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Paul Starr

 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, and Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Photo: November 2018 (Abigail Starr)

Recent book

Defining the Age: Daniel Bell, His Time and Ours, edited with Julian Zelizer (Columbia University Press, 2021). Read the "Introduction" and "Daniel Bell's Three-Dimensional Puzzle."

Recent journalism

  • "It's the Working Class, Stupid," The American Prospect, February 2024.
  • "The Life-and-Death Consequences of Conservative Power," The American Prospect, December 8, 2023.

    Three recent articles on race-related questions

  • "Moving On to Adversity-Based Affirmative Action," The American Prospect, July 2, 2023.
  • "'People of Color' as a category and identity in the United States," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, March 24, 2023.
  • "The Re-Emergence of 'People of Color,'" The DuBois Review: Social Science Research on Race (online First View, June 13, 2022).

    Other academic articles

  • "Escaping Policy Traps: Strategic Options in Overcoming Entrenchment," Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law(2023) 48(2): 135-156. (Special issue on Entrenchment and Health Equity) A comparative analysis of options for overcoming entrenchment in energy, platform monopolies, and health care. Published version here.
  • Postindustrial Limits to Professionalization" [why high-tech is low in professionalization] in Gil Eyal and Tom Medvetz, The Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2023), 470-81..
  • "The Relational Public," Sociological Theory (June 2021), 1-24.
  • "The Flooded Zone: How We Became More Vulnerable to Disinformation in the Digital Era," in W. Lance Bennett and Steven Livingston, eds., The Age of Disinformation (Cambridge University Press [Social Science Research Council], 2020).

    Critical evaluations: "Transforming American Medicine: A Twenty-Year Retrospective," Special issue, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law (2004). Reviews of The Creation of the Media.

    Last modified, February 3, 2024