Faculty Books
Carol Heimer
Professor - On leave
Research Professor
1808 Chicago Ave., Room 109
Phone: (847) 491-7480
ABF: (312) 988-6556
c-heimer@northwestern.edu
Areas of Interest
Law and Society
Organizations-formal/complex
Medical Sociology
Sociological Theory
Relevant Links
American Bar Foundation
Law School
Biography
Carol A. Heimer is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. She received her BA from Reed College and her PhD from the University of Chicago. Heimer has written on risk and insurance (Reactive Risk and Rational Action), organization theory (Organization Theory and Project Management, co-authored with Stinchcombe), the sociology of law and the sociology of medicine (For the Sake of the Children, co-authored with Staffen, winner of both the theory and medical sociology prizes of the American Sociological Association). A recipient of the Ver Steeg Award for graduate teaching, she usually teaches courses on law, medicine, and qualitative methods, with occasional forays in to topics such as the sociology of moral experience. She spent 2007-08 as a Visiting Fellow in the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton. Heimer is currently writing a book from her NSF-funded comparative study of the role of law in medicine. In recent years, American medicine has been "legalized" as relatively informal regulation by professional peers has been supplanted by an increasingly rule-based system. By no means confined to the US, this rule-based regulation has diffused widely, sometimes freely adopted by medical workers eager for the legitimacy conferred by American medical science, at other times imposed on foreign scientific colleagues by American funding agencies and research organizations. The Legal Transformation of Medicine will be grounded in ethnographic work and interviews on the use of rules (broadly conceived) in HIV/AIDS clinics in the US, Uganda, South Africa, and Thailand.
Courses Taught
Soc 403: Field Methods Syllabus
Soc 476: Special Topics: Sociology of Moral Experience Syllabus
Publications
Extending the Rails: How Research Reshapes Clinics
(with JuLeigh Petty), Social Studies of Science, 2011
The Unstable Alliance of Law and Morality
Springer, 2010
Thinking About How to Avoid Thought: Deep Norms, Shallow Rules, and the Structure of Attention
Regulation & Governance 2 (1), 2008
Old Inequalities, New Disease: HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
Annual Review of Sociology, 2007
Cases and Biographies: An Essay on Routinization and the Nature of Comparison
Annual Review of Sociology, 2001
For the Sake of the Children: The Social Organization of Responsibility in the Hospital and the Home
(with Lisa R. Staffen), University of Chicago Press, 1998
William Henry Exum Award
The intent of this prize is to honor the memory of William Henry Exum, a member of the Department of Sociology and the African American Studies Department, who died in 1986 at the age of 37. Exum was concerned with the quality of writing and research analysis in student papers. He was also interested in racial problems facing minority youths in higher education. This award was established as a means of continuing his goals of breaking barriers for all minorities.
The award submission deadline is April 27, 2012. All interested students should submit a 15-20 page paper, typed and double-spaced, on a topic dealing with race and ethnicity. Students are not limited to a sociological approach in preparing their submissions, nor is the award limited to sociology or social science majors.
The paper should include a cover sheet with the student's name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, year in school, and major.
Three copies of the essay must be submitted by the announced deadline to the Exum Award - Department of Sociology, 1810 Chicago Ave., Evanston Campus or one copy by email to sociol@northwestern.edu.
This award is open to all undergraduate students from all disciplines.
Upcoming Events
COLLOQUIUM: Myra Marx Ferree, Sociology, University of WI-Madison
May 17, 2012 • 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Culture and Society Workshop
May 17, 2012 • 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM
