Head shot Claude Fischer c. 2019

Claude S. Fischer

Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School

Research Interests

Personal networks, American social history, technology, social psychology, urban

1972 Ph.D., Folklore, Harvard University
1970 M.A., Sociology, Harvard University
1968 B.A., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Claude S. Fischer is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Schoolhouse in Sociology. He arrived at Berkeley in 1972 with an undergraduate degree from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Well-nigh of his early research focused on the social psychology of urban life—how and why rural and urban experiences differ—and on social networks, both coming together in To Dwell Amongst Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City (1982). In recent years, he has worked on American social history, beginning with a study of the early telephone'south place in social life, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (1992). Along the mode, Fischer has worked on other topics, including writing a book on inequality with 5 Berkeley colleagues, Inequality by Pattern: Cracking the Bong Curve Myth (1996). In 2006, Fischer co-authored a social historical book with Michael Hout, Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last I Hundred Years (Russell Sage), which describes the shrinking of one-time divisions and the widening of new ones among Americans over the twentieth century. In 2010, he published Made in America: A Social History of American Civilisation and Character (Academy of Chicago Press), which analyzes social and cultural alter since the colonial era. In 2011, Fischer completed Yet Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970 (Russell Sage), a study, using compilations of survey information, of whether and how Americans' personal ties contradistinct over four decades. A volume of his selected and updated columns from the Boston Review appeared in 2014 as Lurching Toward Happiness in America. Fischer's latest project, funded by the National Institute of Aging, was a six-twelvemonth panel written report of how personal ties and networks modify as individuals feel life events. Several papers from that project have appeared and more are in progress.

Fischer taught undergraduate and graduate courses in urban sociology, enquiry methods, personality and social construction, social psychology, and American society, and seminars on topics ranging from professional person writing to the sociology of consumption.

Fischer was the founding editor of Contexts, the American Sociological Association'due south mag of sociology for the general reader, 2001 through 2004. In 1996, Fischer won Robert and Helen Lynd Laurels for lifetime contributions to urban studies. In 2011, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2015 equally David Riesman Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Scientific discipline, and in 2017 to the American Philosophical Social club.

Fischer blogs at Fabricated in America (http://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/).

Representative Publications

Lurching Books

2014  Lurching Toward Happiness in America. Boston Review / MIT Printing. (Amazon)

  • 2011 Still Connected: Family unit and Friends in America Since 1970. Russell Sage Foundation. (Amazon)
  • 2010 Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character. University of Chicago Press. (Amazon)
  • 2006 Century of Difference: How America Inverse in the Last One Hundred Years (with Hout). Russell Sage Foundation.
    • Working papers and supplementary materials for the "Century of Departure" Projection can be plant hither
    • Supplementary appendices to Century of Deviation can exist constitute hither and here.
  • 1996 Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (with Hout, Lucas, Sanchez-Jankowski, Swidler and Voss). Princeton University Printing
  • 1992 America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. University of California Press.
  • 1984 The Urban Experience. Second edition. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (Cengage).
  • 1982 To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City. University of Chicago Press.
  • 1977 Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting (with Jackson, Stueve, Gerson, Jones, and Baldassare). Free Press.
  • 1975 Human Aggression and Conflict (with Scherer and Abeles). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Some 21st-Century Academic Papers

  • 2022   Ruppell, Child, Fischer, and Botchway, "Causal Relationships between Personal Networks and Wellness: A Comparison of Three Modeling Strategies." Journal of Health and Social Behavior https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ten.1177/00221465211072310 .
  • 2022   Offer and Fischer, "How New is 'New'? Who Gets Added in a Panel Study of Personal Networks?" Social Networks 70:284-94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2022.02.011 .
  • 2021   Fischer and Durham, "Forms of Grouping Interest: Alternatives to the Standard Question." Sociological Perspectives. (Supplement.)
  • 2021   "From the Northern California Community Study, 1977-78, to UCNets, 2015-20." In M. Modest, et al (eds.) Personal Networks: Classic Readings and New Directions in Ego-Centric Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • 2020   "Of Modernity and Public Sociology: Reflections on a Career So Far." Almanac Review of Folklore 46:19-35. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-110419-023001.
  • 2020   Fischer and Offering, "Who is Dropped and Why? Methodological and Substantive Accounts for Network Loss." Social Networks (May) 61:70-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2019.08.008.
  • 2019   Fischer and Bayham, "Mode and Interviewer Effects in Egocentric Network Research," Field Methods. 31(iii): 195-213. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X19861321.
  • 2018   Offer and Fischer, "Difficult People: Who is Perceived to be Enervating in Personal Networks and Why Are They There?," American Sociological Review 83 (one): 111-142. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417737951
  • 2014    Hout and Fischer, "Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012." Sociological Science one (October). DOI: ten.15195/v1.a24.
  • 2009     Fischer and Mattison, "Is America Fragmenting?" Annual Review of Sociology 35: 435-55 (with Mattson).--- can be accessed here.
  • 2008      "Paradoxes of American Individualism." Sociological Forum 23 (June): 363-72.
  • 2005      "Bowling Alone: What's the Score?" Social Networks 27 (May):155-67
  • 2002     Hout and Fischer, "Explaining the Ascent of Americans with No Religious Preference: Politics and Generation" American Sociological Review 67 (April):165-xc.
  • 2002      "Ever More Rooted Americans." City & Community i(June): 175-94.