Tom R. Burns

Tom R. Burns (* 1937 in Arkansas ) is an American-Swedish sociologist .

Life

Burns studied physics , economics and sociology at the Universities of Stanford and Warsaw . He received his PhD in Sociology from Stanford in 1969. Burns has taught at various universities in the USA, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and at the European University Institute in Florence. At the University of Uppsala he taught as professor of sociology from 1982 until his retirement in 2002.

Together with other social scientists, Burns developed a new variant of systems theory in a scientific network : the social rule system theory , which differs substantially from the systems theory of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann due to the systematic linking of actor and system .

Publications

• 1985: Man, Decisions, Society.
• 1986: The Shaping of Socio-economic Systems.
• 1987: The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory With Applications. Together with Helena Flam.
• 1988: Creative Democracy. Systematic Conflict Resolution and Policymaking in a World of High Science and Technology. Together with Reinhard Ueberhorst . Praeger, New York / Westport, Connecticut / London
• 1992: Societal Decision-making: Democratic Challenges to State Technocracy.
• 1994: Municipal Entrepreneurship and Energy Policy: A Five Nation Study of Politics, Innovation, and Social Change.

Web links

• Tom R. Burns, University of Upsala (Swedish)