Dale W. Tomich

Dale W. Tomich, (1946-2024), Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Binghamton University, passed away peacefully on Saturday, August 17. He was at home, together with his family. Dale was 78 years old, full of projects and hope until the very end. He will be remembered as a warm, generous, and fun man, and as a pathbreaking scholar as well.
Dale was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. He studied in the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1960s-early 1970s, when Madison was an activist campus protesting the Vietnam War and a top research university. At Wisconsin, Dale studied under Hans Gerth, Harvey Goldberg, and Georges Haupt. He also studied under E.P. Thompson at the University of  Warwick. Dale was an editor of the journal Radical America, where he pioneered publication of “workerist” Black radical thought and then little-known works of CLR James. Dale obtained his PhD in European History from Wisconsin in 1976.
Dale joined Binghamton’s Sociology Department soon after receiving his Ph.D., just as that department was becoming a hub of world-systems studies and historical research along the lines of the Annales School. For decades, Binghamton’s Sociology Department and its Braudel Center were internationally renowned. Dale played a major role in the Center, especially in its journal, Review. At Binghamton, Dale taught from 1976 until his retirement in 2020. Dale was one of the most innovative scholars in the Sociology Department and one of the students’ most beloved professors. Students and peers recognize him as a supportive and effective intellectual partner, with a gift for building enduring, broad international networks of scholars (which often include former students).
Dale’s scholarship blended History and Sociology in the study of slavery in the Americas from the perspective of the modern capitalist world system. His first major work was Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy (1830-1848) (Johns Hopkins, 1990; SUNY Press, 2016), which received an award from the American Sociological Association. More recently, Dale published Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery: A Visual History of the Plantation in the 19th century Atlantic World (North Carolina, 2021) in collaboration with an American-Brazilian-Cuban team of scholars (Rafael de Bivar Marquese, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, and Carlos Venegas Fornio). Landscapes of Slavery compellingly explores the interrelation of slavery, technology, and nature in shaping the US South, Brazil, and Cuba as frontiers of capitalist production. It received an American Library Association Prize in 2021.
Dale was the author of numerous pathbreaking essays on historical method and Marxist theory, some of them collected in Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy (Routledge, 2004; EDUSP, 2011). In his essays and in the recent book on landscapes, Dale developed the concept of the "second slavery," to explore the unprecedented expansion of industrial slavery in the Americas in the 19th century. In his final decades, Dale saw his work gain broader recognition beyond the United States, especially in South America and Europe, inspiring scholars of both slavery and the capitalist world economy.  Dale’s innovative perspectives on slavery and capitalism activated an international research network, the Second Slavery Seminar, that began to realize his vision of a more democratic global framework for knowledge exchange and production.
At Binghamton, Dale served several terms as Graduate Director and Chair of the Sociology department. More recently, he served as Deputy Director of the Fernand Braudel Center.
Dale is survived by his wife, Luiza Franco Moreira, and his daughter, Laura Moreira Tomich, who recently graduated from the University of Indiana-Bloomington School of Law.
Dale’s family would like to honor his memory through donations to the Center of Study of Global Inequalities, Universidade Federal Fluminense (Centro UFF).  You may also follow the link: https://gogetfunding.com/campaign_funds/?pre=8804358