David Norman Smith
University of Kansas
United States

David Norman Smith works at the point of intersection between political sociology, political psychology, and political economy. Before joining the KU faculty in 1990, he studied sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D, 1988) and economics at the University of California-Berkeley (A.B., 1974). He is keenly interested in all of the many ways in which people think and feel about democracy and tolerance, not only in politics but in culture and the economy. That interest, and a background in social theory, has led him to pursue an ever-expanding menu of research – on prejudice and intolerance, authority and authoritarianism, the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide of 1994; on charisma and crisis, capitalism and labor. In each of these areas, he seeks multi-faceted insight by whatever means are available – socio-historical study, survey research, and close reading, especially of texts by major sociological theorists.