—Harrison C. White—

Harrison C. White is Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He received a Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from MIT and a Ph.D in Sociology from Princeton University. He previously 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.

He has published both field studies and mathematical analyses of business firms and market operation. He is a founder of the joint doctoral program between sociology, psychology, and the business school at Harvard University and University of Arizona, and he has served on the board of directors of an urban system consulting firm. His current work centers on control processes through agency, and how this shapes the use of time.

Another line of current research melds economic sociology with mathematical modelling (Markets from Networks, Princeton University Press, 2002, where he presents an important attempt to bring mathematical rigour to an understanding of the social networks of entrepreneurs). Another field of investigation meshes social networks with discourse analyses. The theoretical foundation of both were laid out in Identity and Control, published in 1992. Other research interests concern: control (feedback) systems, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, narrative genres, combinatorial and algebraic models in mathematical sociology, and queuing and other stochastic system operation models. He also teaches in the sociology of art.

SOME  PUBLICATIONS

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.

Go to Harrison C. White's home page.
Read about Harrison White's 2001 book, Markets from Networks.
Read about Harrison White's 1992 book, Identity and Control.

The readings for Harrison White's seminar is the essay "Innovation in Style".*

To download click on the link below.

Innovation in Style (This is a Word File.)

(Note: if you have any difficulty accessing these files and need some assistance, please email our conference coordinator).

*If you plan on attending the seminar, please be sure and do the readings before the session. There will be no oral presentations in the seminars, participation will be organized around discussion of assigned readings.