William Sims Bainbridge | |
|---|---|
 Award ceremony for William Sims Bainbridge held by the CITASA section of ASA. 2008 in Boston. | |
| Born | (1940-10-12)October 12, 1940 (age 85) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Harvard University (Ph.D.) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Sociologist |
William Sims Bainbridge (born October 12, 1940) is an Americansociologist who currently resides inVirginia. He is co-director of Cyber-Human Systems at theNational Science Foundation (NSF).[1] He is the first Senior Fellow to be appointed by theInstitute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Bainbridge is most well known for his work on thesociology of religion. Beginning in the 2010s he has published work studying the sociology ofvideo gaming.
Bainbridge began his academic career at theChoate Rosemary Hall preparatory school in his birthstate ofConnecticut. He matriculated atYale University andOberlin College before settling onBoston University, where he received hisB.A. in sociology in 1971. Initially, he studiedmusic and became a skilled piano-tuner. In his free time, he constructedharpsichords andclavichords with the "Bainbridge" name, which still exist in a few households.
Bainbridge received hisPh.D. in sociology atHarvard University in 1975 and went on to study the sociology of religiouscults. In 1976, he published his first book,The Spaceflight Revolution, which examined the push forspace exploration in the 1960s. In 1978, he published his second and most popular[2] book, entitledSatan's Power, which described several years in which Bainbridge infiltrated and observed theProcess Church, a religious cult whose founders had been members ofScientology.[3] The study was one of the last of this type of academic studies done before new rules were introduced restricting unregulated participatory observation and study.
After completing his doctorate, Bainbridge served as anassistant (1975–1980) andassociate professor (1980–1982) of sociology at theUniversity of Washington. During this period, he worked with departmental colleagueRodney Stark on the Stark-Bainbridge theory of religion.[4] Upon returning to Harvard as a visiting associate professor of sociology (1982–1987), he co-wrote the booksThe Future of Religion (1985) andA Theory of Religion (1987) with Stark. As of 2013, their theory, which aims to explain religious involvement in terms of rewards and compensators, is seen as a precursor of the more explicit recourse toeconomic principles in the study of religion later developed byLaurence Iannaccone and others.[5][6]
From this period until the 2000s Bainbridge published more books dealing with space, religion, and psychology. These included a text entitledExperiments in Psychology (1986), which included psychology experimentation software coded by Bainbridge.[1] He also studied the religious cult the Children of God, also known as theFamily International, in his 2002 bookThe Endtime Family: Children of God.
Bainbridge has also taught atIllinois State University (professor of sociology andanthropology; 1987–1990) andTowson University (professor of sociology and anthropology & department chair; 1990–1992). He then joined the National Science Foundation as the director of its sociology program (1992–1999) before holding a series of positions that prefigured his current appointment in 2006.
Books authored by Bainbridge include:
In addition,The Future of Religion was reprinted in Chinese in 2006 andSatan's Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult was translated into Italian in 1994.
Bainbridge's edited and co-edited books include:[7]
In addition to his books, Bainbridge has published over 200 articles and essays in various journals and encyclopedias. From 2013, when he publishedeGods, his work has shifted towards the study of the sociology of video gaming, beginning with the publication of a new article (co-authored with his daughter Wilma Alice Bainbridge) on the potentially interesting aspects of glitches in video games. He has also studied "personality capture" in software, the process by which one may save one's personality in a computer through the answering of vast personality surveys.[1]
The Future of Religion won the "Outstanding Book of the Year" award from theSociety for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1986 andA Theory of Religion won the "Outstanding Scholarship" from the Pacific Sociological Association in 1993.[7]
Bainbridge is a founding member of the Order of Cosmic Engineers[8] and is distantly related to CommodoreWilliam Bainbridge.
