Thomas J. Scheff

Thomas J. Scheff (born 1929) is Professor, Emeritus, Dept of Sociology, UCSB. [1] His fields of study are the emotional/relational world, mental illness, restorative justice, and collective violence. He holds a BS from the University of Arizona in Physics (1950), and a PhD in sociology from the University of California (Berkeley) (1960). He was at University of Wisconsin from 1959-63, when he joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He was advisor to California State Legislature on the writing of the Lanterman, Petris, Short Bill, Later adopted in all of the other states, regulating involuntary commitment of persons deemed mentally ill. [2]

He has honorary doctorates from the University of Karlstad, Karlstad, Sweden (2003), and Copenhagen University, Denmark (2008), and he has held visiting appointments at Carleton University, Canada, Oslo U., Norway, Lund and Karlstad Universities, Sweden. He is a former Chair of the section on the Sociology of Emotions, American Sociological Association, and former President of the Pacific Sociological Association.[3]

His fields of research are social psychology, emotions, mental illness, restorative justice and collective violence. His current studies concern solidarity-alienation and the emotional/relational world. One of his books, Emotions and the Social Bond, concerns part/whole, a unified approach to theory and method in the human sciences.

Contents

Publications

Books

2011. What's Love Got to Do with It? The Emotional World of Pop Songs. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers

Selected Journal articles

References

  1. ^ http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff/
  2. ^ California State Legislature, Rep. Jerome Waldie, 1967. “The Dilemma of Mental Commitments in California”. See also Bardach, Eugene. 1972. The Skill Factor in Politics: Reforming the California Mental Health Law. U. of California Press. For a summary, see pp. 201-202 in the 1999 edition of Being Mentally Ill. Scheff was commissioned by the Wisconsin Legislature to do a study of mental hospitals, but his findings were rejected. However, Waldie’s committee, counseled by Arthur Bolton, replicated Scheff’s study in California, forming the groundwork for the new law.
  3. ^ http://www.pacificsoc.org/2005/06/past_officers_e.html
  4. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594511969
  5. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0761823425
  6. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=55zsIQWBb5sC&q=thomas+scheff&dq=thomas+scheff&lr=&ei=geNGSvmSM4WQNsGkmMMO&pgis=1
  7. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=LsxrAAAAMAAJ&q=thomas+scheff&dq=thomas+scheff&lr=&ei=geNGSvmSM4WQNsGkmMMO&pgis=1
  8. ^ http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=6iXy3_TBYW8C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=thomas+scheff&ots=W2I5LG71NH&sig=zt1-QQ2ZNh-SzVrkgBHc4m4pxFI