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Randy Dale Hodson
1952-2015
Randy Dale Hodson passed away on February 26, 2015, at the age of 62, following a valiant battle with cancer. Randy is survived by his beloved wife, Susan Rogers, and cherished daughters Debbie Mei (13) and Susie Xin (11), parents Warren and Erma Hodson, brother Robert Hodson, as well as many admirers, friends, collaborators and students who loved him and now miss him dearly.
There are so many intellectual accomplishments and imprints that Randy made on our field, including 9 authored or edited books, 100-plus refereed articles, many large grants, teaching and research awards, and two editorships. We feel it important to share the deep and enduring mark that Randy made on us as well as many of his students, collaborators. and friends. With amazing humility, Randy gently bestowed dignity on anyone who crossed his path. Perhaps such gifts, and Randy's approach to others, were driven by his burning sociological interest in human dignity and worth. Or, just maybe, his sincere and ever-present care for others emanated from something deeper within him as a person. We believe it was both, reflected in his work, to be sure, but also in the interpersonal connections he forged in his nurturing of others-connections and nurturing that he held so very dear.
Randy completed his BS in sociology from University of Wyoming-Laramie in 1975 before moving into the graduate program in sociology at University of Wisconsin under the supervision of Robert Hauser and scholars such as David Featherman, Erik Wright, Charles Halaby, Sheldon Danzinger, and William Sewell. Sensing limitations in dominant strands of status attainment and more monolithic class approaches, perhaps owing to both his graduate training and his experiences in low-status jobs, Randy became convinced that proximate structural dynamics within local labor markets were central to the well-being of workers and their identities. Making this case within the field was his first major intellectual accomplishment.
Landing a job as an assistant professor at University of Texas-Austin in 1980 and breaking new ground with his dissertation work, he published several core articles, including "Labor in the Monopoly, Competitive, and State Sectors of Production" (Politics & Society 1978), "Companies, Industries, and Measurement of Economic Segmentation" (American Sociological Review 1984), and a series of related pieces with collaborators and friends Neil Fligstein, Robert Kaufman, Paula England, to name a few. This work fundamentally transformed conceptions and modeling in inequality research. Randy's penetrating and career-long interest in this, and in the labor process, dignity, and inequality more generally, began with such work, but probably really germinated from the job experiences he had as a youth and by his observations of workers around him.
Randy's concerns regarding workplace dignity, his deep appreciation for the workplace ethnographic tradition, and his understanding that the workplace is a contested domain ultimately led to his watershed and transformative project-the Workplace Ethnography Project. He started this project as part of a graduate research practicum with his move to Indiana University in 1986 and then continued it following his move to Ohio State University in 1996. Ambitious and creative in its design, and meticulous and rigorous in its execution, Randy, along with a team of collaborators (Vincent Roscigno, Andrew Martin, Steve Lopez) and graduate students (Martha Crowley, Lindsey Chamberlain, Dan Tope, Marc Dixon), sought and blended the rich insights of hundreds of workplace ethnographies with the comparative leverage that content coding and related analyses would allow.
The result of these efforts included Randy's now classic Dignity at Work (2001), and no less than 30 important solo and collaborative articles on workplace dignity, resistance, and inequality, as well as his Analyzing Documentary Accounts (1999), a "must read" for anyone interested in systematizing qualitative materials. While there are many deep sociological lessons within this body of work, the most essential lies in Randy's conclusion that workers-often through acts of resistance-pursue dignity in their everyday work lives and efforts. Dignity is nevertheless fragile and can be undermined or bolstered in an ongoing way by unique configurations of workplace structures and relations, particularly interactions with immediate supervisors.
Randy enjoyed and felt honored in his connections to others, often going out of his way to make sure that the person sitting across the table felt respected and appreciated. This included his students, who recognized immediately Randy's passion for mentorship and teaching, something Randy engaged in even when he knew his time was growing shorter. It is thus no surprise that Randy was a celebrated teacher (winning The Ohio State University's prestigious Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001) while also penning (with Teresa Sullivan) one of the most recognized and appreciated undergraduate textbooks, The Social Organization of Work. Randy also received The Ohio State University's prestigious Distinguished Scholar Award in 2007, the Sociology Department's Outstanding Faculty Award in 2014, the OOW section's Max Weber (1999) and W. Richard Scott Awards (2005), and the 1PM section's Robert M. Hauser Distinguished Scholar Award (2014).
Randy's astounding blend of superb teaching and excellence in research was rare enough. Even rarer was his grace and humility, the fact that he considered himself privileged to teach and mentor, and that he constantly sought ways to subtly nurture others within his department and the field. In addition to his mentoring, what his friends and collaborators will note is that Randy never lost sight of the human being sitting beside him, how their life was going, and how he himself might connect to, appreciate, and learn from them.
Randy also broadly engaged questions about social inequality and, appreciating the need to address the societal, organizational and individual levels, linked personal biographies to public issues in sociological tradition. At the societal level, he looked beyond the United States to a range of other countries; for instance, in his work with Dan Cornfield on work and labor processes cross-nationally, his research with Garth Massey, Dusko Sekulic, and Robert Kunovich on ethnic conflict and war in Yugoslavia; and attention to economic transformation and inequality in China with Lisa Keister.
Randy brought a flair for thoughtful conception coupled with a deep concern for how sociology might inform how real people are impacted.
For all his recognition and visibility at Ohio State and in the field more broadly, Randy remained incredibly humble, preferring to avoid the limelight. This hardly meant, however, that he shirked service to the field. Randy reviewed for countless journals, served on the editorial boards of American Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Work & Occupations, Work, Employment & Society, Sociological Quarterly, Advances in Applied Sociology, and the International Journal of Management Studies.
Randy Hodson Memorial Fund
Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology
The Department of Sociology mourns the recent passing of our colleague, Randy Hodson. We hope that Randy’s many exemplary intellectual contributions to the field, and to teaching, mentorship and departmental life at The Ohio State University, serve as a model for future generations of young scholars. To this end, we have created The Randy Hodson Memorial Fund. This fund (# 315118) will be used to award and recognize yearly one or more Sociology graduate students for an outstanding paper or research project on the topic of work, power or inequality―all areas around with Randy’s own work and passions revolved. Contributions can be made at: www.giveto.osu.edu/makeagift/.
The Social Organization of Work
Randy Hodson, Teresa A. Sullivan
Wadsworth, 2012 - Business & Economics - 498 pages
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THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF WORK, International Edition, follows a simple structure and uses clear writing to present the material you need in an easily accessible format. This text discusses the most current and hotly debated issues, from the technology revolution to women's issues to the globalization of today's workforce
About the author (2012)
Randy Hodson received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and is currently Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University. His research interests include worker-management conflict, managerial behavior, coworker relations, and technological change. His international interests include ethnic relations in the states of the former Yugoslavia and the socialism to market transition. He is editor of the JAI Press annual series on RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF WORK and is currently working on a National Science Foundation sponsored project to content code book-length organizational ethnographies. He has received a Distinguished University Teaching Award from Ohio State University, as well as numerous awards for his research and scholarship. He is currently the editor of AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW. For more information, see his website at: http://www.soc.sbs.ohio-state.edu/rdh/. Teresa A. Sullivan is Vice President and Graduate Dean and professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Books Written by Randy Hodson