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Nobel Prize Winner Elinor Ostrom Leaves Legacy to Celebrate at a Time of...
Ziyad Marar, Global Publishing Director, SAGE Last week we heard the sad news that Professor Elinor Ostrom has died. Her profound contributions to scholarship have been told often enough (Elinor...
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A Perceptive Outsider Always Looking In: Stuart Hall, 1932-2014
Toasted as the “godfather of multiculturalism,” sociologist Stuart McPhail Hall died today of kidney failure, a week after his 82 birthday. ‘Pessimism of the intellect/optimism of the will’ is a quote...
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Pluralism’s Ringmaster: Robert Dahl, 1915-2014
Although he wrote that “politics is a sideshow in the great circus of life,” Robert Dahl was one of the ringmasters in the academic Big Top. Dahl, who died on Feb. 5 at age 98, had been dubbed the...
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Never Afraid of Living: William Chambliss, 1933-2014
Bill Chambliss, a transformative force in conflict theory, the sociology of law, and criminology, died on February 22. Told he had little time to live when first diagnosed with cancer seven years...
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Argentina’s Voice of Discourse: Eliseo Verón, 1935-2014
Eliseo Verón, a Buenos Aires-born sociologist and anthropologist whose work introduced semiotics to Argentina, died of throat cancer in the city of his birth on Tuesday, April 15. He was 78. Verón,...
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A Radical Democrat: Ernesto Laclau, 1933-2014
Well-known leftist political theorist Ernesto Laclau, an Argentinian who made his home in the United Kingdom and with his partner Chantal Mouffe was the leading proponent of the Essex School of...
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Gary S. Becker: The Economist for the Rest of Us, 1930-2014
Gary S. Becker, the economist for non-economists, died after a long illness on May 3; he was 83. As the Wall Street Journal eulogized, with his death “the world lost one of the great economists of the...
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Norman Girvan: First Citizen of the Caribbean, 1941-2014
Economist Norman Girvan, one of the Caribbean’s most respected social scientists and a consistent voice for greater unity in the region, died last month at the age of 73 from injuries suffered in an...
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Probing the ‘Informed’ Voter: Philip Converse, 1928-2014
Philip Converse in 1985. (Photo Institute for Social Research)In a sense, Philip Ernest Converse is best known for ignorance – not exhibiting it, but uncovering it. Just over a half century ago, in...
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The Author of Risk Society: Ulrich Beck, 1944-2015
Ulrich BeckUlrich Beck, the German sociologist and public intellectual who posited that manufactured risk was a primary product of modernity died of a heart attack on New Year’s Day at age 70. Beck’s...
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Two Social Scientists and Two Policy Paths
Two deaths over the Christmas-New Year’s holidays have caused me to reflect on how social scientists use their knowledge in different ways for different purposes. This sometimes causes difficulties in...
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Philosopher of Fun: Brian Sutton-Smith, 1924-2015
Brian Sutton-Smith. The photo is from the Strong National Museum of Play, where Sutton-Smith was a scholar in residence and which holds the archive of his research materials on play.Brian...
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Democracy’s Statistician: Janet L. Norwood, 1923-2015
Janet Norwood“I believe strongly,” said economist Janet L. Nowood, “that an objective, scientifically created system of data is essential for a democracy to flourish.” And as a the first female head...
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Taliban Kills Social Scientist in Hotel Attack
Paula KantorA social scientist working to improve the lot of women and children in Afghanistan was among 13 people killed Thursday in an attack on a guesthouse in Kabul. The attack on the Park Palace...
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Data, Democracy, and Janet Norwood
Janet Norwood “You can’t have a democratic society without a good data base.” These words reflect the commitment of Janet Norwood to a life of integrity, professionalism, and speaking truth to power...
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The Game Theorist: John Nash, 1928-2015
Nobel laureate economist John Forbes Nash Jr. The American mathematician John Nash, who died in a taxi accident at the weekend, is probably best known to the wider public through Russell Crowe’s...
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Darwin of the Human Sciences: René Girard, 1923-2015
René Girard (Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service)René Girard, whose academic career began in literary theory, and whose own theory of mimesis influenced people ranging from J.M. Coetzee to...
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Showing Institutions Matter: Douglass North, 1920-2015
Douglass C. North e died on November 23 in Benzonia, Michigan. (Photo: UNU-WIDER/Flickr, CC BY 4.0) Douglass C. North, who died last week at the age of 95, was one of the less well-known Nobel...
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The Geographer of Space and Power: Doreen Massey, 1944-2016
Doreen Massey Doreen Massey, the geographer of space and power, died on March 11 at age 72. “A lot of what I’ve been trying to do over the all too many years when I’ve been writing about space,” she...
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The Sociologist of Mobility: John Urry, 1946-2016
John Urry in 2014John Urry, 79, a sociologist probably best known for his work on mobilities but whose gaze also lit on issues ranging from tourism to energy use, from social change to complexity...
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