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Tim Berard

Tim Berard

Tim Berard has overlapping research interests related to the empirical study of practical reasoning, including the deployment of evaluative categories for understanding and faulting types of behavior and types of individuals; attributions of motives for deviance and crime; and the interactional and pragmatic negotiation or contestation of relevant identities. Substantive topics addressed in relation to these interests include hate crimes; racial/ethnic profiling; institutional racism or disparate impact; subcultures in relation to criminal law, national security and sovereignty; and the intersection of macro social institutions and inequalities with the subjective and inter-subjective details of how social relations are created or recreated in human experience, language use and social action.

Professor Berard studied at Boston University under Jeff Coulter, writing a dissertation addressing discrimination disputes as contests over the situational relevance of macro-social identities in micro-social contexts, including legal contexts among others. He is the recipient of the Shils-Coleman prize from the American Sociological Association's Theory Section, for a critical analysis of Michel Foucault's treatment of subjectivity and its relevance to social theory. His current interests address a constellation of issues including motive attributions, social identities, and law, especially in relation to the issues of hate crimes, ethnic profiling in criminal justice and national security contexts, and institutional racism.

Primary Interests:

  • Communication, Language
  • Culture and Ethnicity
  • Intergroup Relations
  • Judgment and Decision Making
  • Law and Public Policy
  • Organizational Behavior
  • Personality, Individual Differences
  • Prejudice and Stereotyping
  • Research Methods, Assessment
  • Self and Identity
  • Social Cognition
  • Sociology, Social Networks

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Journal Articles:

Other Publications:

  • Berard, T. J. (2015). "Hate Crimes, Labels, and Accounts: Pragmatic Reflections on U.S. Hate Crime Law." In: Law at Work, edited by Baudouin Dupret, Michael Lynch and Tim Berard. Oxford University Press.
  • Berard, T. J. (2013). "Under the Shadow of the Authoritarian Personality: Elias, Fromm, and Alternative Social Psychologies of Authoritarianism." In: Norbert Elias and Social Theory: From Classics to Contemporaries, ed. Francois Depelteau and Tatiana Landini. Palgrave-Macmillan.
  • Berard, T. J. (2012). "Collective Action, Collective Reaction: Inspecting Bad Apples in Accounts for Organizational Deviance and Discrimination." In: H. Nasu and F. Waksler (eds.) Interaction and Everyday Life: Phenomenological and Ethnomethodological Essays in Honor of George Psathas. Lexington.
  • Berard, T. J. (2010). Hate Crimes and their Criminalization. In New Approaches to Social Problems Treatment, eds. Stacy Burns and Mark Peyrot, Vol. 17 of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy.
  • Berard, T. J. (2006). Deviant subcultures. In G. Ritzer (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Sociology (Vol. X, pp. 4870-4875). Blackwell.
  • Berard, T. J. (2006). Racial profiling. In J. Ciment (Ed.), Social Issues in America: An Encyclopedia (pp. 1421-1430). Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe.
  • Berard, T. J. (2002). "Japanese American" identity and the problem of multiple description: Disjunctive versions of the Japanese exclusion order. In Stephen Hester & W. Housley (Eds.), Language, Interaction, and National Identity: Studies in the Social Organisation of National Identity (pp. 144-168). Ashgate.

Courses Taught:

  • Crime, Inequality, and Deviant Subcultures
  • Criminology
  • Law and Society
  • Minorities in America
  • Minorities in Crime and Justice

Tim Berard
Sociology, 303 Merrill Hall
Kent State University
P.O. Box 5190
Kent, Ohio 44242
United States of America

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