Orlando Patterson
John Cowles Professor of Sociology
Address:
Harvard University
Department of Sociology
William James Hall 520
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617.495.3707
Fax: 617.496.5794
Email: op@wjh.harvard.edu
Courses
Foreign Cultures 46: Caribbean Societies: Socioeconomic Change and Cultural Adaptations
Sociology 149: Ethnicity - Comparative and Historical Perspectives: Conference Course
Sociology 184: Freedom in America - An Historical Sociology: Conference Course
Sociology 225: Historical Sociology - Studying Continuity and Change: Seminar
Sociology 249: Race, Culture, and Social Structure - Seminar
Sociology 300: Workshop on Race/Ethnicity, Culture and Social Structure
Biography
Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology, received his B.Sc. in Economics from London University and went on to take a Ph.D. in Sociology from the London School of Economics in 1965. After faculty appointments at the London School of Economics and the University of the West Indies he moved to Harvard in 1969-1970 and was appointed Professor the following year. Between 1971 and 1973 he was also Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Leverett House. His dissertation, The Sociology of Slavery: Jamaica, 1655-1838, was published in 1967. In 1977, he published Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse and Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Harvard University Press, 1982). The problem of underdevelopment has been explored in papers on the Caribbean and many policy-oriented reports prepared for the government of Jamaica during his tenure as Special Advisor to Prime Minister Michael Manley for Social Policy and Development (1972-1980). His first of a two volume historical sociology of freedom was published in June 1991, entitled Freedom: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. He is presently completing the second volume of Freedom, dealing with the modern world. In addition, the first two volumes of a trilogy on the intersecting problems of race, immigration, and multiculturalism entitled The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis and Rituals of Blood: The Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries are available from Civitas/Counterpoint. Patterson was awarded the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association in 1983 and was co-winner of the Ralph Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association for the best scholarly work on the subject of pluralism. In 1991, he was awarded the National Book Award in non-fiction for Volume 1 of Freedom. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.