Department of Sociology

Eric Brown
Assistant Professor

I received my PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. Before joining the department at the University of Missouri in the fall of 2006, I was a visiting assistant professor at Wesleyan University. Prior to that I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and the Center for the Study of Inequality at Cornell University. I have also held postdoctoral appointments at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My research and teaching is focused in the
subfields of race and ethnicity, urban sociology,
social stratification, and social policy.

Research Interests

My research interests are in the overlapping arenas of race and class inequalities, urban communities, historical change, and social policies that incorporate both the “welfare state” and “citizenship rights.” I am interested in the manifestation of these kinds of questions in the United States, particularly, but not exclusively, in the case of African Americans. However, I am also interested in comparative U.S., and international analyses of these kinds of problems. I have two ongoing research projects and a third that is in the developing stages.

1) The Formation of the Black Professional Middle Class: Racial Inequality and Social Policy Since the Civil Rights Era

This project explores the role of race relations, social class, and the state in shaping the formation of the “first generation” of the black professional middle class in “integrated” labor markets since the civil rights era. It combines a focus on national changes in class formation, racial inequality, policy development, and contemporary scholarly debates with a case study of changes at the local level in Oakland and the East Bay. More specifically, I am concerned with the cohort of black professional employees who entered their occupations in the 1960s and 1970s. I have a book project under development.

2) Minority Middle Class Formation: The Cases of Buraku People in Japan and African Americans

I have also conducted a comparative research project on (professional) middle class formation among the caste-defined minority group known as the Burakumin in Japan. This project focuses on a comparison of minority middle classes in Japan (Burakumin) and the U.S. (African Americans). Social movements and corresponding legislation in the 1960s (civil rights laws in the U.S. and special measures legislation in Japan) led to new government policies and new opportunity structures for members of the two minority groups. The similarities and differences in the development of policy regimes in these two societies provide an insightful and instructive perspective on the potential limits and possibilities for challenging the marginal status of minority groups in formally democratic postindustrial societies.

3) Race, Class and Urban Poverty

I am also working on a new research project. It will also focus on key factors such as citizenship rights and social policy issues as they are related to racial inequality and urban poverty.

Recent Publications

“The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community” in Joe Trotter
      and Kenneth Kusmer, eds. African American Urban History:
      The Dynamics of Race, Class, and Gender Since World War II.
      Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 (forthcoming).

“DuBois and Diasporic Identity: The Veil and the Unveiling Project”
      (with Judith R. Blau) Sociological Theory, July 2001.

“Black Ghetto Formation in Oakland, 1852-1965: Social Closure and
      African American Community Development.” in Dan Chekki, ed.
      Research in Community Sociology. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1998.

“The Formation of the Black Professional Middle Class: Racial Inequality
      and Social Policy Since the Civil Rights Era.” Article under development.

Courses Taught

The Black Americans

312 Middlebush Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-6100
(573) 882-8331
Fax: (573) 884-6430