Fred L. Block
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Fred L. Block is an American sociologist, and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. Block is widely regarded as one the world’s leading economic and political sociologists. His interests are wide ranging, but he has been noted as an influential follower of Karl Polanyi.
Block is the author of five major books: The Vampire State and Other Myths and Fallacies About The U.S. Economy (1996), Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse (1990), The Mean Season: The Attack On the Welfare State (co-authored with Richard A. Cloward, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Frances Fox Piven) (1987), Revising State Theory: Essays In Politics and Postindustrialism (1987), and The Origins of International Economic Disorder: A Study of United States International Monetary Policy From World War II to the Present (1977).
In the year 2000 he edited the many editions of Karl Polanyi's classic work The Great Transformation into a single edition.
He has also published many journal articles on economic sociology, political sociology, sociology of work, and sociological theory in Politics & Society, World Policy Journal, Socialist Review, Theory and Society, Annual Review of Sociology, and Social Problems.
Block has served on the Board of the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy since 1989 and was a Distinguished Scientific Visitor to the Republic of China in 1995. He has also written for The Nation, The American Prospect, In These Times, Commonweal, Boston Review, and Tikkun.
Block first came to prominence for his dissertation which was later published as the Origins of International Economic Disorder: Study of United States International Monetary Policy from World War II to the Present. In this study he asserted what would become a career long interest in the destabilizing influence of unregulated capital flows across national borders. He would also publish an influential argument on the nature of the elite called the Ruling Class Does Not Rule, which began a decade long debate with social psycholgist G. William Domhoff.
In later years Block gained a more exclusively economic focus publishing three extremely influential works that included two books, Postindustrial Possibilities and The Vampire State; as well as a more proscriptive article on ways capitalist economies could be reformed for more just and efficient results in Capitalism without Class Power.
Of these, Postindustrial Possibilities is the most widely regarded as a sweeping statement on the findings of economic sociology as a field of study combined with Block’s own original contribution woven into the narrative. The Vampire State marks a bit of a return to explicitly political content although it is embedded into a discussion of US economic policy.
Block is married to Carole Joffe, a sociologist, author and activist for women's reproductive rights. They have two children.
