1971

James R. Beniger, Award-winning Scholar, Dies at 63.

Mr. Beniger taught communication and sociology at the University of Southern California and Princeton University and authored a highly acclaimed study of the economic and technological origins of the information society entitled The Control Revolution. He passed away after an extended battle with Alzheimer's disease at age 63.  

I became a graduate student in the Sociology Department at Berkeley in 1971 and ultimately received my doctorate in 1979. A postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford and then a stint as an Assistant Professorship at UCB followed. Then came tenured appointments at UCSC and the University of Michigan. At the latter,I cut my teeth on administrative work as Director of both the Latino Studies Programand the Center for Research on Social Organization. The publication of my book Racial Fault Lines and being awarded a named chair as the Arthur F.

Sociology captured my intellectual fancy in the 1960s when I discovered its adherents tended to support radical change in America's South. Being a fourth generation ancestor of Freed Blacks from Ohio who had been Underground Railroad supporters that was all I needed to grasp. Going to Berkeley in the early '70s was as good as it got. Those were heady days filled with the competing ideas of Bob Blauner, Neil Smelser, Troy Duster, Hardy Frye, Harry Edwards, Herbert Blumer and so many others. I sat in on some of the early Women's Studies classes and gradually purged myself of my sexism.

My graduate education in Sociology and my experiences at U. C. Berkeley were profound influences on my life and work. Having grown up in the dense, congested, and largely humanly-constructed environment of New York City, the sheer beauty, color, and quality of life in Berkeley intrigued me from my first moments there. It did not take long for a group in the class of 1971 to begin meeting regularly; we grappled, of course, with the big questions of sociology and life. And many of us from that group, started over thirty years ago, are still friends in frequent contact today.

Subscribe to 1971