Steven Barkan information

Steven Barkan (born 1951), an American sociologist, is Professor and chairperson of the Sociology department at the University of Maine.^[1]

Barkan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut where he studied sociology and later received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in the same field of study. Upon receiving his doctorate in 1980, he joined the faculty of the University of Maine.

Barkan served as president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP)from 2008 to 2009, a position that has been held previously by such notables as Gary Alan Fine and Alvin Ward Gouldner. Barkan has chaired the SSSP's Law and Society Division and served as an editor of Social Problems, the Society's journal. Barkan has also edited the newsletter of the American Sociological Association's Collective Behavior and Social Movements section.

Barkan's work focuses on criminology and the collective behavior of social movements, especially commitment and participation in social movement organizations. His other areas of interest include the death penalty, feminist activism, public opinion about crime and punishment, and racial attitudes, and household crowding and child well-being. He has published in many different journals, including the American Sociological Review, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociological Inquiry, and Race and Society.

Barkan is noted for incorporating advanced statistical analysis to test hypotheses; one of his most popular teaching techniques is to incorporates ExplorIT software with large demographic data sets to provide students an interactive means of applying statistics tol sociology.

Barkan's Ph.D. dissertation, Protesters on Trial: Criminal Justice in the Southern Civil Rights and Vietnam Antiwar Movements, explored the dynamics between a government and those who protest its policies, both by traditional means and civil disobedience. Using the title movements as case studies, Barkan concluded that the government publicizes trials to exert social control on society in general.

Barkan uses criminology as a means to understand deviant behavior on an individual and social level rather than as a tool for law enforcement. In addition to numerous journal articles and essays on the subject, Barkan has written two popular and widely adopted introductory textbooks. Essentials of Criminal Justice (with George Bryjak) and Criminology: A Sociological Understanding, currently in its fifth edition.^[2]