Michael Mann (sociologist)

Last updated

Michael Mann
Born1942 (age 81–82)
Academic background
Education University of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
Influences
Main interests social power, the state, the military, war

Michael Mann FBA (born 1942) is a British emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) [1] and at the University of Cambridge. [2] Mann holds dual British and United States citizenships.

Contents

Life and career

Mann was born in Manchester, UK. He attended a local primary school, and then Manchester Grammar School. [3]

Mann received a B.A. in modern history in 1963 and a D.Phil. in sociology in 1971 from the University of Oxford. [4]

Mann was lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex from 1971 to 1977. He then became reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, from 1977 to 1987. Mann has been a professor of Sociology at UCLA since 1987. He has been PhD supervisor of Professor Azadeh Kian [5]

Awards and honours

Mann has been the recipient of many awards. [6]

Academic research

Mann's main work is The Sources of Social Power (four volumes). [8] The first two volumes of The Sources of Social Power were published in 1986 and 1993. The last two volumes were published in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

He also published several works on the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These include Incoherent Empire (2003), in which he attacks the United States' 'War on Terror' as a clumsy experiment in neo-imperialism. [9] Two of his works, Fascists (2004) and The Dark Side of Democracy (2005), focus on fascism and ethnic cleansing. [10]

His last work, On Wars, covers the experience of war around the world throughout history. [11]

Mann's work has been the subject of several critical assessments, including John Hall and Ralph Schroder's The Anatomy of Power: Social Theory of Michael Mann (2006) and Ralph Schroder's Global Powers: Michael Mann's Anatomy of 20th Century and Beyond (2016). [12]

Social theory

One of Mann’s main ideas is his IEMP model, where IEMP stands for distinct ideological, economic, military, and political sources of power. [13] The four components of the IEMP model are defined as follows:

In this model:

In his theory of the state, Mann defines the state with four attributes:

  1. "The state is a differentiated set of institutions and personnel
  2. embodying centrality, in the sense that political relations radiate to and from a center, to cover a
  3. territorially demarcated area over which it exercises
  4. some degree of authoritative, binding rule making, backed up by some organized physical force." [17]

Mann also suggests that Weber confuses two conceptions of state strength, those related to:

Wars

Mann’s (2023) On Wars is a work that focuses on military power and its main mechanism, war. It covers wars in Rome, imperial China, the Mongols, Japan, medieval and modern Europe, pre-Columbian and Latin America, the world wars, and recent American and Middle Eastern wars. [19]

Reception of Mann’s ideas

Mann has been called “one of the premier macro-historical sociologists” [20] and “the Max Weber of our time.” [21]

Gianfranco Poggi questioned Mann’s conceptual decision to treat military power as a distinct source of power and defended the classic distinction between economic, political and ideological power. [22]

David D. Laitin challenged two thesis in Mann’s The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing: (1) that democracy and murderous ethnic cleansing are systematically associated, and (2) that genocide as a modern form of state murder is worse than other forms of mass murder. [23]

A special issue of Studies in Comparative International Development focuses on Mann’s concept of state infrastructural power. [24]

Mann has responded at length to various critiques. [25]

Selected publications

Resources on Mann and his research

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/mann/CV.pdf , accessed 31 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Michael Mann, University of Cambridge Department of Sociology, accessed 19 January 2020.
  3. ↑ John A. Hall, “Political Questions,” pp. 33-55, in John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 37.
  4. ↑ https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/mann/CV.pdf , accessed 31 October 2023.
  5. ↑ https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/mann/CV.pdf , accessed 31 October 2023.
  6. ↑ https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/mann/CV.pdf , accessed 31 October 2023.
  7. ↑ "News: Michael Mann awarded Honorary Doctorate". 26 May 2016.
  8. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Vol. 3: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012; Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Vol. 4: Globalizations, 1945–2011. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  9. ↑ Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire. London: Verso, 2003.
  10. ↑
    Michael Mann, Fascists. New York
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Michael Mann, The Dark-Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  11. ↑ Michael Mann, On Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
  12. ↑ John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Ralph Schroeder (ed.), Global Powers: Mann’s Anatomy of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
  13. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 22-32.
  14. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Vol. 3: Global Empires and Revolution, 1890–1945 New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 6-12.
  15. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 3-4.
  16. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 44.
  17. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 55.
  18. ↑ Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 58-59. Mann first introduced the distinction between despotic and infrastructural power in Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results,” Archives Européenes de Sociologie 25, 1984: 185-213. Mann provides an elaborate discussion of this distinction in Michael Mann, “Infrastructural Power Revisited,” Studies in Comparative International Development 43(3)(2008): 355–65.
  19. ↑ Michael Mann, On Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
  20. ↑ David Laitin, “Mann's Dark Side: Linking Democracy and Genocide,” pp. 328-40, in John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 328.
  21. ↑ Randall Collins, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300266818/on-wars/
  22. ↑ Gianfranco Poggi, “Political Power Un-manned: A Defence of the Holy Trinity from Mann's Military Attack,” pp. 135-49, in John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  23. ↑ David Laitin, “Mann's Dark Side: Linking Democracy and Genocide,” pp. 328-40, in John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  24. ↑ Michael Mann contribution to this issue is “Infrastructural Power Revisited.” Studies in Comparative International Development 43(3)(2008): 355–65.
  25. ↑ Michael Mann, “The Sources of Social Power Revisited: A Response to Criticism,” pp. 343-96, in John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder (eds.), The Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Michael Mann, “Preface to the new edition,” pp. vii-xxiv, in Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012; and Michael Mann, “Response to the critics,” pp. 281-322, in Ralph Schroeder (ed.), Global Powers: Mann’s Anatomy of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

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References

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