Viviana Zelizer

Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer (born January 19, 1946) is an American sociologist and the Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. She is an economic sociologist who focuses on the attribution of cultural and moral meaning to the economy. A constant theme in her work is the economic valuation of the sacred, as found in such contexts as life insurance settlements and economic transactions between sexual intimates. In 2006, she was elected to the PEN American Center. In 2007, she was elected to both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Early life and education Viviana Zelizer was born on January 19, 1946, in Buenos Aires, to S. Julio Rotman and Rosita Weill de Rotman. She attended the University of Buenos Aires and studied law for two years. In 1967, she emigrated to the United States Gerald became the rabbi of Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen, New Jersey for 45 years, from 1970 to 2015.

She attended Rutgers University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.A. in 1971. She went on to graduate school in sociology at Columbia University where she received an MPhil, an M.A. in 1974, and a Ph.D. in sociology in 1977.

Zelizer has named four scholars at Columbia, who influenced her intellectual career: Sigmund Diamond, Bernard Barber, David Rothman, and Robert K. Merton. Diamond (whose PhD was in history) and Barber were her primary mentors in sociology, and Rothman in the history department. Zelizer has said that Merton was always present, but at a distance.

Career Zelizer's unique approach to sociology by way of social history was an initial burden, as she recounts:I remember all too painfully an early interview for a job in a university sociology department during which my interrogators asked pointedly how my social historical research qualified as sociology at all.

Awards

1985 C.W. Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems, for Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children 1996 Culture Section Book Award, American Sociological Association, for The Social Meaning of Money

Major works Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy, Princeton University Press. (2010). The Purchase of Intimacy, Princeton University Press. (2005). The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies, Basic Books. (1994). Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children, Princeton University Press. (1985). Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States, Columbia University Press. (1979).