BROWN, Richard H(arvey) 1940-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 12, 1940, in New York, NY; died of cancer October 9, 2003, in Washington, DC. Sociologist, educator, and author. Brown was a professor at the University of Maryland who studied such issues as the origins of modernity versus the characteristics of post-modernity, the effects of globalization on human identity, and the role of linguistic metaphor on the origins of ideas. He did his undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, earning a B.A. in 1961 before receiving a master's in sociology from Columbia University in 1965 and a doctorate in that subject from the University of California at San Diego in 1973. His early work included being a project coordinator for the Community Development Foundation in Central and South America and serving as assistant commissioner to former New York City mayor John Lindsay, for whom he worked on anti-poverty issues. Brown first taught as an instructor at California State University from 1971 to 1972; then he joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 1975, where he later became chair of the sociology department. He was the author of six books on sociology, including A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences (1977), Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality (1987), Toward a Democratic Science: Scientific Narration and Civic Communication (1998), and America in Transit (2002); he was also the editor or coeditor of a dozen other sociology books, most recently including The Politics of Selfhood (2002). In 2003, Brown was honored when an international symposium was held concerning his work.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Washington Post, October 16, 2003, p. B7.

ONLINE

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland,http://www.bsos.umd.edu/ (November 11, 2003), "Sociology Professor Richard Brown."