Titles

• Professor, School of Politics and Global Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Biography

George Thomas's research and teaching focus on world cultural processes and their constitutive effects on authority, agency, and identity. Globalization is not merely greater interconnectedness and complexity worldwide; it also involves a consciousness and culture of the world as one place. In this view, culture is not synonymous with local, traditional practices and identities that are marginalized by technical, economic, material globalization. Global processes are thoroughly cultural and characterized by a hyper rationalism.

Education

• PhD, Sociology, Stanford University, 1979
• MA, Sociology, Stanford University, 1977
• BA, Sociology, Arizona State University, 1973

Expertise

• policy and governance
• religion
• cultural studies
• education
• comparative historical sociology