Michael Schwartz

Who is Michael Schwartz?

Michael Schwartz is an American sociologist and prominent critic of the Iraq war. He is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in New York, where he also serves as faculty director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies and Chair of the Sociology Department. Schwartz has written extensively in the areas of economic sociology and social movements. Schwartz received his doctorate from the Department of Social Relations, Harvard University, where he was a student of Harrison White and Charles Tilly. His writings on Iraq have appeared in TomDispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and Contexts. In Radical Protest and Social Structure, Schwartz develops the concept of structural ignorance to refer to how individuals make choices and decisions in regard to collective action based on their position in the social structure, which constrains their access to relevant information.