Core Department Faculty Member
- Paul McLean
- Professor and Department Chair
- Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1996
- Email: pmclean@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 101C
- Curriculum Vitae
Professor of Sociology, teaches courses on sociological theory, network analysis, political and economic sociology, and the sociology of culture. He also regularly teaches Introduction to Sociology to a broad range of Rutgers students.
McLean's research has focused on exploring the connections between multiple kinds of social networks—marriage networks, economic networks, and political patronage networks chiefly—and describing the cultural practices and identities that actors adopt to move within and across these networks. He has examined the development of elaborate strategies of self-presentation and the emergence of a quasi-modern conception of the self in Renaissance Florence—in articles, and in his book, The Art of the Network (Duke UP, 2007).
His book, Culture in Networks (Polity, 2017) provides an overview of research on the culture-networks link across a variety of interfaces, both historical and contemporary—including research on diffusion, social movement mobilization, clientage structures, topic modelling, the formation of tastes, organizational cultures, and social media usage.
Some of his work on Florence has been collaboratively produced, including studies of Florentine market structure and organizational emergence with John Padgett of the University of Chicago, and work on the structure and 'logics' of interpersonal credit exchange with Neha Gondal of Boston University. He also is pursuing a longstanding in consumer credit in the Renaissance.
In addition, McLean has published work on the political organization of Polish elites in the early modern period, looking at that system’s structure and its evolution as the product of multiple-network dynamics. Other research interests include the idea of chance in the Renaissance, the social theory of Adam Smith, networking dynamics and career trajectories in academia, divisiveness in contemporary American political culture, the organization of videogame play, and (with Eunkyung Song at UMass-Amherst) the concept of side directed behavior: strategic interaction in the presence of an audience.
- Faculty Article(s):
- The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Culture in Networks
- The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements