Harrison C. White is Professor of sociology at Columbia University. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of 15, and recieved his doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the same institution in 1955. He also recieved a doctorate in Sociology from Princeton University in 1960. Previously, He taught at Harvard University, University of Arizona, University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University and Edinburgh. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology, as well as in numerous other fields, including management, economics, mathematics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ... Theoretical physics employs mathematical models in an attempt to understand Nature. ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus in and around suburban Princeton, New Jersey. ...

Academic Biography

Harrison White brings an uniquely combinatorial approach to sociological discourse. His magnus opus "Identity and Control" is a veritable gel and goo of arguments building on a vast network of human knowledge ranging from mathematical models in polymer science and control engineering to historical and anthropological narratives. In response to complaints regarding to the difficulty in comprehending his work, he quips, "sociology is a hard field." ¹

Selected Works

• Harrison C. White (2001), Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production Princeton University Press
• Harrison C. White (1997), Can Mathematics Be Social? Flexible Representation for Interaction Process in Its Socio-Cultural Constructions, Sociological Forum 12:53-71
• Harrison C. White (1995), Network Switchings and Bayesian Forks. Reconstructing the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social Research 62:1035-1063,
• Harrison C. White (1995), Social Networks Can Resolve Actor Paradoxes in Economics and in Psychology, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics vol. 151:58-74
• Harrison C. White (1994), Values Comes in Styles, Which Mate to Change, Chapter 4th in Michael Hechter, Lynn Nadel and R. Michod, eds., The Origin of Values. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
• Harrison C. White (1993), Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press
• Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White (1993), Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (French translation, La Carriere Des Peintres au XIXe Siecle: Du systeme academique au marche des impressionistes, Antoine Jaccottet, tr., Preface by Jean-Paul Bouillon, Flammarion Press: Paris, 1991.)
• Harrison C. White (1992), Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
• Harrison C. White (1992), Markets, Networks and Control, in S. Lindenberg and Hein Schroeder, (eds.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Organization, Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 1992.time.

On-line resources

• Faculty Website at Columbia University

Notes

Note 1: See Interview with Harrison White: 4-16-01 at [www.ssc.wisc.edu/theory@madison/papers/ivwWhite.pdf]