Paul-Brian McInerney, PhD
Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies
Sociology
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Contact
Building & Room:
4140B BSB
Address:
1007 W Harrison St.
Office Phone:
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About
Research Interests: Economic and Organizational Sociology, Sociology of Technology, Social Movements, Sociological Theory, Qualitative Research Methods
Recent Courses:
Economic Sociology (SOC 540)
Sociology of Work (200 level course)
Paul-Brian McInerney is Associate Professor in Sociology and the Director of Graduate Studies at UIC. Broadly, his research focuses on economic and organizational sociology, social studies of technology, social movements and collective behavior, and sociological theory. McInerney is currently studying the interaction of culture and structure in the craft brewing industry. Funded by the National Science Foundation (award ID 1734503), this project combines qualitative interviews and formal network analysis to understand the motivations and consequences of collaboration among craft breweries.
McInerney is the author of From Social Movement to Moral Market: How the Circuit Riders Sparked an IT Revolution and Created a Technology Market (Stanford University Press, 2014). The book covers traces the institutionalization of the nonprofit technology assistance industry, which started as a group of activists dedicated to environmental and social justice causes. McInerney traces how these early technology activists organized a movement and in doing so inadvertently paved the way for corporate-backed nonprofit organizations to create a market for consulting services.
He is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters on topics including: how craft breweries are organized into scenes, evaluations of authenticity among cultural producers, the open source software movement, technology use among activists, collaboration between nonprofit and for-profit organizations, and the hybrid organizational forms of social enterprise. In each of these settings, McInerney explores how groups of people overcome the contention that arises from diverse ways of understanding problems and accomplishing goals.
McInerney teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on organizations, economic sociology, sociology of work, classical and contemporary theory, and research methods. He won the R. Stephen Warner Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2012.
McInerney received his PhD and MPhil in Sociology from Columbia University in 2006. He holds an MA and BA in Sociology from St. John’s University.