Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, as Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and as Director of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
A political sociologist, Walder has long specialized on the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on China have ranged from the political and economic organization of the Mao era to changing patterns of stratification, social mobility, and political conflict in the post-Mao era. Another focus of his research has been on the political economy of Soviet-type economies and their subsequent reform and restructuring. His current research focuses on popular political mobilization in late-1960s China and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state.
Walder joined the Stanford faculty in the fall of 1997. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. As a professor of sociology, he served as Chair of Harvard’s M.A. Program on Regional Studies-East Asia for several years. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. From 1996 to 2006, as a member of the Hong Kong Government’s Research Grants Council, he chaired its Panel on the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business Studies.
His recent publications include “Transitions from State Socialism: A Property Rights Perspective,” in The Sociology of Economic Life, edited by Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg (Westview Press, 2011); Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (Harvard University Press, 2009); The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History, edited with Joseph Esherick and Paul Pickowicz (Stanford University Press, 2006); “Revolution, Reform, and Status Inheritance: Urban China, 1949-1996” (with Songhua Hu), in the American Journal of Sociology (2009); “Ownership, Organization, and Income Inequality: Market Transition in Rural Vietnam” (with Giang Hoang Nguyen) in the American Sociological Review (2008); “Ambiguity and Choice in Political Movements: The Origins of Beijing Red Guard Factionalism,” in the American Journal of Sociology (2006); “From Control to Ownership: China’s Managerial Revolution,” in Management and Organizations Review (2009); and “Political Sociology and Social Movements,” in Annual Review of Sociology (2009).
His latest book, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2015.
