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education
I've been a graduate student in the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona since
2000 and now, after 34 years of near-continuous school enrollment, I am graduating. See my
ongoing trail of papers here. My C.V. is here.
interests
My main interest is to knock the rich and powerful from their leather-lined perches and give the historically exploited
and degraded a seat at the sustainably harvested, round table of autonomy, personal expression, and self-governance.
Everything else is secondary.
My secondary interests include studying social
movements, organizations,
and social networks with an eye toward achieving my main interest. How do
institutions change and what is the role of popular movements in changing them? Sociologists have surprisingly little
to say about this question. I take that back - we will say a great deal when pressed (opinionated buggers that we
are), but our theories are more inclined to explain why institutions don't change.
At Arizona I have worked most closely with Joe
Galaskiewicz, Sarah Soule (now at
Stanford), and Ron Breiger. Theoretically, I stand on the shoulders
of department alumnus Lis Clemens, Cornell
superstar Sid Tarrow, Columbia wunderkind Charles Tilly, and Neoinstitutional darling Paul DiMaggio. I have other, non-academic interests - music,
politics, hiking, and food - all of which deserve more space here but require too much computer time. In the interest
of brevity, my life in a page will have to do.
roots
My mom's grandparents were European-born (Prussia/Poland/Romania somewhere) Jewish immigrants to the U.S. sometime
around 1900. Settling in Michigan, they took advantage of the American dream by opening a small shoe store. Their
children - the Bermans as I know them - were raised in an apartment upstairs from the
store and attended Hebrew school. Grandad didn't much like the school and by the time he got a college degree
(mechanical engineering) and landed a job in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he'd given up his religious practice. My
grandma was much more interested in maintaining her Jewish heritage, but that apparently didn't fly with Grandad, so
she too stopped practicing. During the Second World War, my mother was one of two children from these God-forsaken
Pittsburghers, and made her way from the smokey hills of Steel Town to the bucolic green of Ithaca, New York and Cornell University. Taking up a booming field for women at the time (1959), home
economics, she was destined for success. She moved back to Pittsburgh where she met Dad Larson.
The Larsons hail from Sweden. My great-grandfather found Illinois to his liking and was swept into that state's
economic powerhouse, the railroad. His son followed in his shoes, working his way up to a mid-level manager position
while raising a two-child family of his own. Great-grandma and Grandma Larson figure less prominantly in this family's
oral history, but were undoubtedly hard at work raising children and tending their homes. I do know that my
grandmother was raised Catholic, but never practiced later in life. As the Great Depression gripped the country,
Grandad's railroad job held firm and along came two kids. My dad was in college at nearby Bradley University studying mechanical engineering as the U.S. began to take an
interest in Korean politics. He entered the Air Force as a low-ranking officer and spent the war years doing
experiments in a windtunnel in the Midwest. Dad took a job with a company developing nuclear energy technology that
took him hither and yon, including New York and eventually Pittsburgh, but not before the Sixties brought him his first
marriage, child, divorce, and a master's degree in nuclear engineering.
As war raged in Vietnam and protests enraged at home, my parents were skiing in Lake Placid, NY where they met
- god bless 'em. Within two years, the deal was sealed and along I came; my sister followed close behind; Mom stayed home.
The world of nuclear energy took my family to, of all places, Ogden, Utah. So, my formative years were
here, in the land of Osmonds, Mormons, and the "greatest snow on Earth." Being an "outsider" in a state that
is 85% Mormon isn't so bad if you're a white, educated, clean-cut suburbanite, as I was. Most of my friends,
teachers, scout leaders, and fellow swim team members were Mormon, and they accepted me as a regular ol' kid
on the block. My parents went their seperate ways when I was about eight and my sister and I stayed with Ma.
A frequently contentious home sustained me through the years as I watched my sister rebel with drugs and
alcohol and my father move back to Pittsburgh. For my part, I graduated and left home for the big city, Salt Lake City.
In Salt Lake, I began two years at the University of Utah majoring in
nothing, but interested in illustration and graphic design. In 1993, I moved to an even bigger city, Seattle,
WA, and was admitted to North Seattle Community College where I completed
an Associate's degree, fell in love for the first time, and left my design ambitions by the wayside for environmental
studies. I completed my undergraduate work after four years in beautiful Bellingham at Western Washington University, double-majoring in Environmental Policy &
Planning and Sociology (a nod to my mentor there, John Richardson,
an organizational and educational sociologist). In 1999, I stowed my rain gear and headed for the desert,
Tucson, where I live today.
statistics
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