Coleman, James W. (1947–)

JAMES WILLIAM Coleman in 2003 was a professor of sociology at California Polytechnic State University, San Louis Obispo. Coleman received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1975 and is a widely respected scholar in several distinct areas of research. These include the sociology of white-collar crime, the sociology of social problems, and the sociology of drug use. Other research areas investigated by Coleman include social foundations of Western Buddhism as well as the world system's political economy. His research on white-collar crime has been published in prestigious academic journals such as the American Journal of Sociology and Social Problems.

He is probably most well known as the author of The Criminal Elite: The Sociology of White-Collar Crime, a book that ...