From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harrison C. White is Professor of sociology at Columbia University. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of 15, and received his doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the same institution in 1955. He also received 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.

Harrison White is one of the most prominent pioneers of modern Mathematical Sociology.

Harrison White brings an uniquely combinatorial approach to sociological discourse. His magnum 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

• Harrison C. White (2002), 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.
• Harrison C. White (1988). Varieties of Markets, in Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz, (eds.), Social Structures: A Network Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Faculty Website at Columbia University

Note 1: Interview with Harrison White: 4-16-01