2007 he was recognized as a Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology.
Zerubavel's first notable contributions were in the study of time, particularly the sociology and standardization of time. His books in this area were Patterns of Time in Hospital Life (1979); Hidden Rhythms (1981); The Seven Day Circle (1985); and Time Maps (2003).
Later he turned his attention to what he has termed cognitive sociology, pointing out how much society rather than human nature shapes our mental lives, and how much the commonalities that mark out social groups involve shared patterns of thinking. His work in this vein includes The Fine Line (1991); Terra Cognita (1992); Social Mindscapes (1997); The Elephant in the Room (2006); and Ancestors and Relatives (2011). His newest book is (2018) Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691177366.
Zerubavel served for many years as director of the graduate program in Sociology at Rutgers University and mentor to many graduate students. He became very interested in academic work habits and in time management in writing. His book The Clockwork Muse (1999) gives practical advice to writers across disciplines, and in particular advice on time management to those finishing books and dissertations.
His own writing is notable for its use of multiple examples from everyday life, an approach which one of his students, Wayne Brekhus, has called "Zerubavelian" sociology. [1] [2]
He is married to Yael Zerubavel, a scholar of Israeli history who also teaches at Rutgers University.
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in sociology in the 20th century. After earning a PhD in economics, he served on the faculty at Harvard University from 1927 to 1929. In 1930, he was among the first professors in its new sociology department. Later, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard.
George Ritzer is an American sociologist, professor, and author who studies globalization, metatheory, patterns of consumption, and modern and postmodern social theory. His most notable contribution to date is his concept of McDonaldization, which draws upon Max Weber's idea of rationalization through the lens of the fast food industry. In addition to creating his own theories, Ritzer has also written many general sociology books, including Introduction to Sociology (2012) as well as Essentials to Sociology (2014), and modern and postmodern social theory textbooks. He coined the term “McDonaldization”. Currently, Ritzer is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century". In 2007 The Times Higher Education Guide listed him as the sixth most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences, behind Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens, and ahead of Jürgen Habermas.
Peter Ludwig Berger (1929–2017) was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and theoretical contributions to sociological theory.
Stanley Cohen was a sociologist and criminologist, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, known for breaking academic ground on "emotional management", including the mismanagement of emotions in the form of sentimentality, overreaction, and emotional denial. He had a lifelong concern with human rights violations, first growing up in South Africa, later studying imprisonment in England and finally in Palestine. He founded the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics.
Robert Allan "Laud" Humphreys was an American sociologist and author. He is noted for his research into sexual encounters between men in public bathrooms, published as Tearoom Trade (1970) and for the questions that emerged from what many believe to be unethical research methods. He influenced generations of scholars who research issues related to sexuality and sexual identity.
William Foote Whyte was a sociologist chiefly known for his ethnographic study in urban sociology, Street Corner Society. A pioneer in participant observation, he lived for four years in an Italian community in Boston while a Junior Fellow at Harvard researching social relations of street gangs in Boston's North End.
Howard Saul Becker is an American sociologist who has made major contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music. Becker also wrote extensively on sociological writing styles and methodologies. Becker's 1963 book Outsiders provided the foundations for labeling theory. Becker is often called a symbolic interactionist or social constructionist, although he does not align himself with either method. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Becker is considered part of the second Chicago School of Sociology, which also includes Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss.
Everyday life, daily life or routine life comprises the ways in which people typically act, think, and feel on a daily basis. Everyday life may be described as mundane, routine, natural, habitual, or normal.
Randall Collins is an American sociologist who has been influential in both his teaching and writing. He has taught in many notable universities around the world and his academic works have been translated into various languages. Collins is currently the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading contemporary social theorist whose areas of expertise include the macro-historical sociology of political and economic change; micro-sociology, including face-to-face interaction; and the sociology of intellectuals and social conflict. Collins's publications include The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998), which analyzes the network of philosophers and mathematicians for over two thousand years in both Asian and Western societies. His current research involves macro patterns of violence including contemporary war, as well as solutions to police violence. He is considered to be one of the leading non-Marxist conflict theorists in the United States, and served as the president of the American Sociological Association from 2010 to 2011.
Jaber Fandy "Jay" Gubrium is an American sociologist. He has been a professor in the University of Missouri Department of Sociology since 2002.
Irving Louis Horowitz was an American sociologist, author and college professor who wrote and lectured extensively in his field.
James E. Katz is a communication scholar with an expertise in new media,. He has published widely and is frequently invited to comment on his research at both academic and public policy forms as well as to give interviews to media outlets.
Arnold Allan Lazarus was a South African-born clinical psychologist and researcher who specialized in cognitive therapy and is best known for developing multimodal therapy (MMT). A 1955 graduate of South Africa's CHIPS University of the Witwatersrand, Lazarus' accomplishments include authoring the first text on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) called Behaviour Therapy and Beyond and 17 other books, over 300 clinical articles, and presidencies of psychological associations; he received numerous awards including the Distinguished Psychologist Award of the Division of Psychotherapy from the American Psychological Association, the Distinguished Service Award from the American Board of Professional Psychology, and three lifetime achievement awards. Lazarus was a leader in the self-help movement beginning in the 1970s writing books on positive mental imagery and avoiding negative thoughts. He spent time teaching at various universities in the United States including Rutgers University, Stanford University, Temple University Medical School, and Yale University, and was executive director of The Lazarus Institute, a mental health services facility focusing on CBT.
A. Aneesh is the author of Virtual Migration (2006) who put forward the concept of algocracy now widely used to convey the growing importance and threat of algorithms in social life. In Virtual Migration Aneesh discusses the effects of the movement of labor through technology. The idea of algocracy means governance by computer algorithms, instead of bureaucratic rules or surveillance. He is Director of the Institute of World Affairs and Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Previously, he taught in the Science and Technology Program at Stanford University (2001–04). His scholarship intersects several areas of research: globalization, migration, science & technology, and intellectual property. With a wide background in the social and cultural landscape of India and the United States, Aneesh has spent a decade researching and writing about the world of programmers. Over the years his scholarship has included awards and grants from the McArthur Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Population Council, and the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. Aneesh has published a book, Neutral Accent, on India's call centers where he has coined a new term "system identities" to denote identity assigned by algorithms to the individual.
Chaim Isaac Waxman is an American sociologist now living in Israel.
David Richard Gibson 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". 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.
Cognitive sociology is a sociological sub-discipline devoted to the study of the "conditions under which meaning is constituted through processes of reification." It does this by focusing on "the series of interpersonal processes that set up the conditions for phenomena to become “social objects,” which subsequently shape thinking and thought." Thus, this research aims to sort out the social and cultural contingencies and consequences of human cognition. It has its roots in classical sociological theory, notably Durkheim and Weber, and from contemporary sociological theory, notably Goffman and Bourdieu.
Kari Marie Norgaard is a Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, a post she has held since 2011. She is known for her research into climate change denial and the politics of global warming.
Haim Hazan is Professor of sociology and social anthropology at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on old age as a social phenomenon. He is also an active partner at the Herzog Institute for the Study of Aging and Old Age.
