Department of Business Humanities and Law

As a historical and political sociologist, I study processes of governance and leadership in the field of tension between top-down and bottom-up, between elite and popular governance, experts and civic engagement. Within this dynamic, I have a strong interest in how patterns of inequality, diversity, and difference emerge and are sustained, as well as how forms of alternative and affirmative organizing are undertaken to address, circumvent, or resist such patterns. I study civil society elites, moral elites, intermediary elites, and movement elites. I am engaged in questions related to the role of religion and science in governing modes of behavior under modern conditions, and I study the historical regulation of moral conduct as well as social and economic policy. I apply genealogical as well as contemporary approaches spanning interpretive and statistical methods, including affirmative genealogy, conceptual history, and Social Network Analysis. Pedagogically, I am interested in developing teaching methodologies rooted in American Pragmatism.