Bruce Mork: Introducing Myself

In 1968, the year I began my sociology major at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, sociologist Herbert Gans wrote about what he called the equality revolution, beginning among blacks, young people, and women, and spreading to other groups seeking more autonomy or control over their own lives--more liberty and more democracy. As part of the 1960s generation, I am a product of the equality revolution, and my study of sociology is part and parcel of that process. Sociology as an undergraduate major and as a course of graduate studies peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as it seems to do during periods of intense change. (Enrollments, by the way, have again been increasing in the early 2000s, both at UMD and nation-wide.)

My own concentrations in graduate school at the University of Washington, Seattle, were inequality and social/political movements, and when I left graduate school I was more interested in changing the world than in studying it. After a year on the sociology faculty at the UMD, I went to work in a natural foods cooperative wholesale. Common Health Warehouse Cooperative Association had a board of directors, representing our consumer/owners and a collective, representing our workers (who were all paid the same--$7.04/hour). Decisions were by consensus, and jobs were rotated.

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Here's the logo developed of Tucson's Food Conspiracy, one of the co-op stores that has made a successful transition to the present day. Another is the Whole Foods Coop right here in Duluth, located at 610 E. 4th Street.)

"You are what you eat," believed many of my coworkers, but I was more interested in the employee democracy and consumer ownership aspects of the cooperative movement. I wanted to apply what I'd learned in sociology to build a strong alternative to the anti-democratic world of big business and big government. As we "evolved" the co-op in a more hierarchical and bureaucratic direction, I became the first (and only) general manager of an organization that employed 40 people and delivered food from Montana to upper Michigan. Many years later, I'm back at UMD full-time (as a term appointment faculty member), but still interested in sociology most of all for what it teaches about consciousness and change.

I enjoy teaching a wide variety of courses in the Sociology-Anthropology Department. Most years I also lead a field trip to Chicago during the May session right after spring semester (Sociology 3841 ). I am also intermittently active in an organization called Sociologists of Minnesota that is trying to represent not only sociologists in academic life but the many sociology graduates who take jobs in other organizations.

My partner, Joan, recently retired from her job as the Protestant chaplain at the Benedictine Health Center. My son, Nicolai, lives in North Carolina and works in management for a large corporation there. . My daughter, Betsy, is teaching world literature at the American College of Sofia(a private high school, really) in Bulgaria.

My hobbies include tennis and golf, whitewater kayaking, roller blading, canoeing the BWCA, Scrabble, and recorder music. In spring 2009 I will be offering a new course in the sociology of religion.