June 4, 2025

Dear Members of Our Campus Community,

I am saddened to share with you that Professor Emeritus Thomas Scheff passed away on May 23, 2025, at the age of 95.

Professor Scheff joined our Department of Sociology in 1963, serving as Chair from 1969-70. A pioneering sociologist who made seminal contributions to the understanding of mental illness, emotions, and social conflict, Professor Scheff was a deeply devoted professor and mentor to our students. He was also a passionate advocate for higher education reform. He retired in 1991 after 28 years of dedicated teaching, research, and service to our academic community.

Our heartfelt condolences go out to Tom’s family, friends, colleagues, and former students around the world. In honor of his memory, our campus flag will be lowered to half-staff on Tuesday, June 17.

It is my honor to share the following tribute from our Department of Sociology, authored by Professor Emeritus William T. Bielby. 

Thomas J. Scheff (1929-2025)

Thomas J. Scheff, a pioneering sociologist whose work reshaped the study of emotions, mental illness, and human connection, died on May 23, 2025, in Santa Barbara, California. He was 95.

Born in 1929, Scheff spent much of his distinguished academic career at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was a revered teacher, mentor, and interdisciplinary thinker. Over decades of scholarship, he challenged the boundaries of traditional sociology, arguing that emotions — especially shame, pride, and love — are not merely personal experiences but fundamental forces shaping society.

His 1966 book, Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory, is a foundational text in the sociology of mental health and labeling theory. In this pioneering work, Scheff challenged prevailing medical and psychiatric models by arguing that mental illness is not simply a biological condition but a socially constructed phenomenon, often defined and reinforced through societal reactions to deviant behavior. Scheff proposed that psychiatric labels — once applied — can shape an individual’s identity and interactions, leading to "secondary deviance" and the self-fulfilling prophecy of chronic mental illness. His analysis extended Howard Becker’s work on deviance, emphasizing the social processes of rule enforcement, stigma, and institutionalization in the production of mental illness. Being Mentally Ill sparked decades of research and debate across sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and law, contributing to shifts in mental health policy, deinstitutionalization efforts, and the broader recognition of the social determinants of mental health. By foregrounding the interactive, institutional, and symbolic dimensions of mental illness, Scheff’s work remains a touchstone in the study of mental health, social control, and the sociology of deviance.

Scheff went on to become a foundational figure in the sociology of emotions. He argued that emotions are the glue of social life, essential for maintaining, repairing, or fracturing human bonds. In influential works such as Emotion and the Social Bond and Microsociology, he developed theories linking emotional processes to both interpersonal conflict and large-scale violence. A central contribution, developed in collaboration with Suzanne Retzinger, was the theory of the shame–rage spiral, which illuminated the emotional dynamics underlying conflict, violence, and social breakdowns. Building on Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self and Erving Goffman’s insights into facework, Scheff and Retzinger argued that unacknowledged and unprocessed shame — often invisible in social interactions — can escalate into anger, rage, and aggression, reinforcing cycles of disconnection and conflict. Their work offered a compelling framework for understanding the micro-processes that fuel macro-level phenomena such as family violence, ethnic conflict, and even war. By centering emotions — particularly shame — within sociological analysis, Scheff and Retzinger’s theory had a lasting impact across disciplines, influencing research in sociology, psychology, conflict resolution, restorative justice, and trauma studies. Their collaboration established the shame–rage spiral as a foundational concept in the sociology of emotions, emphasizing the need for emotional literacy, acknowledgment, and repair in fostering healthy social bonds.

Scheff’s 2000 book, Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War, extended his analysis of emotions into the realm of collective violence and nationalism. In this work, he argued that unacknowledged shame and cycles of humiliation are not only at the root of interpersonal conflict but also play a pivotal role in fueling ethnic hatred, nationalist ideologies, and war. Drawing on case studies from historical conflicts, Scheff demonstrated how the shame–rage spiral can scale up from micro-interactions to shape group dynamics, leading to violent escalation and political catastrophe. Bloody Revenge was an ambitious attempt to bridge micro-sociology and global conflict studies, offering a theoretical framework for understanding the emotional underpinnings of war and suggesting that acknowledging and addressing collective emotions is essential for breaking cycles of violence and building peace.

Scheff’s later work, Goffman Unbound: A New Paradigm for Social Science (2006), is a bold reimagining of Erving Goffman’s legacy. In it, Scheff argues that Goffman’s work, often seen as fragmented or confined to the analysis of everyday interaction, contains the seeds of a unified paradigm for social science — one that centers on emotional attunement, the signaling of social bonds, and the subtle, often overlooked dynamics of shame and pride. Scheff positioned Goffman’s ideas as a corrective to the dominance of structural and rationalist models in sociology, emphasizing the importance of emotion, facework, and ritual in maintaining the social order. Goffman Unbound inspired renewed engagement with symbolic interactionism, prompting scholars to reconsider the centrality of micro-level processes in shaping social institutions and macro-structures. It cemented Scheff’s role as a leading interpreter of Goffman and a key figure in the sociology of emotions, advancing an interdisciplinary vision that bridges sociology, psychology, and cultural studies.

Scheff’s innovative work on love and popular songs (What’s Love Got To Do With It: Emotions and Relationships in Popular Songs, 2011) reflected his enduring commitment to understanding the emotional dynamics at the core of social life. He argued that popular love songs serve as a cultural archive of collective emotional life, revealing how modern societies express, distort, or suppress feelings of attachment, shame, and longing. His analyses highlighted the ways in which popular music often romanticizes or sentimentalizes love, presenting it as a fleeting passion or tragic loss while obscuring the deeper, relational processes that sustain human bonds. Scheff contended that this cultural framing — marked by a tendency to bypass or deny feelings of shame and vulnerability — contributes to widespread emotional illiteracy, reinforcing patterns of disconnection and conflict in intimate relationships. His work bridged the sociology of emotions, cultural sociology, and symbolic interactionism, encouraging scholars to treat artistic and popular cultural forms as critical sites for examining the social construction of emotion. By drawing attention to the subtle, often hidden emotional cues embedded in everyday cultural expressions, Scheff’s work on love and popular songs deepened our understanding of the emotional undercurrents that shape both individual lives and collective experiences.

At the University of California, Santa Barbara, where Scheff taught from 1963 until his retirement in 1991, he emerged as a passionate advocate for higher education reform. In 1969, while serving as chair of the sociology department, he challenged the passive, hierarchical model of learning that he believed left students disengaged — what he famously described as “a wave passing over students.” He instead called for “active learning,” where students would confront professors directly, asking, “What is the end of your knowledge?” Scheff urged students to take ownership of their education by concentrating deeply on a few courses and forging close, questioning relationships with their instructors. A year later, in the wake of the 1970 Isla Vista riots, Scheff channeled his vision into action. In a public letter, he argued that the destruction of the Bank of America building symbolized a misplaced anger, and he called for constructive alternatives — cooperatives, community projects, and self-governance initiatives — that could transform Isla Vista into a space for student empowerment and social innovation. His vision for a participatory, tutorial-style model of education was both radical and prescient, foreshadowing today’s calls for student-centered learning. While some colleagues found his ideas challenging, Scheff’s commitment to intellectual engagement and dialogue helped inspire a generation of students and educators at UC Santa Barbara.

Throughout his career, Thomas J. Scheff remained committed to the belief that understanding emotion is essential to understanding humanity. His intellectual contributions reshaped the field of sociology, influencing generations of scholars across disciplines. Scheff’s work remains a testament to the power of emotional insight in understanding social life — and to his conviction that, in the face of conflict, it is not enough to dismantle what is broken; we must also build what is possible.

Tom will be deeply missed by his colleagues, students, and the many scholars across disciplines whose work was shaped by his insights, generosity, and profound commitment to understanding the emotional foundations of social life.

Sincerely,

Henry T. Yang
Chancellor