About Chris Wellin

I am a sociologist whose scholarship and research have focused on the study of work and occupations; aging and the life course, with a focus on chronic illness, caregiving, and critiques of healthcare institutions and policies; and qualitative methods, spanning ethnography, interviewing, and other forms of investigating and representing social life.

For those interested in the lineage of figures and approaches within sociology, I have been strongly influenced by what has been discussed as a “Second Chicago School” of sociology, about which you can learn more in a (1995) book edited by Gary Alan Fine. Centered at the University of Chicago in the period between the mid-1940s and early 1960s, this varied—sometimes contentious—collection of people and published work can broadly be characterized by: the influence of Herbert Blumer and Everett Hughes and their students , by an emphasis on fieldwork and other qualitative methods of inquiry (in contrast to the rise of quantitative social research in American sociology during this period), and by a theoretical orientation toward interpretive approaches, especially symbolic interactionism. Those who were trained in and expanded on this loosely defined “school” include Howard S. Becker, Erving Goffman, Anselm Strauss, Fred Davis, and Joseph Gusfield. These and other scholars have left a distinctive, lasting, and international impact, particularly on topical areas that emerged as important in my work, to which I refer above.

This tradition resists the division between academic and applied research, as it does that between formal theory and the description and study of everyday practice in social life. As such, much of my work has sought to engage and inform social policies and approaches to reforming institutions. A recurring theme in my work—evident to me now, but not consciously present as I began a series of case-studies and other projects—is to document workers’ often tacit skills and stocks of knowledge, often passed along informally, and the denial or exploitation of such knowledge within formal systems of bureaucratic authority. This tension I have studied in long-term ethnographic projects in settings as diverse as factory work, technical theater, and paid caregiving within quasi-institutional facilities for people who are older and/or face disability. I have found it invaluable, even if a bit subversive, to challenge the premises and supposed rationality of workplace supervision and governance.

A full-time teacher of sociology for two decades, I have also engaged issues of pedagogy, and reflected on cultural and interactional dynamics of academic sociology. This website contains published work over roughly thirty years, including my dissertation, articles, book chapters and reviews.

There is also a link to some selected writings by my late father, Edward Wellin, who made notable contributions to cultural, medical, and applied anthropology. My hope is to make the writings as accessible as possible, and to engage others with shared interests and goals.

With a lifelong interest and involvement in music, I hope in the future to connect those interested with recordings and videos that have been released under the banner of Whispering Campaign.

Reference

Fine, Gary Alan (ed). 1995. A Second Chicago School? The Development of a Postwar American Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.