Thomas J. Scheff

Thomas J. Scheff (1929 – 23 May 2025) was an American Professor, Emeritus, Department of Sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara. His fields of study were the emotional/relational world, mental illness, restorative justice, and collective violence. He held a BS from the University of Arizona in Physics (1950), and a PhD in sociology from the University of California (Berkeley) (1960). He was at University of Wisconsin from 1959 to 1963, when he joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

He was advisor to California State Legislature on the writing of the Lanterman, Petris, Short Bill, Later adopted in all of the other states, regulating involuntary commitment of persons deemed mentally ill.

He had honorary doctorates from the Karlstad University in Karlstad, Sweden (2003), and University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2008), and he held visiting appointments at Carleton University, Canada, Oslo U., Norway, Lund and Karlstad Universities, Sweden. He was a Chair of the section on the Sociology of Emotions, American Sociological Association, and President of the Pacific Sociological Association.

His fields of research were social psychology, emotions, mental illness, restorative justice and collective violence. His current studies concern solidarity-alienation and the emotional/relational world. One of his books, Emotions and the Social Bond, concerns part/whole, a unified approach to theory and method in the human sciences.

Scheff died on May 23, 2025 at the age of 95.