Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Department of Social Sciences and History
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Florham/Madison Campus
After receiving my Ph.D., I worked for six years as a Research Associate to the Harvard University Program on Technology and Society. For two years thereafter I was a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. I then taught for 32 years at Fairleigh Dickinson.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
My research interests revolve around the relationships between self and
society, the changing meanings of individualism and community in American
culture, and the nature of cultural change.
I have recently completed an analysis of the "culture wars" that challenges the assumption of a deeply divided American society. The study finds that the culture warriors all subscribe to the same American cultural ideas and wrestle with enduring dilemmas that have long plagued American politics. There is no single cleavage along which the culture wars are fought - no "either/or." Elite and popular opinion alike support "both/and": individualism and community, morality and pragmatism, populism and elitism. Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas will be published by the University of Michigan Press in 2010.
Recent previous publications include: In Conflict No Longer. Self and Society in Contemporary America (Rowman & Littlefield, Inc., 2000); "Mass Society" in Encyclopedia of Community, Edited by Karen Christenson and David Levinson (Sage Publications, 2003); and "The Theory That Won't Die: From Mass Society To The Decline of Social Capital," Sociological Forum, September 2005.