About Us
Sociology came late to Berkeley, but when it arrived it hit the ground running, addressing the big issues of the time in novel and innovative ways that would reshape US sociology. The Berkeley Sociology Forum (BSF) is designed to work in that tradition, addressing questions of global import. BSF is neither a course nor a workshop but an intellectual center that will engage issues of a comparative, global, historical, theoretical and methodological character.
Berkeley sociology has always been at the forefront of defining the big questions of sociology. It began with the Department of Social Institutions (1923-1946) led by Frederick Teggart, idiosyncratic autodidact, historian and world system analyst. He had one full-time colleague, the economist, Margaret Hodgen. When the Department of Sociology was established in 1946 it began to recruit the best and the brightest. They were young sociologists who in the 1950s and 1960s would create and develop sub disciplines of sociology: symbolic interaction and deviance, sociology of law, political sociology, industrial sociology, historical and comparative, social theory and collective behavior, religion, culture. Come the 1970s Berkeley took a radical turn, and with it appeared pioneering studies of race, gender, and development. These strands continue but new challenges have arisen as modern societies appear to be entering a new “stationary state” marked by intellectual and economic stagnation as well as heightened inequality. Among the topics BSF will address are: the ecological, economic and political crises of the capitalist world, tectonic transformations in the structure of geopolitics, new social movements of both left and right, immigration in a global perspective, new directions in social theory in light of the deepening identity crisis of sociology as a discipline, and finally science as topic and model for sociology.
BSF will begin by following the successful format of earlier occasional forums in which the work of leading figures was discussed by a local panel. This year the Forum will take place twice a semester in Barrows 402 from 5p.m. to 7.30p.m. on Wednesdays.
Berkeley sociology has always been at the forefront of defining the big questions of sociology. It began with the Department of Social Institutions (1923-1946) led by Frederick Teggart, idiosyncratic autodidact, historian and world system analyst. He had one full-time colleague, the economist, Margaret Hodgen. When the Department of Sociology was established in 1946 it began to recruit the best and the brightest. They were young sociologists who in the 1950s and 1960s would create and develop sub disciplines of sociology: symbolic interaction and deviance, sociology of law, political sociology, industrial sociology, historical and comparative, social theory and collective behavior, religion, culture. Come the 1970s Berkeley took a radical turn, and with it appeared pioneering studies of race, gender, and development. These strands continue but new challenges have arisen as modern societies appear to be entering a new “stationary state” marked by intellectual and economic stagnation as well as heightened inequality. Among the topics BSF will address are: the ecological, economic and political crises of the capitalist world, tectonic transformations in the structure of geopolitics, new social movements of both left and right, immigration in a global perspective, new directions in social theory in light of the deepening identity crisis of sociology as a discipline, and finally science as topic and model for sociology.
BSF will begin by following the successful format of earlier occasional forums in which the work of leading figures was discussed by a local panel. This year the Forum will take place twice a semester in Barrows 402 from 5p.m. to 7.30p.m. on Wednesdays.
BSF is organized by Michael Burawoy, John Lie, Mara Loveman, Raka Ray, Dylan Riley, and Cihan Tugal.