Joel Best

Last updated

Joel Gordon Best (born August 21, 1946) is a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. He specializes in topics such as social problems and deviance. His current research focuses on awards, prizes, and honors in American culture. He is an author of over ten books and dozens of academic articles.

Contents

Joel Best earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. He also earned a second M.A. degree in history from the University of Minnesota. He taught at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN—1969-70), California State University, Fresno (1970-91), and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (1991–99).

He served as a President of the Midwest Sociological Society and the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and was an editor of the journal Social Problems . When asked about his prolific output, Best responded, “If you write a page per day, or every few days, you will have a book by the end of the year.” [1]

He recently was seen as a source cast member on the critically acclaimed show Adam Ruins Everything . Best provided evidence supporting the fact that strangers, contrary to popular belief, do not (with a single rare exception of an estranged father-son situation) and have never tampered with or poisoned the candy given to a trick-or-treater as far as records can provide.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anomie</span> Sociological term for "normlessness"

In sociology, anomie is a social condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards or guidance for individuals to follow; which leads to people disrespecting their social values. Anomie is believed to possibly evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community. An example is alienation in a person that can progress into a dysfunctional inability to integrate within normative situations of their social world such as finding a job, achieving success in relationships, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert K. Merton</span> American sociologist (1910–2003)

Robert King Merton was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He served as the 47th president of the American Sociological Association. He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor. In 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for his contributions to the field and for having founded the sociology of science.

Robert Allan Humphreys (1930–1988), known as Laud Humphreys, was an American sociologist and Episcopal priest. 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 was overwhelmingly considered unethical research methods. He influenced generations of scholars who research issues related to sexuality and sexual identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual anthropology</span> Subfield of social anthropology

Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science and visual culture. Although sometimes wrongly conflated with ethnographic film, visual anthropology encompasses much more, including the anthropological study of all visual representations such as dance and other kinds of performance, museums and archiving, all visual arts, and the production and reception of mass media. Histories and analyses of representations from many cultures are part of visual anthropology: research topics include sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphics, paintings and photographs. Also within the province of the subfield are studies of human vision, properties of media, the relationship of visual form and function, and applied, collaborative uses of visual representations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labeling theory</span> Labeling people changes their behavior

Labeling theory posits that self-identity and the behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them. It is associated with the concepts of self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping. Labeling theory holds that deviance is not inherent in an act, but instead focuses on the tendency of majorities to negatively label minorities or those seen as deviant from standard cultural norms. The theory was prominent during the 1960s and 1970s, and some modified versions of the theory have developed and are still currently popular. Stigma is defined as a powerfully negative label that changes a person's self-concept and social identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard S. Becker</span> American sociologist (1928–2023)

Howard Saul Becker was an American sociologist who taught at Northwestern University. Becker made 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 was often called a symbolic interactionist or social constructionist, although he did not align himself with either method. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Becker was considered part of the second Chicago School of Sociology, which also includes Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss.

Stuart Henry is professor emeritus, Criminal justice and former director of the School of Public Affairs, San Diego State University (2006–17). He has also been visiting professor of criminology at the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research from 2008 to 2013 and visiting research scholar in sociology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, 2017.

John H. Gagnon was a pioneering sociologist of human sexuality who wrote and edited 15 books and over 100 articles. He collaborated with William Simon to develop the piece he is perhaps best recognized for: "Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality" (1973). He was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught and from 1968 to 1998. In that same time frame, he also dedicated himself to advancing the field of sociology through his research.

Troy Smith Duster is an American sociologist with research interests in the sociology of science, public policy, race and ethnicity and deviance. He is a Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley, and professor of sociology and director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at New York University. Duster is on the faculty advisor boards of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine and the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies.

Rhys H. Williams is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. He is also Director of the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion.

David Garland is Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and professor of sociology at New York University, and an honorary professor in Criminology at Edinburgh Law School. He is well known for his historical and sociological studies of penal institutions, for his work on the welfare state, and for his contributions to criminology, social theory, and the study of social control.

Susan Leigh Star (1954–2010) was an American sociologist. She specialized in the study of information in modern society; information worlds; information infrastructure; classification and standardization; sociology of science; sociology of work; and the history of science, medicine, technology, and communication/information systems. She commonly used the qualitative methods methodology and feminist theory approach. She was also known for developing the concept of boundary objects and for contributions to computer-supported cooperative work.

Otto Nyholm Larsen was an American sociologist at the University of Washington specializing in social psychology. He served as Chair of the Department of Sociology and as Director of the Institute for Sociological Research.

David L. Altheide is an American sociologist. He taught for thirty-seven years at Arizona State University and is Regents' Professor Emeritus of the School of Justice and Social Inquiry there.

John Franklin Lofland is an American sociologist best known for his studies of the peace movement and for his first book, Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith, which was based on field work among a group of Unification Church members in California in the 1960s. It is considered to be one of the most important and widely cited studies of the process of religious conversion, and one of the first modern sociological studies of a new religious movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Burk</span> American sociologist (born 1948)

James S. Burk is an American sociologist and professor at Texas A&M University. He is most notable as a scholar of military sociology, political sociology, and the history of sociology. He is a central figure in the study of civil-military relations in democratic societies.

William Simon (1930–2000) was a sociologist of human sexualities between 1970 and 2000. His co-authored book, Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Conduct played a major role in shaping the contemporary sociology of sexuality and critical sexualities studies. His work helped pioneer a theory of sexual scripting and he was a gentle but radical advocate of sexual tolerance. He was an early advocate of gay rights and testified against obscenity laws.

Paula S. England, is an American sociologist and Dean of Social Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research has focused on gender inequality in the labor market, the family, and sexuality. She has also studied class differences in contraception and nonmarital births.

Joseph Galaskiewicz is an American sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, known for his work on interorganizational relations and social network analysis.

James David Wright was an American sociologist. He had been the Provost's Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Central Florida since 2001. Since 2013, he had also been a Pegasus Professor there. He wrote 17 books and over 250 peer-reviewed papers. From 1978 until 2014, he was the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Social Science Research.

References

  1. Adam Szetela, "How to Write (And Publish) Like a Pro," Inside Higher Education, Sep. 30, 2017