D J Frank

Biographic Data

ID28401
NAMED J Frank
GIVEN NAMESD J
FAMILY NAMEFrank
SIGNATUREFRANK D J
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of California, Irvine
ORCID0000-0002-5187-1709
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS34
TOTAL CITATIONS1,289
WORKS AS AUTHOR34
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1994
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX15

  • Ecology and Economy

    Open AccessD J FrankOTHERThe Blackwell Encyclopedia of…2025

    The ecology–economy relationship is relatively new to the social – and sociological – agenda. In the early twentieth century, the relationship was defined primarily in terms of natural resources – a one‐way flow of goods from the ecology to the economy. In the latter twentieth century, the relationship was defined primarily in terms of environmental protection – a one‐way flow of bads from the economy to the ecology. Now, the relationship is incr…

  • The University

    Open AccessD J Frank, D S Smith et al.ARTICLEMinerva2025References: 16

    The university has risen over nearly a thousand years, growing from a tiny Western outcrop between church and state into a great global behemoth—key to culture, action, and stratification. Even as it has grown and flourished, the university has been shadowed by relentless attacks. We seek here to explain the seeming paradox. Our starting point is a distinction between institution and organization. The university institution is defined by religiou…

  • The Social Foundations of Academic Freedom

    Open AccessJ C Lerch, D J Frank et al.ARTICLEAmerican Sociological Review2024Cited by: 17References: 107

    This article analyzes academic freedom worldwide with newly available cross-national data. The literature principally addresses impingements on academic freedom arising from religion or repressive states. Academic freedom has broadly increased since 1945, but we see episodic reversals, including in recent years. Conventional work emphasizes the uniformity of international institutional structures and their influence on countries. We attend to the…

  • On university competition

    Open AccessD J Frank, J W MeyerARTICLEStudies in Higher Education2024References: 37

    Universities are specific local entities, and as such are in competition with one another for resources and prestige. The general tone of the literature—which sees universities mainly as specific organizations—is quite negative, with competition leading to destructive market and political forces. The tone is surprising, given the extraordinary worldwide university expansion over the last seven or eight decades. This inconsistency is resolved with…

  • The University

    Open AccessD J Frank, J W MeyerARTICLEGlobal Perspectives2023Cited by: 1

    In the following essay, we respond to the Douglass book on Neo-Nationalism and Universities (2021) and the Global Perspectives Review Symposium: Universities between Inter- and Renationalization. We see the university’s extraordinary success as a transcendent global institution fomenting tensions with specific instances of the university in national (and neo-nationalist) contexts. Attacks tend to be on organizational issues in local cases, rather…

  • Animals in world society

    Open AccessMike Zapp, D J Frank et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2023Cited by: 5References: 55

    This article analyzes cross-national and longitudinal variations in the incorporation of nonhuman animals into country constitutions and legislation. We argue that incorporation follows from the scientific rationalization and human rights-based ontological elaboration of nonhuman animals in world society, carried by a growing number of intergovernmental agreements and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). To test our ideas, we use …

  • Higher Education for Democracy

    Open AccessD J FrankARTICLEContemporary Sociology A Journal…2023Cited by: 1

    Unassailable Ideas: How Unwritten Rules and Social Media Shape Discourse in American Higher Education

  • Women's participation and challenges to the liberal script

    Open AccessJ C Lerch, Evan Schofer et al.ARTICLEInternational Sociology2022Cited by: 22References: 41

    Existing scholarship documents large worldwide increases in women's participation in the public sphere over recent decades, for example, in education, politics, and the labor force. Some scholars have argued that these changes follow broader trends in world society, especially its growing liberalism, which increasingly has reconfigured social life around the choices of empowered and rights-bearing individuals, regardless of gender. Very recently,…

  • Mitchell L Stevens, Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Seteney Shami, Seeing the World

    Open AccessD J FrankARTICLEInternational Sociology2020

  • Ecology and Economy

    Open AccessD J FrankOTHERThe Blackwell Encyclopedia of…2017

    The ecology–economy relationship is relatively new to the social – and sociological – agendas. In a semantic sense, this is necessarily the case. The word “ecology” only recently entered the vernacular. But sociology's newfound awareness represents more than semantic innovation. It embodies basic shifts in the institutional context

  • NGOs, Ingos, and Environmental Policy Reform, 1970–2010

    Wesley Longhofer, Evan Schofer et al.ARTICLESocial Forces2016

    We examine the effects of domestic and international environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on pro-environmental policy adoption using cross-national data. We address three views: (1) a bottom-up perspective, prioritizing the role of domestic NGOs; (2) an interaction imagery, stressing alliances or reinforcing pressures between domestic and international NGOs; (3) a top-down view, emphasizing the part of international NGOs. We use eve…

  • Cross-National and Longitudinal Variations in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1965 to 2005

    D J Frank, D M Mo et al.ARTICLESocial Forces2016Cited by: 5References: 34

    This paper analyzes cross-national and longitudinal variations in criminal laws regulating sexual activities. We blend historical and sociological institutionalisms to argue that criminal sex laws embody exogenous models, supplied by colonial and imperial powers and evolving world society. To test our ideas, we apply logit-panel and pooled-time-series models to original data from more than 150 countries on four aspects of sex laws, 1965 to 2005: …

  • Sex Laws and Sexuality Rights in Comparative and Global Perspectives

    Open AccessD J Frank, Nolan Edward PhillipsARTICLEAnnual Review of Law and Social…2013Cited by: 4References: 50

    This article seeks to explain the emergence of a new field of study oriented toward sex laws and sexuality rights in comparative and global perspectives. We argue that this field comes into focus because of three changes in the social context: the introductions of sexuality into sex, of human rights into national laws, and of global into comparative perspectives. Each turn of the social kaleidoscope generates new objects of and rationales for sch…

  • The Knowledge Business

    Open AccessD J FrankARTICLEContemporary Sociology A Journal…2012

  • Worldwide Trends in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1945 to 2005

    Open AccessD J Frank, Bayliss J Camp et al.ARTICLEAmerican Sociological Review2010Cited by: 137References: 59

    Between 1945 and 2005, nation-states around the world revised their criminal laws on sexual activities. This global reform wave-across countries and domains of sexual activity-followed from the reconstitution of world models of society around individuals rather than corporate bodies. During the post-World War II period, this process rearranged the global cultural and organizational underpinnings of sex, eroding world-level support for criminal la…

  • The Global Dimensions of Rape-Law Reform

    Open AccessD J Frank, Tara Hardinge et al.ARTICLEAmerican Sociological Review2009Cited by: 51References: 65

    Most studies of rape-law reform outcomes focus on single cases. We advance this literature by studying outcomes more systematically-leveraging new cross-national and longitudinal reform data-and showing that reform outcomes have both global and national determinants. Our exploratory analyses show three main findings: (1) Rape-law reforms are strongly associated with elevated police reporting between 1945 and 2005. (2) The strength of the associat…

  • Ecology and Economy

    Open AccessD J FrankOTHERThe Blackwell Encyclopedia of…2007

    For sociologists, the consideration of ecology – and thus ecology's role in the economy – is relatively new to the agenda. In a semantic sense, this is necessarily the case. The word “ecology” and its apparatus of meaning only recently entered the vocabulary. But sociology's ecological turn is much more than the result of semantic invention. It embodies a profound shift in the institutionalized model of nature itself (Frank 1997)

  • World Society, NGOs and Environmental Policy Reform in Asia

    Open AccessD J Frank, Wesley Longhofer et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2007Cited by: 60References: 25

    We examine the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental policy reform in Asia. Standard accounts treat NGOs as critical players in the policy process, responding to local environmental degradation and pressing states for environmental reforms. We argue, by contrast, that environmental policy changes are borne largely of the global environmental regime, and that domestic environmental NGOs in Asia are better seen as p…

  • University expansion and the knowledge society

    Open AccessD J Frank, J W MeyerARTICLETheory and Society2007Cited by: 36References: 33

  • Worldwide Expansion and Change in the University

    Open AccessD J Frank, W John MeyerCHAPTERTowards a Multiversity?2006

  • Reconstructing the University

    D J Frank, Jay GablerBOOKReconstructing the University2006

    Current conversations on the state of academia contain a broad sense of crisis over changes in the body of university knowledge—the decline of literature, the unbridling of ethnic studies, the growth of various applied programs, and so on. Much of the concern revolves around a perceived deterioration of the academic core in which, the thinking goes, the university's teaching and research priorities are increasingly compromised by external financi…

  • The Natural Sciences in the University

    Open AccessJay Gabler, D J FrankARTICLESociology of Education2005Cited by: 6References: 7

    The changing academic priorities of universities are often discussed but little investigated by social scientists: What accounts for the striking expansions and contractions in disciplinary fields over time? Focusing specifically on the natural sciences, this article articulates a global-institutional argument that holds that deep shifts in ontological conceptions of action and structure over the course of the 20th century fomented shifts in the …

  • The Profusion of Individual Roles and Identities in the Postwar Period

    Open AccessD J Frank, J W MeyerARTICLESociological Theory2002Cited by: 97References: 34

    In recent decades, the individual has become more and more central in both national and world cultural accounts of the operation of society. This continues a long historical process, intensified by the consolidation of a more global polity and the weakening of the primordial sovereignty of the national state. Increasingly, society is culturally rooted in the natural, historical, and spiritual worlds through the individual, rather than through cor…

  • Environmentalism as a Global Institution

    D J Frank, Ann Hironaka et al.ARTICLEAmerican Sociological Review2000Cited by: 23References: 4

    Les AA. s'efforcent de repondre aux critiques adressees par Frederick H. Buttel a l'encontre de leur article : «The Nation-State and the Natural Environment over the Twentieth Century» publie en fevrier 2000. Ils s'efforcent de montrer, contre l'opinion de Buttel, que l'ecologie est un phenomene global. L'ecosysteme est une entite globale, planetaire. Le processus de mondialisation tend a restructurer les Etats-nations et a institutionnaliser une…

  • The Nation-State and the Natural Environment over the Twentieth Century

    D J Frank, Ann Hironaka et al.ARTICLEAmerican Sociological Review2000Cited by: 438References: 33

    National activities to protect the natural environment are on the rise. Conventional explanations of the phenomenon emphasize domestic processes, set in motion by environmental degradation and economic affluence. We propose instead a top-down causal imagery that hinges on a global redefinition of the "nation-state" to include environmental protection as a basic state responsibility. We test our view using event-history analyses of five indicators…