Bruce G. Carruthers

Non-resident Long-term Fellow for Programmes on Global Governance, SCAS.
John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston

Following an undergraduate degree in communication studies from Simon Fraser University in Canada,
Bruce G. Carruthers received his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1991. His research areas include
economic sociology, comparative and historical sociology, the sociology of law, and the sociology of
organizations. At Northwestern University, Carruthers is involved in the graduate Comparative Historical
Social Science program and the Kellogg-Sociology joint-PhD program. He was President of the Society
for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in 2013–2014 and directed the Buffett Institute for Global
Studies from 2014 to 2018.

His current research focuses on the quantification of credit in the United States, but he also works on
the relationship between law and money, corporate social responsibility and taxation, the adoption of
“business” features by U.S. museums, and institutions that support long-term decision-making. He has
had visiting fellowships at the Russell Sage Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and the U.S. Library of Congress and received a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship.

Carruthers' latest book, The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America, came out in
fall 2022. He has published five other books, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial
Revolution (Princeton University Press, 1996); Rescuing Business: The Making of Corporate Bankruptcy
Law in England and the United States (with Terence C. Halliday; Oxford University Press, 1998); Economy/
Society: Markets, Meanings, and Social Structure (with Sarah L. Babb; Sage, 2000); Bankrupt: Global
Lawmaking and Systemic Financial Crisis (with Terence C. Halliday; Stanford University Press, 2009);
and Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach (with Laura Ariovich; Polity Press, 2010), with recent
articles published in Theory and Society, the Fordham Law Review, the Journal of Economic Literature,
Social Science History, Socio-Economic Review, Sociétés Contemporaines, and the Journal of Comparative
Economics.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2023-24.