He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Virginia. Dr. Manning’s research is primarily concerned with the diverse ways in which people express grievances and respond to deviance, a topic known as conflict management or social control. Social control takes on many forms, including gossip, spanking, firing, feuding, suing, imprisonment and execution. Dr. Manning utilizes a theoretical paradigm known as “pure sociology” (developed by Donald Black) to explain variation in social control with it’s location and direction in social space.