Biography

Susan S. Silbey holds the Leon and Anne Goldberg Chair in Humanities, Anthropology and Sociology, and is Professor of Behavioral and Policy Sciences in the Sloan School of Management where she teaches in the programs in Work and Organizational Studies and Economic Sociology. From 2017-2019, she served as Chair of the MIT Faculty.

Silbey is interested in the governance, regulatory and audit processes in complex organizations. Her current research focuses on the creation of management systems for containing risks, including ethical lapses, as well as environment, health and safety hazards. In addition, for fifteen years, she has been part of a team following a national panel of engineers from college to the workplace. She has recently begun several projects on the regulation of big tech and AI supply chains.

Some award winning articles and books include “Why do biologists and chemists do safety differently? The Reproduction of Cultural Variation through Pragmatic Regulation,” (2021); “Accountability Infrastructures: Pragmatic Regulation Inside Organizations,” (2021); “I’m Not A Feminist, But… The Hegemony of a Meritocratic Ideology and The Limits of Critique Among Women in Engineering,” (2018); “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward A Sociology of Narrative” (1995); “Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority” (2003); “Governing the Gap: Forging Safe Science Through Relational Regulation,” (2011); The Common Place of Law: Stories From Everyday Life (1998). Other books include In Litigation: Do the Haves Still Come Out Ahead (2003); Law and Science (I): Epistemological, Evidentiary and Relational Engagements (2008), and Law and Science (II): Regulation of Property, Practices and Products (2008).

Silbey is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards including the James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, (2019-2020); Institut des Etudes Avancees (2015-2016); Paris; Russell Sage Foundation (2014-2015); Stanton Wheeler Prize for Mentoring (2015); John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2009); Doctor Honoris Causa from Ecole Normale Superiere Cachan in Paris (2006); and the Harry Kalven Jr. Prize for advancing the sociology of law (2009). She is Past President of the Law & Society Association (1995-1996), and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Research

Designing and Evaluating Regulatory Mechanisms to Empower and Constrain AI Supply Chains

This project reviews existing models of regulation to assess their applicability to emergent AI supply chains now proliferating globally. We identify and outline several distinct regulatory strategies –public, private and professional -- articulating first how AI supply chains (and AI itself) challenges existing modes of regulation and how prior forms of governance may be adapted to this new setting. We consider hazards at the individual, organizational and systemic scales.

The Struggle for Accountability: Trust and Surveillance in the Cultures of Science

By substituting systems of audit and surveillance for the relations of trust and collegiality that have built and sustained modern science, contemporary environmental health and safety management systems seek to reconstruct the everyday routines and rituals of scientific practice, remaking them into the elements of a new form of sociality. While surveillance and audit are familiar in business and government, these are foreign to the world of science and the professional lives of scientists where traditions of autonomy and individual responsibility have been so powerful in creating the authority of science. This project explores a confrontation between the authority of law and the authority of science and does so in the very heart of science: in the laboratory, a complex technologically organized workplace.

“Why do biologists and chemists do safety differently?  The Reproduction of Cultural Variationthrough Pragmatic Regulation,” Susan S. Silbey, in Pragmatist Turn in Sociology, (edited by Neil Gross, Isaac Reed and Christopher Winship) Columbia University Press, 2022.

 “To protect from lab leaks, we need ‘banal’ safety rules, not anti-terrorism measures,” Huising and Silbey, STAT News, August 13, 2021. https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/13/banal-lab-safety-rules-keep-us-safe/

“Co-opting regulation:  Professional control through discretionary mobilization of legal prescriptions and expert knowledge.” Joelle Evans and Susan S. Silbey. Organizational Science (2021)

Developing Diverse Leadership for Engineering

With colleagues Brian Rubineau, Erin Cech, and Carroll Seron, Silbey is conducting a longitudinal panel study of engineering students from entry in college to the workplace. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the research revisits the panelists every five years after graduation (2007).  Our theoretical model adjudicates among the most important contending explanations for persistent gender stratification in professional employment by testing social psychological theories of causal individual and gender differences, organizational-level processes of culture, chilly climates and tokenism; and social capital theories concerning the efficacy of social networks. The research is designed to identify gaps in our understanding, as well as address some of the methodological problems associated with answering outstanding questions about gendering in STEM occupations.

See “Why are so many women leaving engineering?” https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field

“Bias and belief in meritocracy in AI and engineering” https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2019/04/03/bias-and-belief-in-meritocracy-in-ai-and-engineering/

“I’m Not A Feminist, But… The Hegemony of a Meritocratic Ideology and The Limits of Critique Among Women in Engineering,” Carroll Seron, Susan Silbey, Erin Cech, and Brian Rubineau. Work & Occupations, March 1, 2018, pp. 131-167.  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0730888418759774

Governing the Gap: Managing Compliance in Complex Organizations

In collaboration with Ruthanne Huising, Silbey is synthesizing research on regulatory enforcement and compliance with ethnographic studies of the regulation of scientific laboratories. The neo-liberal policies of the last forty years deconstructed some of the most critical mechanisms of the regulatory state, leaving in their wake an abundance inconsistencies and contradictions as residues of the checkered history of 20th century government regulation. Although we risk escalating crises by ignoring the lessons of history, the circumstances in which we act are never exactly the same. Thus, this project seeks to identify the conditions that distinguish regulatory successes and failures across history and cultures, and puts front and center in the project the organized subjects of regulation. We look inside regulated organizations, recognizing them as a web of transactions and norms, to examine how formal and informal organizational practices transform regulatory requirements into normalized activity. We map the range of research on coalface governance (frontline work), while displaying the assumptions and implications of each lever (nudge (individual), bureaucracy (roles, rules and procedures), relational governance (network), organizational culture (assumptions, values, and artifacts) often embedded in recommendations to policymakers or organizational managers. For published work, see "The Sociological Citizen: Pragmatic and relational regulation in law and organizations", Regulation & Governance, Volume 5, 2011, pp. 14-42; “From Nudge to Culture and Back Again: Coalface Governance in the Regulated Organization”, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 14, 2018, 91-114; “Accountability Infrastructures: Pragmatic Regulation Inside Organizations,” Ruthanne Huising and Susan Silbey.  Regulation & Governance, June 2021 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/rego.12419

Selected Publications

Teaching

21A.127J / 11.045J / 15.342J / 17.045J
Organizations and Environments

The goal of this doctoral course is to familiarize students with major conceptual frameworks, debates, and developments in contemporary organization theory. This is an inter-disciplinary domain of inquiry drawing primarily from sociology, and secondarily from economics, psychology, anthropology, and political science. The course focuses on inter-organizational processes, and also addresses the economic, institutional and cultural contexts that organizations must face.

This is an introduction to a vast and multifaceted domain of inquiry. Due to time limitations, this course will touch lightly on many important topics, and neglect others entirely; its design resembles more a map than an encyclopedia. Also, given the focus on theoretical matters, methodological issues will move to the background. Empirical material will be used to illustrate how knowledge is produced from a particular standpoint and trying to answer particular questions, leaving the bulk of the discussion on quantitative and qualitative procedures to seminars such as 15.347/21A.809, 15.348/21A.819, and the like. OCW site

21A.450J / 17.045J
Power: Interpersonal, Organizational and Global Dimensions

Using examples from anthropology and sociology alongside classical and contemporary social theory, subject explores the nature of dominant and subordinate relationships, types of legitimate authority, and practices of resistance. Examines how we are influenced in subtle ways by the people around us, who makes controlling decisions in the family, how people get ahead at work, and whether democracies, in fact, reflect the will of the people. OCW site

21A.459
Seminar in Readings on Law and Society

Explores the historical and contemporary literature, theoretical and empirical, tracking the roles of law in society as a common yet distinctive aspect of everyday life. Focuses on law as a social institution, a system, and as a feature of popular culture. Highlights the relationship between the internal logic of legal devices and economic, political and social processes and change. Emphasizes law as a practical resource, a mechanism for handling a wide range of unspecified social issues, problems, and conflicts, and at the same time, as a set of limited although shared representations and aspirations.

21A.809
Methods for Graduate Research in the Social Sciences

Foundations of good empirical research in the social sciences. Introduction to the basic assumptions and underlying logic of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Explores a variety of approaches to research design, evaluates the products of empirical research, and practices several common techniques. Students develop a framework for their own research project.

21A. 819J / 15.349J
Qualitative Research Methods

Training in the design and practice of qualitative research. Organized around illustrative texts, class exercises, and student projects. Topics include the process of gaining access to and participating in the social worlds of others; techniques of observation, fieldnote-taking, researcher self-monitoring and reflection; methods of inductive analysis of qualitative data including conceptual coding, grounded theory, and narrative analysis. Discussion of research ethics, the politics of fieldwork, modes of validating researcher accounts, and styles of writing up qualitative field research.

Now available online as 2 MITx  courses available on MITx Online: 

Qualitative Research Methods: Interview Process and Qualitative Research Methods: Data Coding and Analysis

Awards

News

Mixing joy and resolve, event celebrates women in science and addresses persistent inequalities

David Orenstein | The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory | MIT News

October 10, 2024

For two days at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, participants in the Kuggie Vallee Distinguished Lectures and Workshops celebrated the success of women in science and shared strategies to persist through, or better yet dissipate, the stiff headwinds women still face in the field.

“Everyone is here to celebrate and to inspire and advance the accomplishments of all women in science,” said host Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of the Picower Institute, as she welcomed an audience that included scores of students, postdocs, and other research trainees. “It is a great feeling to have the opportunity to showcase examples of our successes and to help lift up the next generation.”

Professor Susan Silbey is awarded the James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award

May 20, 2019

Professor Susan Silbey is awarded MIT's highest faculty honor

Professor Susan Silbey Opens the Celebration of MIT's New Schwarzman College of Computing

March 6, 2019

Professor Susan Silbey in her role as Chair of the Faculty at MIT gave the opening remarks at the recent celebration for the opening of the new Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing.

Perspectives on the Societal Impact of Computing and AI

February 27, 2019

At the invitation of SHASS Dean Melissa Nobles, Professors Susan Silbey, Heather Paxson, and Stefan Helmreich were asked to offer their perspectives on the "societal and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies".

Susan Silbey Receives "Caring Award" from the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education

August 1, 2015

Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology, and Anthropology Susan Silbey received a "Caring Award" from the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education. The awards are to recognize excellent dedication and mentorship to students.

Susan Silbey Receives Law and Society Association's Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award

May 30, 2015

Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology, and Anthropology Susan Silbey received the 2015 Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award from the Law and Society Association for her outstanding contributions as a mentor to students of all levels who are working on law and society issues.

Susan Silbey Receives Levitan Teaching Award

May 9, 2014

Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology, and Anthropology Susan Silbey was one of four recipients of the 2014 James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

Links

Sociology@mit website

"The Clash of Professional Autonomy and Regulatory Compliance" (RSF Blog)

The Life of the Law: an interview with Susan Silbey about "dibs"

Susan Silbey on WHYY Radio: Snowy Parking Conflicts in Philly

Robert J. Silbey Memorial Website

Interview on Insights from Anthropology and Sociology on Global Environmental Issues

Engineering Culture and the Reproduction of Sex Segregation

Droit et Societe, N. 100/2018, “After Legal Consciousness Studies: dialogues transformatiques et transdiciplinaires”

Conversations in Law and Society: Susan Silbey

Welcoming Remarks, Schwarzman College of Computing

“The Fundamental Challenge Facing Higher Education Today”

“#MeToo at MIT: Harassment and Systemic Gender Subordination”

“The Obligations of Citizenship”

“How Not To Teach Ethics”

MITx Online courses: Qualitative Research Methods: Interview Process and Qualitative Research Methods: Data Coding and Analysis

"To protect from lab leaks, we need ‘banal’ safety rules, not anti-terrorism measures"

Video: Invocations of Law on Snowy Streets (video)

Video: My Garden (video)