Claude S. Fischer

Claude S. Fischer is Professor of the Graduate School in Sociology, UC Berkeley. Most 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 culminating in To Dwell Among 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's place in social life, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (1992), as well as other topics such as inequality, co-authoring Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996). In 2006, Fischer co-authored Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years (Russell Sage), which describes the shrinking of old 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 Culture and Character, which analyzes social and cultural change since the colonial era. In 2011, Fischer completed Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970, a study, using compilations of survey data, of whether and how Americans' personal ties altered over four decades. He has most recently completed a panel survey study of how individuals' personal networks change. Fischer maintains a blog at madeinamercathebook. [Sept., 2020]