Robin M. Williams Jr. Lecture

Michael Burawoy has studied industrial workplaces in different parts of the world – Zambia, Chicago, Hungary and Russia – through participant observation. In each of his projects he has tried to cast light from the standpoint of the workplace on the nature of postcolonialism, on the organization of consent to capitalism, on the peculiar forms of working class consciousness and work organization in state socialism, and on the dilemmas of transition from socialism to capitalism. Over the course of his research and teaching, he has developed theoretically driven methodologies that allow broad conclusions to be drawn from ethnographic research and case studies. These methodologies are represented in Global Ethnography a book coauthored with 9 graduate students, which shows how globalization can be studied “from below” through participation in the lives of those who experience it. Throughout his career, he has engaged with Marxism, seeking to reconstruct it in the light of his research and more broadly in the light of historical challenges of the late 20th and early 21st. centuries.

About the Robin M. Williams, Jr. Lecture
The annual Robin M. Williams, Jr. Lecture, established in 2009 by the UCI Department of Sociology and the Center for the Study of Democracy, honors the research and teaching of Robin M. Williams, Distinguished Professor, who devoted his career to studying intergroup tensions, race relations, war and peace, ethnic conflict, and altruism and cooperation. Williams was a greatly respected and much loved member of the UCI School of Social Sciences where he spent the final 16 years of his life pursuing his love for research, teaching and service.

Please RSVP to csd@uci.edu by April 13th if you plan on attending as seating is limited. Lunch will be provided.