Donald Black (sociologist)

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Donald Black is University Professor of the Social Sciences at the University of Virginia, who previously taught at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School.

Author of the 1976 book The Behavior of Law, which has received very favorable reviews, and The Social Structure of Right and Wrong, which applies sociological concepts first explored in The Behavior of Law to subjects other than law, such as Right and Wrong, Crime as Social Control, Conflict Management, art, ideas (as an empirical distributed phenomenon), and God. For each of these areas, Black explains and predicts variable aspects such as the frequency of each one (how many arrests? how many ideas? how active a God?) as well as topic-specific variables (is the arrest upward or downward? how important is the idea?)

Black's approach is distinctive both for its epistemological approach (pure sociology) and its theoretical model (social geometry).

[edit] References

Works by Black:
- 1971. "The social organization of arrest". Stanford Law Review 23:1087-1111.
- 1976. The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press.
- 1980. The Manners and Customs of the Police. New York: Academic Press.
- 1984. "Social control as a dependent variable". Pages 1-36 in Toward a General Theory of Social Control, Volume I: Fundamentals, edited by Donald Black. Orlando: Academic Press.
- 1989. Sociological Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
- 1990. "The elementary forms of conflict management". Pages 43-69 in New Directions in the Study of Justice, Law, and Social Control, prepared by the School of Justice Studies, Arizona State University. New York: Plenum Press.
- 1993. The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. San Diego: Academic Press.
- 1998. The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. Revised edition. San Diego: Academic Press.
Works relying heavily upon Black's theoretical approach, including his epistemology and his explanatory model:
- Baumgartner, M.P. 1988. The Moral Order of the Suburb. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ________________. 1992. "War and peace in early childhood". Pages 1-38 in Virginia Review of Sociology Volume I, edited by James Tucker. Orlando: Academic Press.
- ________________. 1999. "Introduction." Pages 1-31 in The Social Organization of Law: 2nd Edition, edited by M.P. Baumgartner. New York: Academic Press.
- Borg, Marian J. 1992. "Conflict management and the modern world-system". Sociological Forum 7:261-282.
- Cooney, Mark. 1991. "Law, morality, and conscience: The social control of homicide in modern America". Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia.
- ____________. 1997. "From Warre to Tyranny: Lethal Conflict and the State". American Sociological Review 62 (2): 316-338.
- ____________. 1997b. "The Decline of Elite Homicide." Criminology 35(3): 381-407.
- ____________. 1998. Warriors and Peacemakers: How Third Parties Shape Violence. New York: New York University Press.
- Morrill, Calvin. 1995. The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Tucker, James. 1993. "Everyday Forms of Employee Resistance". Sociological Forum 8: 25-45.
- _____________. 1999. The Therapeutic Corporation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Other works positively reflecting upon or confirming Black's work:
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Works critical of or contradicting Black's work:
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