Department of Sociology

Richard Williams, Professor Emeritus, taught courses in the sociology of identity and race and the sociology of symbolic boundaries. His research focused on the development of "racial" and "national" identities within the context of macro and mid-range social structures. His book Hierarchical Structures and Social Value: The Social Construction of Black and Irish Identities in the U.S. (Cambridge University Press, 1990) is a reflection of his thinking about those issues. Another area of interest centered around contemporary cultural forms of social system legitimization.