Katz, Jack 1944-

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KATZ, Jack 1944-

PERSONAL: Born October 16, 1944, in New York, NY; son of Charles R. (a lawyer) and Rivka (Blacker) Katz. Education: Colgate University, B.A., 1966; University of Chicago, J.D., 1969; Northwestern University, Ph.D., 1976.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Sociology, University of California—Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Yale University, New Haven, CT, research associate in law school, 1974-79; University of California—Los Angeles, assistant professor, 1979-82, associate professor, 1982-89, professor of sociology, 1989—. Consultant for university presses, law and social science journals, and defense in death penalty cases. Visiting professor, University of Paris, Paris, France, 1991-92; visiting professor, EHESS, Paris, 2001. Hans W. Mattick Lecturer, University of Illinois, 1989; Snortum Lecturer, Association of Criminal Justice Research, 1989; Stanley L. Common Lecturer, Union Theological Seminary, 1992; Fortunoff Criminal Justice Speaker, New York University, 1998. Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, 2000-01.

MEMBER: Law and Society Association (trustee, 1984-86).

AWARDS, HONORS: Russell Sage Law and Society fellowship, Yale University, 1973-75; Cooley Award, SSSI, 1989; Pacific Sociological Association annual scholarship award, 1990.

WRITINGS:

Poor People's Lawyers in Transition, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1982.

Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1988.

How Emotions Work, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1999.

Contributor of chapters to books, including Management Fraud, edited by R. K. Elliott and J. J. Willingham, Petrocelli (New York, NY), 1980; Criminology in the 1990s, edited by John E. Conklin, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 1996; The Widening Scope of Shame, edited by Melvin Lansky and Andrew Morrison, Analytic Press (Hillsdale, NJ), 1997; Social Science, Social Policy and Law, edited by Austin Sarat, Robert Kagan and Patricia Ewing, Russell Sage (New York, NY), 1999; Social Dynamics of Crime and Control: New Theories for a World in Transition, edited by Suzanne Karstedt and Kai-D. Bussmann, Hart Press (Portland, OR), 2000.

Editor, with Robert Emerson, Field Encounters and Discoveries, an ethnographic book series for University of Chicago Press. Consulting editor, American Journalof Sociology, 1977-79; associate editor, Symbolic Interaction, 1995-99; deputy editor, American Sociological Review, 2001—. Member of editorial advisory board, Western Criminology Review, Theoretical Criminology, and Ethnography. Contributor of scholarly papers to numerous periodicals, including American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, Law and Society Review, American Bar Foundation Research Journal, Media, Culture & Society, and Ethnography.

SIDELIGHTS: Jack Katz is a sociologist who has done research into aspects of criminal behavior that might reasonably be labeled "evil" or "deviant." Katz's book Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil explores "the social and epistemic dynamics of criminal events," wrote Jeff Ferrell in Social Justice. Katz specifically concentrates on criminal events in which the perpetrator deliberately acted with the intent of self-gratification through intimidation or harm to a victim. New Republic correspondent Jonathan Rieder noted: "Katz's immense contribution is to force us to dwell on the foreground, on the lived experience, of all manner of fierce malefactors." The critic added that Katz "offers some profound truths about the flight from experience, from culture, and from morality." In the National Review, Joseph Sobran declared that the author "has written a fascinating book. He aims not to excuse, but to explain. The criminals he studies are united in the euphoria of violence and other consciously deviant behaviors." Sobran concluded: "Seductions of Crime is a keen, imaginative piece of work. It makes nonsense of the idea that we can get rid of crime just by beefing up either the police or the welfare state. It reminds us that criminals are people too, and that this isn't necessarily a compliment."

How Emotions Work examines emotional experiences through the lens of social milieu, or, as Spencer E. Cahill put it in The American Journal of Sociology, "the aesthetics of embodied conduct." Examples include road rage on the Los Angeles freeways, Little Leaguers' responses to humiliating strikeouts, families laughing at their reflections in funhouse mirrors, and a toddler whining in day care. Cahill noted that the book "is not only about How Emotions Work, but about how we work. . . . This book is an invitation to change our comfortably worn views of human social experience, and it is an inviting one. Katz . . . will provoke you to rethink what you previously thought about our being, and being together, in the world."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, November, 1989, Robert J. Bursik, Jr., review of Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil, p. 782; July, 2000, Spencer E. Cahill, review of How Emotions Work, p. 257.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Lucille M. Boone, review of How Emotions Work, p. 257.

National Review, December 9, 1988, Joseph Sobran, review of Seductions of Crime, p. 56.

New Republic, November, 19, 1990, Jonathan Rieder, review of Seductions of Crime, p. 36.

New York Times Book Review, November 20, 1988, Franklin E. Zimring, review of Seductions of Crime, p. 50.

Social Forces, June, 1990, John H. Lindquist, review of Seductions of Crime, p. 1329.

Social Justice, fall, 1992, Jeff Ferrell, review of Seductions of Crime, p. 110.