Harrison White
Encyclopedia
Harrison Colyar White (March 21, 1930 – ) is the emeritus Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University
. White is an influential scholar in the domain of social networks. He is credited with the development of a number of mathematical models of social structure including vacancy chain
s and blockmodels. He has been a leader of a revolution in sociology
that is still in process, using models of social structure that are based on patterns of relations instead of the attributes and attitudes of individuals. He has investigated and modeled persistent social formations like persons and organizations. White and his students have been able to observe and measure the patterns of relationships that appear as social constructs and have taken some of what we have known by common sense and measured it empirically. They have shown that some of our common sense notions are not correct.
The most comprehensive documentation of his theories can be found in the book Identity and Control, first published in 1992. A major rewrite of the book appeared in June 2008. White is currently involved in sociolinguistics and business strategy as well as sociology.
(MIT), receiving his undergraduate degree at 20 years of age; five years later, in 1955, he received a doctorate in theoretical physics
, also from MIT.
After receiving his PhD in theoretical physics, White started his doctoral studies in sociology at Princeton University
. At the same time he took up a position as an operations analyst at the Operations Research Office
, Johns Hopkins University
. While continuing his studies at Princeton, White also spent a year as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
, Stanford University
, California. Upon an invitation from Herbert Simon
, White then moved from California to Pittsburgh to work as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration
, Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie-Mellon University) where he stayed for a couple of years, between 1957 and 1959.
It was also during these years that White, still a graduate student in sociology, wrote and published his first social scientific work, "Sleep: A Sociological Interpretation" in Acta Sociologica, together with Vilhelm Aubert, a Norwegian sociologist. White carried out empirical research, which in May 1960 he submitted as his doctoral dissertation, earning a PhD in sociology from Princeton University
.
It was also during these years that White met his first wife, Cynthia A. Johnson, who was a graduate of Radcliffe College
, where she had majored in art history. The couple’s joint work on the French Impressionists, Canvases and Careers (1965) and “Institutional Changes in the French Painting World” (I964), originally grew out of a seminar on art in 1957 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, led by Robert Wilson.
In 1959, White moved to Chicago to start working as an associate professor at the Department of Sociology. At that time, both Peter Blau
and Erving Goffman
were there. During his stay at the University of Chicago
, White finished An Anatomy of Kinship, published in 1963 within the Prentice-Hall series in Mathematical Analysis of Social Behavior, with James Coleman and James March as chief editors. The book received significant attention from many mathematical sociologists of the time, and contributed greatly to establish White as a model builder.
, where he became the leader of the “Harvard Revolution” in social networks. White’s research on “vacancy chains” was assisted by a number of graduate students, including Michael Schwartz
and Ivan Chase.
The outcome of this was the book Chains of Opportunity. The book described a model of social mobility where the roles and the people that filled them were independent. The idea of a person being partially created by their position in patterns of relationships has become a recurring theme in his work. This provided a quantitative analysis of social roles, allowing scientists new ways to measure society that were not based on statistical aggregates.
Another of his graduate students, Mark Granovetter
, studying how people got jobs, discovered they were more likely to get them through acquaintances than through friends. This, tied with earlier work by Stanley Milgram
(who was also in the Harvard Department of Social Relations
, though not one of White’s students), gave scientists a better sense of how the social world was organized: into dense groups with “weak ties” between them. This line of research is still actively being pursued by Jon Kleinberg
, Duncan Watts and others.
More generally, White and his students sparked interest in looking at society as networks rather than as aggregates of individuals.
This view is still controversial. In sociology and organizational science, it is difficult to measure cause and effect in a systematic way. Because of that, it is common to use sampling techniques to discover some sort of average in a population.
For instance, we are told almost daily how the average European or American feels about a topic. It allows social scientists and pundits to make inferences about cause and say “people are angry at the current administration because the economy is doing poorly.” This kind of generalization certainly makes sense, but it does not tell us anything about an individual. This leads to the idea of an idealized individual, something that is the bedrock of modern economics. Most modern economic theories look at social formations, like organizations, as products of individuals all acting in their own best interest.
While this has proved to be useful in some cases, it does not account well for the knowledge that is required for the structures to sustain themselves. White and his students (and his students' students) have been developing models that incorporate the patterns of relationships into descriptions of social formations. This line of work includes: economic sociology, network sociology and structuralist sociology.
In this book, White discusses the social world, including “persons,” as emerging from patterns of relationships. He argues that it is a default human heuristic to organize the world in terms of attributes, but that this can often be a mistake. For instance, there are countless books on leadership that look for the attributes that make a good leader. However, no one is a leader without followers; the term describes a relationship one has with others. Without the relationships, there would be no leader. Likewise, an organization can be viewed as patterns of relationships. It would not “exist” if people did not honor and maintain specific relationships. White avoids giving attributes to things that emerge from patterns of relationships, something that goes against our natural instincts and requires some thought to process.
(as defined by Frank Knight
), monopolistic competition
(Edward Chamberlin
), or signalling
(Spence
). This sociological perspective on markets has influenced both sociologists (see Joel M. Podolny
) and economists (see Olivier Favereau).
Among social network researchers, White is a legend (One INSNA conference had a special “White Tie” event, dedicated to White -- Emmanuel Lazega refers to him as “Copernicus and Galileo” because he invented both the vision and the tools). However, he is not that well known to most people, although his students and mentees have had a tremendous impact. Mark Granovetter
, at Stanford, who provided the theoretical background for the Tipping Point, was a student of White’s. Other former students include Michael Schwartz and Ivan Chase, both professors at Stony Brook; Kathleen Carley
at Carnegie Mellon University
; Ronald Breiger at the University of Arizona
; Barry Wellman
at the University of Toronto
; Peter Bearman
at Columbia University
; Bonnie Erickson (Toronto); Joel Levine (Dartmouth College
), Nicholas Mullins (deceased), Margaret Theeman (Boulder), Brian Sherman (retired, Atlanta), Nancy Howell (retired, Toronto); David Gibson (University of Pennsylvania
); Matthew Bothner (University of Chicago
); Ann Mische (Rutgers University
); and Kyriakos Kontopoulos (Temple University
).
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. White is an influential scholar in the domain of social networks. He is credited with the development of a number of mathematical models of social structure including vacancy chain
Vacancy chain
A vacancy chain is a social structure through which resources are distributed to consumers. In a vacancy chain, a new resource unit that arrives into a population is taken by the first individual in line, who then leaves his/her old unit behind, this old unit is taken by a second individual,...
s and blockmodels. He has been a leader of a revolution in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
that is still in process, using models of social structure that are based on patterns of relations instead of the attributes and attitudes of individuals. He has investigated and modeled persistent social formations like persons and organizations. White and his students have been able to observe and measure the patterns of relationships that appear as social constructs and have taken some of what we have known by common sense and measured it empirically. They have shown that some of our common sense notions are not correct.
The most comprehensive documentation of his theories can be found in the book Identity and Control, first published in 1992. A major rewrite of the book appeared in June 2008. White is currently involved in sociolinguistics and business strategy as well as sociology.
Early years
White was born on March 21, 1930 in Washington, DC. At the age of 15, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT), receiving his undergraduate degree at 20 years of age; five years later, in 1955, he received a doctorate in theoretical physics
Theoretical physics
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...
, also from MIT.
After receiving his PhD in theoretical physics, White started his doctoral studies in sociology at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. At the same time he took up a position as an operations analyst at the Operations Research Office
Operations Research Office
The Operations Research Office was a civilian military research center founded in 1948 by the United States Army. It was run under contract by Johns Hopkins University. The organization's offices were originally at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. They moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland in 1952...
, Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
. While continuing his studies at Princeton, White also spent a year as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is an American interdisciplinary research body in Stanford, California focusing on the social sciences and humanities . Fellows are elected in a closed process, to spend a period of residence at the Center, released from other duties...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, California. Upon an invitation from Herbert Simon
Herbert Simon
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...
, White then moved from California to Pittsburgh to work as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration
Tepper School of Business
The Tepper School of Business is a private business school located on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.The school consistently ranks highly among the top business schools in the U.S., as well as in a wide range of specializations, such as finance,...
, Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie-Mellon University) where he stayed for a couple of years, between 1957 and 1959.
It was also during these years that White, still a graduate student in sociology, wrote and published his first social scientific work, "Sleep: A Sociological Interpretation" in Acta Sociologica, together with Vilhelm Aubert, a Norwegian sociologist. White carried out empirical research, which in May 1960 he submitted as his doctoral dissertation, earning a PhD in sociology from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
It was also during these years that White met his first wife, Cynthia A. Johnson, who was a graduate of Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the coordinate college for Harvard University. It was also one of the Seven Sisters colleges. Radcliffe College conferred joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas beginning in 1963 and a formal merger agreement with...
, where she had majored in art history. The couple’s joint work on the French Impressionists, Canvases and Careers (1965) and “Institutional Changes in the French Painting World” (I964), originally grew out of a seminar on art in 1957 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, led by Robert Wilson.
In 1959, White moved to Chicago to start working as an associate professor at the Department of Sociology. At that time, both Peter Blau
Peter Blau
Peter Michael Blau was an American sociologist and theorist. Born in Vienna, Austria, he immigrated to the United States in 1939. He received his PhD at Columbia University in 1952, and was an instructor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan from 1949–1951, before moving on to teach...
and Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist and writer.The 73rd president of American Sociological Association, Goffman's greatest contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction in the form of dramaturgical perspective that began with his 1959 book The Presentation of Self...
were there. During his stay at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, White finished An Anatomy of Kinship, published in 1963 within the Prentice-Hall series in Mathematical Analysis of Social Behavior, with James Coleman and James March as chief editors. The book received significant attention from many mathematical sociologists of the time, and contributed greatly to establish White as a model builder.
The Harvard Revolution
In 1963, White left Chicago to be an associate professor of sociology at the Harvard Department of Social RelationsHarvard Department of Social Relations
The Department of Social Relations for Interdisciplinary Social Science Studies, more commonly known as the "Department of Social Relations" was an interdisciplinary collaboration among three of the social science departments at Harvard University beginning in 1946...
, where he became the leader of the “Harvard Revolution” in social networks. White’s research on “vacancy chains” was assisted by a number of graduate students, including Michael Schwartz
Michael Schwartz
Michael or Mike Schwartz may refer to:*Mix Master Mike , real name Michael Schwartz, American turntablist*Michael Schwartz , American sociologist*Mike Schwartz, American actor and writer...
and Ivan Chase.
The outcome of this was the book Chains of Opportunity. The book described a model of social mobility where the roles and the people that filled them were independent. The idea of a person being partially created by their position in patterns of relationships has become a recurring theme in his work. This provided a quantitative analysis of social roles, allowing scientists new ways to measure society that were not based on statistical aggregates.
Another of his graduate students, Mark Granovetter
Mark Granovetter
Professor Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist at Stanford University who has created theories in modern sociology since the 1970s. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known...
, studying how people got jobs, discovered they were more likely to get them through acquaintances than through friends. This, tied with earlier work by Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
(who was also in the Harvard Department of Social Relations
Harvard Department of Social Relations
The Department of Social Relations for Interdisciplinary Social Science Studies, more commonly known as the "Department of Social Relations" was an interdisciplinary collaboration among three of the social science departments at Harvard University beginning in 1946...
, though not one of White’s students), gave scientists a better sense of how the social world was organized: into dense groups with “weak ties” between them. This line of research is still actively being pursued by Jon Kleinberg
Jon Kleinberg
-External links:**** Stephen Ibaraki*Yury Lifshits,...
, Duncan Watts and others.
Sociological contributions
A good summary of White's sociological contributions is provided by his former student and collaborator, Ronald Breiger:
White addresses problems of social structure that cut across the range of the social sciences. Most notably, he has contributed (1) theories of role structures encompassing classificatory kinship systems of native Australian peoples and institutions of the contemporary West; (2) models based on equivalences of actors across networks of multiple types of social relation; (3) theorization of social mobility in systems of organizations; (4) a structural theory of social action that emphasizes control, agency, narrative, and identity; (5) a theory of artistic production; (6) a theory of economic production markets leading to the elaboration of a network ecology for market identities and new ways of accounting for profits, prices, and market shares; and (7) a theory of language use that emphasizes switching between social, cultural, and idiomatic domains within networks of discourse. His most explicit theoretical statement is Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action (1992), although several of the major components of his theory of the mutual shaping of networks, institutions, and agency are also readily apparent in Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts (1993), written for a less-specialized audience.
More generally, White and his students sparked interest in looking at society as networks rather than as aggregates of individuals.
This view is still controversial. In sociology and organizational science, it is difficult to measure cause and effect in a systematic way. Because of that, it is common to use sampling techniques to discover some sort of average in a population.
For instance, we are told almost daily how the average European or American feels about a topic. It allows social scientists and pundits to make inferences about cause and say “people are angry at the current administration because the economy is doing poorly.” This kind of generalization certainly makes sense, but it does not tell us anything about an individual. This leads to the idea of an idealized individual, something that is the bedrock of modern economics. Most modern economic theories look at social formations, like organizations, as products of individuals all acting in their own best interest.
While this has proved to be useful in some cases, it does not account well for the knowledge that is required for the structures to sustain themselves. White and his students (and his students' students) have been developing models that incorporate the patterns of relationships into descriptions of social formations. This line of work includes: economic sociology, network sociology and structuralist sociology.
Identity and control
White’s most comprehensive work is Identity and Control. The first edition came out in 1992 and the second edition appeared in June 2008.In this book, White discusses the social world, including “persons,” as emerging from patterns of relationships. He argues that it is a default human heuristic to organize the world in terms of attributes, but that this can often be a mistake. For instance, there are countless books on leadership that look for the attributes that make a good leader. However, no one is a leader without followers; the term describes a relationship one has with others. Without the relationships, there would be no leader. Likewise, an organization can be viewed as patterns of relationships. It would not “exist” if people did not honor and maintain specific relationships. White avoids giving attributes to things that emerge from patterns of relationships, something that goes against our natural instincts and requires some thought to process.
Markets from networks
Harrison White also developed a perspective on market structure and competition in his 2002 book, Markets from Networks, based on the idea that markets are embedded in social networks. His approach is related to economic concepts such as uncertaintyKnightian uncertainty
In economics, Knightian uncertainty is risk that is immeasurable, not possible to calculate.Knightian uncertainty is named after University of Chicago economist Frank Knight , who distinguished risk and uncertainty in his work Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit:- Common-cause and special-cause :The...
(as defined by Frank Knight
Frank Knight
Frank Hyneman Knight was an American economist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders of the Chicago school. Nobel laureates James M. Buchanan, Milton Friedman and George Stigler were all students of Knight at Chicago. Knight supervised...
), monopolistic competition
Monopolistic competition
Monopolistic competition is imperfect competition where many competing producers sell products that are differentiated from one another...
(Edward Chamberlin
Edward Chamberlin
Edward Hastings Chamberlin was an American economist. He was born in La Conner, Washington.Chamberlin studied first at the University of Iowa , then pursued graduate-level studies at the University of Michigan, eventually receiving his Ph.D...
), or signalling
Signalling (economics)
In economics, more precisely in contract theory, signalling is the idea that one party credibly conveys some information about itself to another party...
(Spence
Michael Spence
Andrew Michael Spence is an American economist and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, along with George A. Akerlof and Joseph E. Stiglitz, for their work on the dynamics of information flows and market development. He conducted this research while at Harvard University...
). This sociological perspective on markets has influenced both sociologists (see Joel M. Podolny
Joel M. Podolny
Joel M. Podolny is an American sociologist and is the former Dean of the Yale School of Management. On November 1, 2008, Podolny stepped down as dean to be replaced by Sharon Oster, and in early 2009 assumed the position of Senior Vice President of Human Resources, and Dean of Apple Inc.'s new...
) and economists (see Olivier Favereau).
White’s influence
Identity and Control has seven chapters. The first six are about social formations that control us and how our own judgment organizes out experience in ways that limit our actions. The final chapter is about “getting action” and how change is possible. One of the ways is by “proxy,” empowering others.Among social network researchers, White is a legend (One INSNA conference had a special “White Tie” event, dedicated to White -- Emmanuel Lazega refers to him as “Copernicus and Galileo” because he invented both the vision and the tools). However, he is not that well known to most people, although his students and mentees have had a tremendous impact. Mark Granovetter
Mark Granovetter
Professor Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist at Stanford University who has created theories in modern sociology since the 1970s. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known...
, at Stanford, who provided the theoretical background for the Tipping Point, was a student of White’s. Other former students include Michael Schwartz and Ivan Chase, both professors at Stony Brook; Kathleen Carley
Kathleen Carley
Kathleen M. Carley is an American social scientist specializing in dynamic network analysis. She is a professor in the School of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research International at Carnegie Mellon University and also holds appointments in the Tepper School of Business, the...
at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
; Ronald Breiger at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
; Barry Wellman
Barry Wellman
Barry Wellman, FRSC directs NetLab as the S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities and organizations...
at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
; Peter Bearman
Peter Bearman
Peter Shawn Bearman is an American sociologist. He is Jonathan Cole Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University....
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
; Bonnie Erickson (Toronto); Joel Levine (Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
), Nicholas Mullins (deceased), Margaret Theeman (Boulder), Brian Sherman (retired, Atlanta), Nancy Howell (retired, Toronto); David Gibson (University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
); Matthew Bothner (University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
); Ann Mische (Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
); and Kyriakos Kontopoulos (Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
).
Current work
White is still active with his major research in linguistics. In the new Identity and Control there is emphasis on “switching” between network domains as a way to account for grammar in a way that does not ignore meaning as does much of standard linguistic theory. His long-standing interest in organizations is still active, and he is working on how strategy fits into the overall models of social construction he has developed.Selected books
- Harrison C. White (2008), Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge (Second Edition), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press ISBN 0691137153
- Harrison C. White (2002), Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
- Harrison C. White (1993), Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
- Harrison C. White (1992), Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Selected articles
- Harrison C. White, Frédéric C. Godart, and Victor P. Corona (2007), Mobilizing Identities: Uncertainty and Control in Strategy, Theory, Culture & Society 24:181-202.
- Harrison C. White (1997), Can Mathematics Be Social? Flexible Representation for Interaction Process in its Socio-Cultural Constructions, Sociological Forum 12:53-71.
- Harrison C. White (1995), Network Switchings and Bayesian Forks. Reconstructing the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social Research 62:.
- Harrison C. White (1995), Social Networks Can Resolve Actor Paradoxes in Economics and in Psychology, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 151:58-74.
- Harrison C. White (1994), Values Comes in Styles, Which Mate to Change, Chapter 4th in Michael Hechter, Lynn Nadel and R. Michod, eds., The Origin of Values. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
- Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White (1993), Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (French translation, La Carriere Des Peintres au XIXe Siecle: Du systeme academique au marche des impressionistes, Antoine Jaccottet, tr., Preface by Jean-Paul Bouillon, Flammarion Press: Paris, 1991.)
- Harrison C. White (1992), Markets, Networks and Control, in S. Lindenberg and Hein Schroeder, (eds.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Organization, Oxford, UK: Pergamon Press, 1992.
- Harrison C. White (1988). Varieties of Markets, in Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz, (eds.), Social Structures: A Network Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.