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Information about Harrison White

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 University. 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, bringing an uniquely combinatorial approach to sociological discourse. His most recent book, Identity and Control, summarizes his recent thinking. It 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 White has also developed an original and influential perspective on market structure and competition in his 2002 book, Markets from Networks. Based on the idea that markets are embedded in social networks, his approach is related to economic concepts such as uncertainty (as defined by Frank Knight), monopolistic competition (Edward Chamberlin), or signalling (Spence). This sociological perspective on markets has influenced both sociologists (see Joel M. Podolny) and economists (see Olivier Favereau).

In social network analysis, White is also known for having intellectually sired at Harvard University in the 1960s-1970s, a large number of scholars who went on to become notable in the field. These include Ivan Chase, Bonnie Erickson, Mark Granovetter, Nancy Howell, Joel Levine, Nicholas Mullins, John Padgett, Brian Sherman and Barry Wellman.

Selected Works

  • 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.

On-line resources

Notes

Note 1: Interview with Harrison White: 4-16-01
Sociology (from Latin: socitus, "companion"; and the suffix -ology, "the study of", from Greek λόγος, lógos, "knowledge") is the systematic and scientific study of society and societal behavior.
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Columbia University is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Its main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan, in New York City.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing 32 academic departments,[3]
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Theoretical physics employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics, as opposed to experimental processes, in an attempt to understand nature. Its central core is mathematical physics 1, though other conceptual techniques are also used.
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Princeton University is a private coeducational research university located in Princeton, New Jersey. It is one of eight universities that belong to the Ivy League.
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Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League.
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University of Arizona (also referred to as UA or U of A) is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States.
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The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Founded in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society and the oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago held its first classes on October 1, 1892.
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Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It began as the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1900. In 1912, the school became Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees.
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University of Edinburgh (Scottish Gaelic: Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann), founded in 1582,[4] is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Mathematical sociology is the usage of mathematics to construct social theories. In sociology, in general, the connection between mathematics and sociology is confined to problems of data analysis; employing statistical models.
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social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual
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In economics, Knightian uncertainty is risk that is immeasurable, not possible to calculate.

Knightian uncertainty is named after Frank Knight (1885-1972).

See also

  • Uncertainty#Relation between uncertainty, probability, vagueness and risk

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Frank Hyneman Knight (November 7, 1885 - April 15, 1972) was an important economist of the twentieth century. He was born in McLean County, Illinois in a devoutly Christian family of farmers.
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Monopolistic competition is a common market form. Many markets can be considered as monopolistically competitive, often including the markets for restaurants, cereal, clothing, shoes and service industries in large cities.
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Edward H. Chamberlin (May 181899-1967) was an American economist. He was born in La Conner, Washington.

Chamberlin studied first at the University of Iowa (where he was influenced by Frank H.
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In economics, more precisely in contract theory, signalling is the idea that one party (termed the agent) conveys some meaningful information about itself to another party (the ).
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Michael Spence

Stanford University homepage photo
Born November 7 1943 (1943--) (age 64)
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Joel M. Podolny is an American sociologist and is Dean of the Yale School of Management. Prior to his arrival at Yale, he was Professor and Director of Research at Harvard Business School where he taught courses in business strategy, organizational behavior, and global management.
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social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual
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Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist who has created some of the most influential theories in modern sociology since the 1970s. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in a
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Barry Wellman, FRSC (b. 1942) directs NetLab as the S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities
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