Interview 18 Randall Collins

Abstract

Randall Collins is currently Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and well known as one of the non-Marxist conflict theorists in the world. He received his A.B. (1963) from Harvard College where he studied with Talcott Parsons and received his M.A. in psychology (1964) from Stanford University, M.A. in sociology (1965) from the University of California at Berkeley where he continued to finish his Ph.D. (1969). He has taught in many prestigious universities. The first position in academia was at the University of California, Berkeley, followed by the University of Wisconsin, University of California, San Diego, University of Virginia and University of California, Riverside, ultimately at University of Pennsylvania. He once quit from academia twice as a novelist and private scholar. Collins has been recognized as a leading contemporary social theorist whose areas of expertise include both micro sociology, such as face to face interaction, sociology of intellectuals and social conflict, and the macro-historical sociology of political and economic change. He was elected as a member of Academy of American Arts and Sciences in 2000, and served as the president of the American Sociological Association from 2010 to 2011.