Thomas Beamish

Research Interests

• Organizations, Institutions, and Economy
• Environment and Technology
• Social and Community Movements

Research Statement

Dr. Beamish has studied innovation processes in the commercial construction/real estate industry; social and organizational response to environmental change and disaster; and how and why community movements mobilize and respond as they do to "risky" developments. What ties these diverse projects together is his theoretical fascination with the intersection of institutions, social organization, and interpretive work. His focus in each of these projects has been the collective bases for "local rationalities;" how sensemaking emerges from the places people live, the formal and informal social relations they are embedded within, and the collective memories and cognitive models they share as a result that help to explain their actions and inactions.

Selected Publications

• The BP Disaster and Hobson's Choice of Oil Production. (2010) Climate Progress (http://climateprogress.com). Washington, DC: American Progress Action Fund.
• "Mesoeconomics: Business Cycles, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Crisis in Commercial Building Markets." (W/ Nicole W. Biggart) in Markets on Trial: The Economic Sociology of the U.S. Financial Crisis. Research in Sociology of Organizations, Edited by Michael Lounsbury and Paul Hirsch. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. (Forthcoming 2010)
• “Alliance-Building Across Social Movements: Bridging Difference in a Peace and Justice Coalition.” (w/ Amy Luebbers) Social Problems. (forthcoming) November, Volume 56, Number 4.

• “The Logic of Risk Distribution: Site Fights and Resisting Global Toxics." A Review Essay. Social Movement Studies. (forthcoming) Vol. 8, No. 3, August, pp. 295-298.

• "Economic Sociology in the Next Decade and Beyond.” American Behavioral Scientist. (2007) Vol. 50, No. 8, 993-1014.

• "Economic Worlds of Work: Uniting Economic Sociology with the Sociology of Work." In Social Theory at Work. (w/ Nicole W. Biggart) Marek Korczynski, Randy Hodson,
  and Paul Edwards (eds.). (2006) Oxford University Press.

• “The Economic Sociology of Conventions: Habit, Custom, Practice and Routine in Market Order." (w/ Nicole W. Biggart) Annual Review of Sociology. (2003) 29:443–64.

• Silent Spill: The Organization of Industrial Crisis. (2002) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Series title: Urban and Industrial Environments.)

• “Waiting For Crisis: Regulatory Inaction and Ineptitude and the Case of the Guadalupe Dunes Oil Spill.” Social Problems. (2002) Vol. 49, No. 2. May: 150-177.

• “Environmental Hazards and Institutional Betrayal: Lay Public Perceptions of Risk in the San Luis Obispo County Oil Spill.” Organization and Environment. (2001) Vol. 14, No. 1 March: 5-33.

• “Accumulating Trouble: Complex Organization, a Culture-of-Silence, and a Secret Spill.” Social Problems. (2000) Vol. 47, No. 4. November: 473-498.

• “Who Supports the Troops? Vietnam, the Gulf War and the Making of Collective Memory.” (w/ Harvey Molotch and Richard Flacks) Social Problems. (1995) Vol. 42, No. 3. August: 344-360.