George William "Bill" Domhoff (born August 6, 1936) is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and

research professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...

and

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the ed ...

, and a founding faculty member of UCSC's Cowell College. He is best known as the author of several best-selling sociology books, including '' Who Rules America?'' and its seven subsequent editions (1967 through 2022).

Biography

Early life

Domhoff was born in

Youngstown, Ohio Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County. At the 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area, whi ...

, and raised in

Rocky River Rocky River may refer to: Localities * Rocky River, Ohio, USA * Rocky River, New South Wales near Uralla, Australia Electorates *Electoral district of Rocky River (South Australia) Streams In Australia: * Rocky River (New South Wales) * ...

, 12 miles from Cleveland. His parents were George William Domhoff Sr., a loan executive, and Helen S. (Cornett) Domhoff, a secretary at George Sr.'s company. In high school, Domhoff was a three-sport athlete (in baseball, basketball, and football), wrote for his school newspaper's sports section, served on student council, and won a contest to be the batboy for the

Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central division. Since , they have ...

. He graduated as co-

valedictorian Valedictorian is an academic title for the highest-performing student of a graduating class of an academic institution. The valedictorian is commonly determined by a numerical formula, generally an academic institution's grade point average (GPA) ...

Education

Domhoff received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree in

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...

(1958), where he finished freshman year as sixth in his class, wrote for the '' Duke Chronicle'', played baseball as an outfielder, and tutored the student athletes. As an undergraduate, he also wrote for '' The Durham Sun'' and received his

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

key. He later earned a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree in psychology at

Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in ...

(1959), and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in psychology at the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, i ...

(1962).

Family

Domhoff has four children; his son-in-law is former

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (A ...

player Glenallen Hill.

Career

Academia

Domhoff was an assistant professor of psychology at

California State University, Los Angeles California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public university in Los Angeles, California. It is part of the 23-campus California State University (CSU) system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degrees, 122 master's degrees, ...

for three years in the early 1960s. In 1965, he joined the founding faculty of the

(UCSC) as an assistant professor at Cowell College; he became an associate professor in 1969, a professor in 1976, and a Distinguished Professor in 1993. After his retirement in 1994, he has continued to publish and teach classes as a research professor. Over the course of his career at UCSC, Domhoff served in many capacities at various times: acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences, chair of the Sociology Department, chair of the Academic Senate, chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel, and chair of the Statewide Committee on Preparatory Education. In 2007, he received the University of California's Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award, which honors the post-retirement contributions of UC faculty.

Sociology

Domhoff's first book, '' Who Rules America?'' (1967), was a 1960s sociological best-seller, arguing that the United States is dominated by an

elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. ...

ownership class, both politically and economically. This work was partially inspired by Domhoff's experience of the

Civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

and projects he assigned for his social psychology courses mapping how different organizations were connected. It built on

E. Digby Baltzell Edward Digby Baltzell Jr. (November 14, 1915 – August 17, 1996) was an American sociologist, academic and author. He studied the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment and is credited with popularizing the acronym ''WASP''. He was also a b ...

's 1958 book ''Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class'',

C. Wright Mills Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962) was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills published widely in both popular and intellectual journals, and ...

' 1956 book ''The Power Elite'',

Robert A. Dahl Robert Alan Dahl (; December 17, 1915 – February 5, 2014) was an American political theorist and Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He established the pluralist theory of democracy—in which political outcomes ar ...

's 1961 book ''Who Governs?'' and Paul Sweezy work on interest groups, and Floyd Hunter's 1953 book ''Community Power Structure'' and 1957 book ''Top Leadership, USA.'' ''Who Rules'' was followed by a series of sociology and power structure books like ''

and the Power Elite'' (1968), ''Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats'' (1974), and three more best-sellers: ''The Higher Circles'' (1970), ''The Powers That Be'' (1979), and ''Who Rules America Now?'' (1983). Domhoff has written seven updates to ''Who Rules America?''; every edition has been used as a sociology textbook. He also has a "Who Rules America?" web site, hosted by UCSC.

Psychology

In addition to his work in sociology, Domhoff has been a pioneer in the scientific study of dreams. In the 1960s, he worked closely with Calvin S. Hall, who had developed a content analysis system for dreams. He has continued to study dreams up to the present day, and his latest research advocates a neurocognitive basis for future dream research. He and his research partner, Adam Schneider, maintain two web sites dedicated to quantitative dream research
DreamResearch.net
an
DreamBank.net

Selected Bibliography

'' Who Rules America?''

* 1967. ''Who Rules America?'' Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:

Prentice Hall Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari ...

. * 1983. ''Who Rules America Now? A View for the 80's.'' New York: Simon and Schuster. * 1998. ''Who Rules America? Power and Politics in the Year 2000.'' 3rd Edition. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Co. * 2002. ''Who Rules America? Power and Politics.'' 4th Edition. New York:

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...

. * 2006. ''Who Rules America? Power, Politics, and Social Change.'' 5th Edition. New York:

. * 2010. ''Who Rules America? Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance.'' 6th Edition. New York:

. * 2014. ''Who Rules America? The Triumph of the Corporate Rich.''. 7th Edition. New York:

. * 2022. ''Who Rules America? The Corporate Rich, White Nationalist Republicans, and Inclusionary Democrats in the 2020s.'' 8th Edition. Abingdon, UK:

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

Dreams

* 1996. ''Finding Meaning in Dreams: A Quantitative Approach.'' New York: Plenum Publishing. * 2003. ''The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development, and Content Analysis.'' Washington:

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

Press. * 2018. ''The Emergence of Dreaming: Mind-Wandering, Embodied Simulation, and the Default Network.'' New York:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

. * 2022. ''The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming: The Where, How, When, What, and Why of Dreams.'' Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

References

External links

Who Rules America?The Quantitative Study of DreamsDreamBank.net
{{DEFAULTSORT:Domhoff, G. William American psychologists American sociologists American political writers American male non-fiction writers American social sciences writers Dream University of California, Santa Cruz faculty Duke University Trinity College of Arts and Sciences alumni Kent State University alumni University of Miami alumni Writers from Ohio People from Rocky River, Ohio 1936 births Living people