Department of Sociology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: 510-642-4760
tbgold@berkeley.edu
Thomas B. Gold is Associate Professor of Sociology and, since 2000, Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies, a consortium of 14 American universities which administers an advanced language program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. At Berkeley he has also served as Associate Dean for External Relations of the Division of International and Area Studies, Founding Director of the Berkeley China Initiative, and Chair of the Center for Chinese Studies.
Professor Gold got interested in China as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. After finishing Oberlin, he taught English at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. He received a Masters in Regional Studies-East Asia from Harvard University and then a PhD in Sociology from the same institution. He later worked as a Chinese interpreter-escort for the Department of State.
Gold's research focuses on many aspects of the societies of East Asia, particularly mainland China and Taiwan.
His publications on mainland China have covered numerous topics, including youth, popular culture, personal relations, civil society, and private business. He co-edited (with Doug Guthrie and David Wank), Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi (Cambridge, 2002), (with Victoria Bonnell), The New Entrepreneurs of Europe and Asia: Patterns of Business Development in Russia, Eastern Europe and China (Sharpe 2002), and (with William Hurst, Jaeyoun Won and Li Qiang), China's Shattered Rice Bowl: Laid-Off Workers in a Workers' State,(Palgrave Macmillan, in press). He is preparing two papers on international Non-Governmental Organizations in China in two different fields: environmental protection and micro-finance. He also intends to get back to a book-length project on private business in China.
His book, State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle (Sharpe 1986) was the first to apply theories of dependency, world systems, and dependent development, up to that time based mainly on the experience of Latin America, to an East Asian case. He is currently writing a book, Remaking Taiwan: Society and the State Since the End of Martial Law, which examines the causes and consequences of democratization on the island. It draws on many research visits there, including observations of most island-wide elections since 1989. He has also published numerous articles about different aspects of Taiwan society.
Professor Gold regularly teaches Introductory Sociology, the Sociology of Development, and Contemporary Chinese Society, as well as other courses on globalization, culture, life course, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Professor Gold is a strong advocate of public sociology, and has served on the boards of many civic organizations. He currently sits on the boards of The National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, The Asia Society of Northern California, and The East Bay College Fund, the latter of which provides scholarships and mentoring to graduates of Oakland public high schools who attend 4-year colleges or universities.
