Eviatar Zerubavel
Eviatar Zerubavel (born November 25, 1948) is a sociology professor at Rutgers University who studies how people think and organize everyday life. He focuses on time, boundaries, and categorization. He is the grandson of Ya'akov Zerubavel. Born in Israel to parents in diplomatic service, he spent much of his childhood abroad. He studied at Tel Aviv University and earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, where he worked with Erving Goffman. After teaching at Columbia University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, most of his career has been at Rutgers. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and was named Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology in 2007.
Zerubavel’s early work explored time and how society standardizes it. Notable books from this period include Patterns of Time in Hospital Life (1979), Hidden Rhythms (1981), The Seven Day Circle (1985), and Time Maps (2003). Later, he developed cognitive sociology, showing how social patterns shape our thinking. Key books in this area are The Fine Line (1991), Terra Cognita (1992), Social Mindscapes (1997), The Elephant in the Room (2006), and Ancestors and Relatives (2011). His 2018 book Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable looks at the power of everyday, overlooked things.
He directed Rutgers’ graduate program in sociology for many years and mentored many students. He also became interested in writing habits and time management; The Clockwork Muse (1999) offers practical advice for writers finishing books and dissertations. Zerubavel’s writing uses many examples from ordinary life, a style some call "Zerubavelian" sociology. He is married to Yael Zerubavel, a scholar of Israeli history who also teaches at Rutgers.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:54 (CET).