Professor Eaton is an economic sociologist who studies the power of elites in politics and the economy, as well as policy and organizational strategies to rebalance power and wealth towards ordinary people. His book, Bankers in the Ivory Tower (University of Chicago Press, 2022), is about the relationship between financialization, student debt, inequalities in higher education, and the rise of private equity and hedge fund investors among US billionaires. The book won the Pierre Bourdieu best book award from the American Sociological Association.
Eaton's latest research project examines how billionaires from finance and from big tech adopted more oligarchical roles in US politics.
His writing and research have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Marketplace, and elsewhere
His academic research has been published in journals across the social sciences, including American Sociological Review, Review of Financial Studies, Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Sociology of Education, Politics & Society, Research in Higher Education, Sociological Compass, and Socius.
Eaton's research uses data carpentry to digitize, link, and construct original data for measuring inequalities in the resources and activities of elites and less powerful social groups. Much of this data is multi-level organizational data. He publishes code and data from this work at the Higher Ed Data Hub.
Eaton received his Ph.D in sociology from University of California, Berkeley. He was a postdoctoral scholar in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University before joining the faculty in sociology at UC Merced. Eaton's articles and newsletter are available at his website.
Economic sociology, political sociology, organizations, education, stratification and inequality, healthcare, public policy
