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Welcome to Berkeley Sociology

Berkeley Sociology mourns the loss of Michael Burawoy, a world-renowned sociologist and professor emeritus who died February 3. Professor Burawoy is famous for his contributions to theory, methods, analyses of labor processes in industrial worksites, and analyses of the university as a workplace.. 

As ASA President, Burawoy developed and advanced his call for “public sociology” a call that energized more diverse and younger generations of sociologists to practice sociology through proactive engagement with concerns and questions that emanate from communities beyond academia. As ISA President, Burawoy built infrastructure for sustained scholarly exchange between scholars of the “global south” and the “global north.” 

Burawoy’s teaching and mentoring were legendary, as were his commitments to the improvement of pedagogy and sustaining accessible, high-quality public education. Read more about Professor Burawoy’s life and legacy as well as the memories and tribes from his students and colleagues..

Faculty Spotlight
Raka Ray
Professor and Dean, Social Sciences
Gender, postcolonial sociology, emerging middle classes, South Asia, inequality, qualitative research methods, social movements
Cihan Tugal
Professor
Political sociology; Religion; Capitalism and development; Social movements; Islam and the Middle East; Social theory; Comparative and historical sociology; Ethnography
Yan Long
Assistant Professor
Global and transnational sociology, political sociology, health and medicine, organizations, gender and sexualities
In Memoriam
Albert Einstein (1941)
Albert Einstein (1941)
EMERITUS PROFESSOR

Prof. Einstein served graduate students as a model of prudence in remaining unfashionably true to the grand…

Faculty Publishing
book cover
Full Name
Robert Braun

Protectors of Pluralism

Why do some religious groups protect victims of genocide while others do not? This book argues that local religious minorities are more likely to save persecuted groups. Two reinforcing...
Full Name
Robert Braun

Protectors of Pluralism

Why do some religious groups protect victims of genocide while others do not? This book argues that local religious minorities are more likely to save persecuted groups. Two reinforcing mechanisms link minority status to rescue operations. First, religious minorities are better able to set up clandestine organizations because their members are more committed. Second, religious minorities empathize with targets of purification campaigns, imbuing their networks with preferences that lead them to resist genocide. A geo-referenced dataset of Jewish evas...
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Departmental Colloquium Series

Neil Gong, “Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles”

Monday February 10th, 2025 at 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building & Via Zoom

Abstract:

This talk compares public safety net and elite private psychiatric treatment in Los Angeles to show how inequality shapes the very meanings of mental illness, recovery, client choice, and personhood. In Downtown LA, the crises of homelessness and criminalization mean public providers define recovery as getting a client housed, not in jail, and not triggering emergency calls. Given insufficient treatment capacity, providers eschew discipline for a “tolerant containment” model that accepts medication refusal and drug use so long as deviant behavior remains indoors. For elite private providers serving wealthy families, on the other hand, recovery means normalization and generating a respectable identity. Far from accepting madness and addiction, providers use a “concerted constraint” model to therapeutically discipline wayward adult children. Turning theoretical expectation on its head, the ethnography shows how “freedom” becomes an inferior good and disciplinary power a form of privilege.