Charles Derber

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Charles Derber
Born	{January 1944} Washington DC
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupation	Professor of Sociology and American Political Writer
Employers	Boston College
Website www2.bc.edu/~derber

Born in Washington DC January, 1944 Charles Derber attended Yale University were he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Later he attended the University of Chicago where he obtained his PhD. Currently Charles Derber is a professor^[1] of Sociology at Boston College. He has also served as director of its graduate program on social economy and social justice. Derber is a prolific writer. His works include The Wilding of America: Money, Mayhem, and the New American Dream (Worth Publishers, 2006), Hidden Power: What You Need to Know to Save Our Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2005), People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis (Picador, 2003), Corporate Nation (St. Martin's 2000). The Pursuit of Attention (2000), The Nuclear Seduction (with William Schwartz, University of California Press, ), and Power in the Highest Degree (with William Schwartz and Yale Magrass, Oxford, 1990).

Derber's work falls into three major categories. One is a critique of individualism and American culture. In 2000, Oxford University Press^[2] printed a 20th year commemorative edition of The Pursuit of Attention, marking its status as a classic sociological work. It focuses on ego-centeredness and "conversational narcissism" in everyday life as structured by class, gender and America’s individualistic culture. Derber's book, The Wilding of America, in its fourth edition, is a widely used text in American sociology. It offers a sharp critique of the American Dream and the crisis of hyper-individualism.

Derber is best known to the general public for his analysis of corporate power and globalization. His book Corporation Nation^[3] is an influential study of how corporations penetrate and increasingly control every sector of American life. People Before Profit^[4], a treatment of corporate globalization and its alternatives, has been published in five languages. His more recent books, Regime Change Begins at Home and Hidden Power, advance the literature on the marriage of political and economic power in America. In 2006, the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) nominated Hidden Power^[5] as one of the three best American books on current events.

Derber's most recent works focus on ideology and political morality. His 2008 book, Morality Wars^[6] (co-authored with Yale Magrass), analyzes hegemonic discourses from the Roman Empire to the present. It also examines religious and "born again" ideologies, from German fascism to contemporary evangelical politics in the United States. Another 2008 book, with Katherine Adam, The New Feminized Majority^[7], examines the gendered character of values and politics in America. It shows that a new electoral majority has embraced progressive values historically associated with women; values now shared by millions of men.

Derber is known as a public sociologist who writes for general audiences, offering not only sociological critiques but alternative visions. He is one of the most prominent contemporary exemplars of the sociological imagination as championed by C. Wright Mills.