In memoriam: Michael Burawoy
With the tragic news of his passing on February 3, 2025, our Executive Editor Naomi Schneider shares a tribute to Michael Burawoy, a legendary figure in the field of Sociology.
Michael Burawoy, UC Press author and beloved friend, died in Oakland in a hit-and-run accident near his home a few days ago. Besides being a towering figure in sociology for decades, he was a true compadre. I’m devastated, still shellshocked, trying to absorb his loss.
Michael was born in the UK, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Ukraine. He attended the University of Cambridge, where he majored in math but decided he wanted to study sociology and, after doing research in Africa, got his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago. The book coming out of his dissertation, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism (University of Chicago Press), has been tremendously influential in the field. He taught in the department of sociology at UC Berkeley for almost 50 years.
Michael was one of the most important sociologists of the last decades, developing the “extended case method” for undertaking ethnographic research. His own fieldwork took him to Russia, Hungary, Zambia, and Chicago where he worked on factory floors, in copper mines, and on other industrial sites to cast light—from the standpoint of the people in the workplace—on the nature of postcolonialism, the organization of consent to capitalism, the idiosyncratic forms of working-class consciousness, and work organization both in socialism and in the transition to capitalism.
Over the last decades his research took him around the world as he focused on the importance of “public sociology,” increasingly homing in on the university itself as a site where students are taught and where knowledge is put into the public domain. Recently Michael was focusing on the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, and he was in close conversation with UC Press author Aldon Morris, whose book The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology spawned a new field of study.
Michael served as the president of the American Sociological Association (ASA), 2004–2005, and as the president of the International Sociological Association (ISA), 2010–2014. In 2024 he helped to organize an ASA statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Michael published four books with UC Press:
- The Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations, and One Theoretical Tradition
- Public Sociology: Fifteen Eminent Sociologists Debate Politics and the Profession in the Twenty-first Century
- Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World
- Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis
Two of these books were developed with students. These collaborative volumes capture one of Michael’s brilliant and admirable traits: his commitment to cultivating his students. His undergrad lectures were renowned for being exciting and kinetic experiences, and his reputation among grad students was legendary. He served as an adviser for as many as 80 dissertations! Over the course of my career, UC Press has published approximately 25 books by Michael’s students. Just a few weeks ago, I put a new project under contract by another, Sarah Payne. I can’t count the number of people who have told me that they would never have gone to grad school if not for Michael’s presence at UC Berkeley.
Michael lived in Oakland’s Lake Merritt area for decades, long before it became a hip neighborhood. Never owning a car, he biked to Berkeley for decades and was a fit and robust 77-year-old. He was a passionate fan of Manchester United and would organize some of his days around getting up at 4:00 am to catch a game. He had a wicked and playful sense of humor that led to much laughter when we spent time together.
He was truly a role model who taught me how to live a life of political commitment, integrity, generosity, caring, and intellectual curiosity. He died before his time and we are the less for it.
—Naomi Schneider