Mark S. Granovetter

By Sara L. Austin, EdD

Mark Sanford Granovetter is a professor at Stanford University. He is a prominent sociologist who earned an A.B. in history at Princeton University and a Ph.D in sociology from Harvard University.

He is one of the most cited experts in the field, best known for his paper called The Strength of Weak Ties, which has been cited over 50,000 times. He has also conducted research in economic sociology. His article, Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness, is said to have inspired a new field of inquiry in economic sociology. In 2014 he was believed to be a Nobel Prize contender and was placed on Thomson Reuters’s list predicting winners for economics.

He has spent his career at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stanford University, and Northwestern University.

His most recent book, Society and Economy: Framework and Principles, was published in 2017. He was recognized recently by Thomson Reuters, which named him a Citation Laureate, an honor reserved for the most heavily cited scholars in their respective fields of inquiry. He is the Joan Butler Ford Professor of Sociology and the Joan Butler Ford Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University.

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