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Eugene Halton is an American sociologist and philosopher. He is professor emeritus in Sociology and American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Halton has written extensively on consumption and materialism, and the problematic nature of modern civilization and the civilizational mindset more generally. His recent works concern a new philosophy of history regarding the limitations of the civilizational mindset, and guideposts toward re-attuning contemporary civilization to what he has termed “sustainable wisdom.”

Halton is author of From the Axial Age to the Moral Revolution (2014). This book rewrites the history of the axial age, the revolutionary period centered roughly around 600-500 BCE, bringing the unknown original theory of John Stuart Stuart-Glennie from 1873 to light, as well as another previously unknown and unexpected contributor, D. H. Lawrence.

Halton’s first book, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1981, coauthored with M. Csikszentmihalyi), is now regarded as a founding keystone work in material culture studies and has been translated into Italian, German, Japanese, and Hungarian. It is based on his dissertation, and is a study of the household possessions of over 300 Chicagoans. He is also the author of Meaning and Modernity (1986), Bereft of Reason (1995), and The Great Brain Suck (2008), all published by The University of Chicago Press. Meaning and Modernity was a keystone work in the revival of philosophical pragmatism in the social sciences, especially the work of C. S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism. Charles Townsend wrote in The Times Literary Supplement that, “Halton’s answer to the dilemma of modernity is a still more striking synthesis… his work shows that the cracking shell of modernism will provide a rich intellectual agenda.”

Halton is a coeditor of Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing (Peter Lang, 2019). This book is based on a conference Halton helped co-organize with the other editors, and makes use of Halton’s term, “sustainable wisdom,” in the title.

Career
Halton received his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Princeton University in 1972 and his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in Human Development in 1979. His dissertation thesis was Cultural Signs and Urban Adaptation: The Meaning of Cherished Household Possessions, which was the basis for his coauthored book, The Meaning of Things. Between 1975 and 1978 he served as Project Director for a research study of “Cultural Symbols and Urban Adaptation” funded by National Institute of Aging, at the University of Chicago. In 1978-1979 He was a Lecturer in the Collegiate Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, teaching in the social science core course. He held a postdoctoral fellowship between 1979-1981 at the University of Chicago and Michael Reese Hospital.

Halton joined the University of Notre Dame in 1982 as an assistant professor, was promoted to full professor in 1993, and became professor emeritus in 2020. In 1985-1986 he was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Scholar at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Yale University in 1989-1990, and was selected as a member of the Fulbright Senior Specialist Roster from 2010 to 2015.

Personal
As an undergraduate at Princeton University and later, Halton was active in athletics. He was on the men’s basketball team freshman year, and competed in track and field throughout college and after. He won the Heptagonal League high jump three times, set an ivy league record of 7 feet 1 inch (2.16 meters), and was the first ivy league jumper to clear 7 feet.

Halton was an internationally ranked high jumper, competed in the 1972 US Olympic trials, and was a member of the US Track and Field Team in 1973 and 1974 for track meets against the Soviet Union. In 2021 He was selected for the Shore Athletic Club (New Jersey) Hall of Fame Class of 2021. First as a high jumper, then independently some years later as a musician, Halton picked up the nickname Jumpin’ Gene.

Halton has also performed harmonica internationally and written songs which have been recorded, including the lyrics for Tow Truck Man, which appears on the Willie Buck Delmark Records CD, Cell Phone Man, and “Smoke and Mirrors,” which appears on the Rockin’ Johnny Burgin 2017 CD, Neoprene Fedora, on West Tone Records.

Halton’s website is: https://www3.nd.edu/~ehalton/