Arthur Stinchcombe
Professor Emeritus
Area(s) of Interest
Science and Technology, Economy and Society
Relevant Links
Biography
May 16, 1933-July 3, 2018
Professor Stinchcombe was a leading social scientist of his generation and one of the most renowned scholars of economic sociology, organization theory, comparative and historical sociology, and the sociology of law in the history of sociology. His accolades were noteworthy: he was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He received a series of awards from the American Sociological Association, including the Distinguished Career Prize, the Sorokin Prize, the Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship, and the Lazarsfeld Award for career contributions to methodology. After earning his PhD in sociology from the University of California-Berkeley in 1960, he taught at Johns Hopkins, Berkeley (where he served as department chair), the University of Chicago, and the University of Arizona, before coming to Northwestern, where he was a professor of sociology, political science and organizational behavior before his appointment as the John Evans Professor of Sociology. He also held visiting appointments in Chile, England, the Netherlands, Norway, and Australia, and at the Stanford School of Business. In 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bergen.
Art is remembered for his towering intellect, his analytic clarity about theoretical and methodological questions, his encyclopedic knowledge of the social sciences, and his intellectual generosity.
Books
The Logic of Social Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005.
When Formality Works: Authority and Abstraction in Law and Organizations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2001.
Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1995.
Information and Organizations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1990.
Stratification and Organizations: Selected Papers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1986.
Organization Theory and Project Management: Administering Uncertainty in Norwegian Offshore Oil. By Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Carol A. Heimer. Bergen, Norway and Oxford, England: Norwegian University Press and Oxford University Press. 1985.
Economic Sociology. New York: Academic Press. 1983. (Italian translation: Sociologia Economica: Uno Studio Comparato. Trans. by Alba Scardina. Published by Liviana Editrice. 1988. Translated into Chinese in 1987 by Xiaodong Yang: Zhejiang People's Publishing House).
Crime and Punishment—Changing Attitudes in America. By Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Rebecca Adams, Carol A. Heimer, Kim L. Scheppele, Tom W. Smith, and D. Garth Taylor. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. 1980.
Dakota Farmers and Ranchers Evaluate Crop and Livestock Surveys. By Calvin Jones, Paul B. Sheatsley, and Arthur L. Stinchcombe. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center. 1979.
Theoretical Methods in Social History. New York: Academic Press. 1978.
Creating Efficient Industrial Administrations. With the assistance of Zahava Blum and Rene Marder. New York: Academic Press. 1974.
Constructing Social Theories. First Published 1968. Republished: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Rebellion in a High School. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, New York Times Pub. 1964.