Editor-in-Chief
Joel Best, Professor of Sociology & Criminal Justice
Email address:
joelbest@udel.edu
Academic History
B.A. - University of Minnesota, 1967; M.A. - University of
California, Berkeley (sociology), 1968; Ph.D. - University of California,
Berkeley (sociology), 1971; M.A. - University of Minnesota (history),
1979.
Taught at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN), 1969-70; California State
University, Fresno, 1970-91 (department chair, 1978-88); Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale, 1991-99 (department chair, 1991-99); University of
Delaware, 1999-present (department chair, 1999-2006).
Series Editor,
“Social Problems and Social Issues” (Aldine de Gruyter,
1990-2004) Editor, Social Problems (1996-99)
President, Midwest
Sociological Society (1999-2000)
President, Society for the Study of
Social Problems (2001-02)
Research Interests
Social problems; deviance; collective behavior.
Selected Publications
Books include:
Threatened Children:
Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims (University of Chicago Press,
1990)
Organizing Deviance, 2nd ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1994) - with
David F. Luckenbill
Controlling Vice: Regulating Brothel Prostitution in
St. Paul, 1865-1883 (Ohio State University Press, 1998)
Random
Violence: How We Talk about New Crimes and New Victims (University of
California Press, 1999)
Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers
from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (University of California Press,
2001)
Deviance: Career of a Concept (Wadsworth, 2004)
More
Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues (University
of California Press, 2004)
Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall
for Fads (University of California Press, 2006)
Social Problems
(Norton, in press)
Edited collections include:
The
Satanism Scare (Aldine de Gruyter, 1991) - with James T. Richardson and
David G. Bromley
Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social
Problems, 2nd ed. (Aldine de Gruyter, 19995)
How Claims Spread:
Cross-National Diffusion of Social Problems (Aldine de Gruyter,
2001)
Prizes and Awards
Charles Horton Cooley Award, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, 1991.
