Department of Sociology

J. Kenneth Benson
Professor Emeritus  

Kenneth Benson has been with our department since 1966. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and specializes in theory, organizations and work.

Research Interests

I am continuing to develop the implications of a dialectical approach to the sociology of organizations outlined in my papers in the Administrative Science Quarterly in 1975 and 1977. The approach requires dealing with the social construction of organizations and interorganizational networks.

In developing the dialectical view, I am currently engaged (along with Byung-Soo Kim) in a critical response to the New Institutionalism in organization studies. A paper dealing with this critique was presented at the 2007 meeting of the American Sociological Association.

I continue to be interested in national industrial policies. A paper on industrial policy (with Nick Paretsky) in the Clinton Administration was published in 1998. I directed a doctoral dissertation by Paretsky on the history of US industrial policies completed in 2003. I studied industrial policy in Sweden in 1985-86.

I am carrying out a survey study of religion and the professions focused on how the religious concerns of clients, patients, and other publics are handled by professional workers. The survey was funded by the MU Center for Religion, the Professions, and the Public. Collaborators on this project are Edward Brent and Maksim Kokushkin. Papers on this study have been presented at meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and at the University of Montreal.

Teaching Interests

Social Organization of Industrial Societies

Work and Occupations

Sociological Theories

Recent Publications

J. Kenneth Benson and Nick Paretsky, “Active-Competitive Industrial Policy: From Project to Logic of Action.” Pp. 169-186 in Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda. Edited by Clarence Lo and Michael Schwartz. Blackwell, 1998.

Invited Lectures

J. Kenneth Benson, “Religions, Professions, and Publics: The Contradictions and Paradoxes of Desecularization.” University of Montreal, February 2004.

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