Michael Burawoy has died

The eminent sociologist Michael Burawoy died on Monday, after being hit by a car while walking near near his home. I’ve found a couple of tributes: this from Marta Soler Gallart which tells a story I didn’t know but surprises me not in the least, and this from Oleg Komlik. There’ll be loads of tributes to his remarkable intellectual contributions, and I’ll have nothing to add to them. So I’ll just say this. I didn’t know Michael that well really, but he was a very close friend of my very close friend Erik Olin Wright, so over many years I saw him briefly, and occasionally, always in the most convivial of circumstances. I discovered very quickly that I adored him and his company. He was generous and kind to treat me as an equal — he probably did that to everyone. I loved that somebody could combine a level of energy even into his seventies that I, personally, have never had, with a commitment and passion for all the right things and still give the sense of being permanently slightly amused with the world. When he and Gay Seidman were preparing the memorial volume for Erik Olin Wright, Michael was determined that I would contribute, despite being a complete outlier intellectually. I was resistant to writing a contribution (because an outlier and not thinking I had much to say), and Michael pressed me to write an essay which, in the end, I was really proud of. I realized after I’d finished it that he knew I’d produce something good, but that the reason he had pressed me was that he predicted (I’m sure correctly) that if I didn’t contribute I would regret it.

A great intellectual, yes, but I hope the tributes place that second to the fact that he was a lovely, generous, man.