William Anthony Gamson (January 27, 1934 – March 23, 2021) was a professor of
Sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
at
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
, where he was also the co-director of
the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP). He is the author of numerous books and articles on
political discourse, the
mass-media
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information e ...
and
social movements
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a Social issue, social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of Group ...
from as early as the 1960s. His influential works include ''Power and Discontent'' (1968), ''The Strategy of Social Protest'' (1975), ''Encounters with Unjust Authority'' (1982) and ''Talking Politics'' (2002), as well as numerous editions of ''
SIMSOC''.
Gamson received his Ph.D. in 1959 from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, where he taught from 1962 until 1982. In 1962, he won the
AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...
. He is also a
1978 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship; that same year, he was a fellow at the Stanford
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social a ...
. He became the 85th
president
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
of the
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fif ...
(ASA) in 1994. His awards include the ASA’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award in 1987, the Distinguished Career award from the ASA Section on Peace and War in 1997, the McCarthy Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for the Study of Social Movements In 2011, and the ASA’s W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award by the American Sociological Association in 2012.
Gamson was a leader and organizer of the 1965 anti-Vietnam War
teach-in
A teach-in is similar to a general educational forum on any complicated issue, usually an issue involving current political affairs. The main difference between a teach-in and a seminar is the refusal to limit the discussion to a specific time fr ...
at the University of Michigan and continued to participate in anti-war sentiment and protest throughout the 60s and early 70s. He led a fast by university professors against University involvement in military research.
His wife,
Zelda F. Gamson, was also an active participant in the peace movement and was involved in the 1971 March on Washington.
Gamson is also known for his writing about and creation of simulation games used primarily in teaching and organizational training environments. These include ''SIMSOC: Simulated Society'' (1969), ''What’s News: A Game Simulation of TV News'' (1984), and the ''Global Justice Game'' (2007).
Gamson was also instrumental in the creation of
fantasy baseball Fantasy baseball is a game in which the participants serve as owners and general managers of virtual baseball teams. The competitors select their rosters by participating in a draft in which all relevant Major League Baseball (MLB) players are ava ...
and
fantasy sports
A fantasy sport (also known less commonly as rotisserie or roto) is a game, often played using the Internet, where participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams composed of proxies of real players of a professional sport. These teams compete bas ...
. He created the first fantasy baseball league in Boston in 1960, the "Baseball Seminar," where colleagues would form rosters that earned points on the players' final standings in batting average,
RBI,
ERA
An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth.
Comp ...
and wins.
Alan Schwarz
Alan Schwarz (born July 3, 1968) is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and author, formerly at ''The New York Times'', best known for writing more than 100 articles that exposed the National Football League's cover-up of concussions and brought the ...
: ''The Numbers Game : Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics'' Thomas Dunne Books
Thomas Dunne Books was an imprint of St. Martin's Press, which is a division of Macmillan Publishers. From 1986 until April 2020, it published popular trade fiction and nonfiction.
History
The imprint signed David Irving, a scholar, for a Joseph ...
p. 175, Gamson later brought the idea with him to the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
where some professors played the game. These included historian
Robert Sklar, whose students included
Daniel Okrent
Daniel Okrent (born April 2, 1948) is an American writer and editing, editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of ''The New York Times'' newspaper, inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several books ( ...
; Okrent later wrote a book that was the key catalyst for the modern
fantasy sports
A fantasy sport (also known less commonly as rotisserie or roto) is a game, often played using the Internet, where participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams composed of proxies of real players of a professional sport. These teams compete bas ...
industry.
Gamson and his wife Zelda, who lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, had two children, Jennifer and
Joshua
Joshua () or Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' lit. 'Yahweh is salvation') ''Yēšūaʿ''; syr, ܝܫܘܥ ܒܪ ܢܘܢ ''Yəšūʿ bar Nōn''; el, Ἰησοῦς, ar , يُوشَعُ ٱبْنُ نُونٍ '' Yūšaʿ ...
, and five grandchildren.
Gamson's Law
''Gamson's Law of Proportionality'' or simply ''Gamson's Law'' was suggested by
Eric C. Browne and
Mark N. Franklin in 1971. They stated that there is proportionality between the numerical representation of each political force in a government and their number of seats in the parliament. It was based on the idea that each actor in government expects a payoff proportional to the weight that it contributes to the coalition, that had been proposed in the paper ''A theory of coalition formation'', published in 1961 by William Gamson.
Selected bibliography
*Gamson, William A.; Modigliani, Andre. 1989. "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach". ''American Journal of Sociology'' 95: 1–37.
*Gamson, William, A.; Wolfsfeld, Gadi. 1993. "Movements and Media as Interacting Systems." ''The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science'' 528: 114–125.
*Gamson, William A.; Meyer, David. 1996. "Framing political opportunity." In D. McAdam, J. McCarthy, & M. Zald (Eds.), ''Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings'' (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, pp. 275–290). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803987.014
*Gamson, William A. 1997. "On Coming to Terms with the Past." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 103: 210–215.
* Ferree, Myra Marx; Gamson, William A.; Gerhards, Jurgen; and Rucht, Dieter. 2002
''Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States''.New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
*Gamson, William A. 2011. “From Outsiders to Insiders: The Changing Perception of Emotional Culture and Consciousness among Social Movement Scholars.” ''Mobilization'' 16: 405–418.
*Gamson, William A. 2013. “Games Throughout the Life-Cycle,” ''Simulation and Gaming'', Vol. 44: 609–623.
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gamson, William A.
1934 births
2021 deaths
American Jews
American sociologists
Boston College faculty
Presidents of the American Sociological Association
University of Michigan alumni
University of Michigan faculty
Antioch College alumni
Fantasy sports