ABSTRACT
Gideon Sjoberg's interests turned decidedly toward the corporation, and then finance capital, in the latter phase of his long intellectual career. Back in 1984, as Reagan was finishing up his first term in office, Sjoberg began sketching out the features of a growing critique of bureaucracy and state planning that emanated from various points of view along the political spectrum from left to right. Sjoberg’s interests turned decidedly toward the corporation, and then finance capital, in the latter phase of his long intellectual career. By the 2000s, his theorizing about the need for a sociology of human rights had come into sharper focus, while attending not simply to the state as a potential threat and guarantor, but also the corporation. Sjoberg’s work also reflects abiding concerns regarding how the wider rational bureaucratic order functions to keep the class system in place, often making it well nigh impossible to move up from the lower rungs.
