Kenneth D. Bailey (born 1943) is an American sociologist, systems scientist and professor of sociology at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

in Los Angeles.

Biography

Bailey studied at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

at Austin. He got there a B.S. in mathematics in 1963, a

M.A. 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 ...

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 ...

in 1966 and a

Ph.D. 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 ...

in 1968. The last four years he got an N.D.E.A. Fellowships. Summer 1967 he participated in a workshop in mathematical sociology at the Johns Hopkins University.Curriculum Vitae
of Kenneth D. Bailey. Since 1968 he worked at the University of California, Los Angeles, at the department of sociology as assistant professor. From 1971 to 1974 he worked there as director of a population research program, a survey research center at the university. From 1974 to 1989 he was associate professor and since then professor. In between he was a scholar and visiting associate professor at the department of sociology at the

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

from 1981 to 1983. Since 1984 he is also a senior research fellow at the International Systems Science institute in

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

. Bailey is a member of the American Sociological Association, the International Society for the Systems Sciences, where he was president in 2003, and the International Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Bailey participated in scientific reviews as American Sociological Review from 1974 to 1976, Systems Practice from 1987 to 1989, Behavioral Science from 1993 to 1997 and Systems Research and Behavioral Science since 1997. He also refereed in some dozen other magazines and books.

Work

Bailey's research interests have been in the fields of

research methods Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

and environmental

demography Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...

and

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

Sociology and new systems theory

In his 1994 work ''Sociology and new systems theory. Toward a theoretical synthesis,'' Bailey questioned if in those days social systems theory really existed, and if science could speak of a new social systems theory. In Bailey's opinion the works in this fields in those days did not bears much resemblance to the original action theory of

Talcott Parsons Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in soci ...

since the 1950s.

Social entropy theory

One of the main focuses of Bailey was the development a macro-sociological

, which he named social entropy theory. In this the concept of social entropy stood for a "measure of the natural decay of the structure or of the disappearance of distinctions within a social system."

Publications

Bailey wrote several books, articles and papers. A selection: * 1978. ''Methods of Social Research''. New York: Free Press, 1978 * 1985. ''Systems Inquiring: Applications''. With

Bela H. Banathy Bela may refer to: Places Asia *Bela Pratapgarh, a town in Pratapgarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India *Bela, a small village near Bhandara, Maharashtra, India *Bela, another name for the biblical city Zoara * Bela, Dang, in Nepal * Bela, Janakpur, ...

et al. (ed.), Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society for General Systems Research International Conference. Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications. * 1990. ''Social Entropy Theory''. Albany, New York: State University of New York (SUNY) Press. * 1994. ''Sociology and the new systems theory: Toward a theoretical synthesis''. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. * 1994. ''Typologies and Taxonomies: An Introduction to Classification Techniques''. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1994. * 1997. ''Systems Thinking, Globalization of Knowledge, and Communitarian Ethics''. Edited with Yong Pil Rhee. Proceedings of the International Society for the Systems Sciences International Conference. Seoul, Korea, 1997 ;Articles — a selection * 1998. "Structure, Structuration, and Autopoiesis: The Emerging. Significance of Recursive Theory." In: ''Current Perspectives in Social Theory'' 18 (1998), pp. 131–154 * 2001. "Systems Theory". In: Jonathan Turner (ed.), ''Handbook of Sociological Theory. * 2006. "Living systems theory and social entropy theory". In: ''Systems Research and Behavioral Science'', 23, 291-300.

References