He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin. He received his PhD in Sociology at The New School for Social Research and received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Science Foundation. He is the author, among other works, belligerent Lives, The gray area, and along with Deborah Swistun, Flammable. Study of the environmental suffering, book that has received numerous awards. He was editor of the journal Qualitative Sociology. His research focuses on issues of poverty and urban marginality, collective action and ethnography