Sociology of Structures, Structures of Sociology. An Interview with Charles Crothers

Abstract

Charles Crothers is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand. He was born in Christchurch, NZ, but grew up in small seaside town Tauranga, attending a multi-disciplinary social science degree at the brand-new University of Waikato. He then switched Sociology as a discipline, completed his Ph.D. at Victoria University of Wellington and followed up with several years as a junior lecturer at VUW. A further 5 years with the research section of the “Town and Country Planning Division” at the Ministry of Works and Development followed, providing a very useful platform for policy work and data analysis. He then spent a decade teaching sociology at the University of Auckland and half a decade at the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), with the final two decades back in Auckland, lecturing at AUT. He now continues as a Senior Research Associate of the Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Throughout his career, Crothers has experienced many sabbatical periods around the world: at the University of Oregon, Waterloo Canada, Kent at Canterbury and Sussex, with the most recent at Sapienza-University of Rome in 2022. From this vantage point, mixing NZ’s peculiar perspective and a variety of stays abroad, Crothers’ position in the field of sociology is fairly unique, at least socio-geographically.