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News & Events

Obituary: Prof. Herbert R. Barringer

Herbert Barringer, who had been a professor in the department for over 40 years, passed away on December 15, 2007. A "Remembrance of Herb" was held in his honor at the Hawai`i Sociological Association meeting on February 16, 2008, where friends and colleagues spent time talking and thinking about the good times with him. To create a more permanent remembrance, an account has been established at the UH Foundation for the "Herbert Barringer Memorial Scholarship" for those who wish to contribute to his memory.

An obituary written by Professor Emeritus Kiyoshi Ikeda follows, as it appears in ASA Footnotes.

Herbert Reese Barringer, Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, died, December 15, 2007.  He was 76.

Barringer was born in Billings, Montana.  Beginning his undergraduate studies at San Diego State College in San Diego with a B.A. with high honors and distinction in Sociology in 1959, he completed an M. A. at Northwestern University with a Comparative Politics Fellowship in 1961 and a Ph. D. in 1964.  in Sociology in 1959.  In his graduate work, he received University Fellowship and Comparative Politics Fellowship support at Northwestern University.

During his forty four years of scholarship, Barringer made significant contributions to sociological and social science research on the sociology of Asian Societies, with special attention to Korea and the Sociology of Social Stratification and Ethnicity and the Racialization of Native Hawaiians and Koreans in and around Hawai`i.  He explored the details of given settings, processes, and populations with a fine sense of the local within a more general and comparative  social science framework with the best of qualitative and quantitative analyses.  Starting at the University of Delaware as Assistant Professor of Sociology, he received Summer Fellowships to continue to research Asian societies and Korea.  In 1966-67, he served as Fulbright Lecturer at Seoul National University in Korea.  In 1967, he was appointed Associate Professor Sociology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. He was supported as Associate Sociologist at the UH Social Science Research Institute from 1967-70 to pursue comparative research involving Korea in and around the Pacific Basin.  He served on National and International Committees on the Social Science Research Committee from 1971 to 1975, and the Editorial Board of Korean Forum from 1977 and Korean Studies from 1978 and as occasional reader for the American Sociology Review and the American Journal of Sociology. He received numerous research grants to pursue studies involving Korea and Korean and Native Hawaiian populations in and around Hawai`i.  These includes Fulbright, IL CORK SSRC, SSRC-Russell Sage, UH Intramural and Center for Korean Studies grants, and Alu Like grants to examine the status of Native Hawaiians in educational and employment levels

These led to papers presented at professional meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, the American Sociological Association, SSRC-ACLS, the Population and Development of Seoul National University, ILCORK, the Population Association, Pacific Sociological Association, the East-West Center, and the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawai1i at Mānoa. These covered the Korean experience in Korea and around the Pacific Basin and the Asian Rim, development of Korean Social Science, urbanization in Japan and Korea, urbanization, migration, stratification, mobility and family changes in Korea, consequences of power and development strategy in contemporary Korea, Korean friendship networks, a Markov chain analysis of ethnic networks, the demography, immigration, growth, change, income attainment, education, and heterogeneity of Asian Americans, Asian Indians in the United States,   Publications included work with Robert F. Winch and Robert M. McGinnis, Selected Studies in Marriage and the Family, with Raymond W. Mack and George W. Blanksten, Social Change in Developing Areas:  A Reinterpretation of Evolutionary Theory, with Man-Gap Lee, A City in Transition,: Urbanization in Taegu, Korea, with Peter C. Xenos, Robert W. Gardner, and Michael Levin, Asian and Pacific Americans in the U. S.  Numerous articles with colleagues and graduate students emerged on work developed in funded and unfunded research support with a focus on social stratification in the Philippines, Korea, and the U. S.  As a generalist, he wrote about behavioral theory for the Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior.

Over the forty years, Barringer contributed to the education of over 3,000 undergraduates at Hawai`i in the Honors courses, in courses in the Sociology of Deviance and Social Control, in Racial and Ethnic Relations, Racism and Ethnicity in Hawai`i, in Principles of Sociological Inquiry, and in Social Statistics.  Student evaluations were very positive and students  were challenged to do their best in these classes.  Where students needed timely counsel in and out of the classroom, they received such aid in forms and ways suited their level and backgrounds.  In the required Sociological Inquiry and Statistics courses, the brightest and the best were most affirmative.  As an informed Advisor of  students in the Arts and Sciences Liberal Studies Program, he fostered  work in and around the Colleges and Schools in interdisciplinary work and experiences not afforded by narrower coverage within disciplines. 

Barringer also demanded work of the highest order in graduate studies.  By sponsorship and mentorship of the highest order, he pressed for the best in scholarly endeavors in required methodology, theoretical perspectives, on structural analyses in race relations and race and cultural contacts in Hawai`i, and substantive grounding in the social demography and policy research in Asian societies and in the flow of populations from Asia, the Pacific and American and European settings in around Hawai`i.  He fostered the development of careers in the discipline and social sciences, in social demography, in research on Asian-American health and mental health status, risks, and prevention-amelioration, in survey and policy research, in law-related fields with impact on political developments.

Barringer was an outstanding academic citizen by serving fully and well in the standing and ad-hoc departmental, college, and campus-wide program and personnel review committees.  In the public sociology domain, well-grounded in both field work and statistical analyses, such disciplined knowledge enabled Barringer to speak openly and directly on the sources and consequences of  racial, ethnic, and socio-economic conditions and events.  Within the University itself and in the larger community, he challenged those who were privileged and powerful to reduce overt and subtle discriminatory conduct and practices which lead to continuing disparities and at-risk outcomes involving the indigenous Native Hawaiians in Hawai`i and in the United States as a whole.

Barringer is survived by sister, Nancy Parker.