Murray Milner, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Virginia and is currently Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He received B.Sc. from Texas A & M, and M.A. from the University of Texas, and M. Div. from Union Theological seminary (New York), and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. For three years, he directed a relief and rehabilitation program in Bangladesh.

He has written an array of articles and is a co-author of Police on Campus, an analysis of the mas police action at Columbia University in 1968. He is author of four books: The Illusion of Equality: The Effects of Educational Opportunity on Inequality and Conflict; Unequal Care: A Case Study of Interorganizational Relations in Health Care; and Status and Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an analysis of Indian Culture. The latter book received the 1996 Distinguished Publication Award from the American Sociological Association. His most recent book is Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption (Routledge, 2004), which applies the theory of status relationships that was developed in Status and Sacredness to the behavior of adolescents.

His Fellowships include: NIMH Training Fellowship, NEH Summer Institute for Cross-disciplinary Study; Senior Fulbright Fellow to India; American Institute of Indian Studies Fellowship. He has been a visiting scholar at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, the Delhi School of Economics, and London School of Economics, and Downing College, Cambridge. In 1997, he was the American Sociological Association Sorokin Lecturer at the Eastern Sociology Association meetings and the Pacific Sociological Association meetings. In 1998 he received the Virginia Social Science Association Distinguished Scholar Award. In 2007 he received his second Fulbright award and served as a lecturer in sociology at Delhi School of Economics and at St. Edmund's College of North East Hill University.

Currently he is working on a general model of elites and non-elites and the application of this theory of status relationship to celebrities and ethnic groups.

Books

Police on Campus, (co-author), New York Civil Liberties Union, 1969

The Illusion of Equality: The Effects of Educational Opportunity on Inequality and Conflict, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972, Japanese edition with new introduction, Tokyo: Reimer Shobo, 1976

Unequal Care: A Case Study of Interorganizational Relations in Health Care, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980

Status and Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, (American Sociological Association Distinguished Publication Award for 1996)

Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption, New York: Routledge, 2004

Articles (and recent reviews)

"Human Rights as Status Relations," Handbook of Human Rights, ed. Thomas Cushman. London and New York: Routlege, 2011.

Murray Milner, Jr. 2002. "Caste," in Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, David Levinson and Karen Christensen, eds., New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, The Gale Group, pp.438-443.

"Status Distinctions and Boundaries" Handbook of Cultural Sociology, Edited by John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo, New York: Routlege (2010).

"Is Celebrity a New Kind of Status System?" Society (2010) 47:379–387.

"Youth Culture in a 'Faraway Place.'" The Hedgehog Review (Spring 2009) p. 65-73.

"Teenage Behavior: It’s Not Biology, Psychology, or Family Values" Educational Horizons vol 84 no. 4 Summer 2006, p. 240-6.

“Status,” Encyclopedia of Social Theory, Edited by Austin Harrington, Barbara L Marshall, Hans-Peter Müller, London: Routlege, 2006.

"Celebrity Culture as a Status System", The Hedgehog Review Celebrity Culture, p. 66- 77 Spring 2005

"Solidarity, the Sacred, and Human Rights: A Sociological Response," The Hedgehog Review, 3(Summer 2001):33-37.

"Status and Sacredness: Worship and Salvation as Forms of Status Transformation." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, (June 1994)

"Hindu Eschatology and the Indian Cast System: An Example of Structural Reversal," The Journal of Asian Studies, 52 (May 1993):298-319

"Status Relations in Marriage Alliances: Toward A General Theory," Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS), 22, 2(1989): 146-169

"Theories of Inequality: An Overview and a Strategy for Synthesis," Social Forces, June 1987

"Dirt and Development in India," Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1987

"Alternative Forms of Coordination: Combing Theoretical and Policy Analysis," International Journal of Comparative Sociology, March-June, 1978. Reprinted in Policy Research, Amsterdam: Brill, 1979.