Social Science Research Council

Craig Calhoun comments on Mike Huckabee’s brand of religion and touches upon the political realignments taking place more widely within America’s evangelical communities. He goes on to provide an historical account of why religion assumes such a prominent place in the public sphere in the United States as compared to European countries. For more on American religion and politics, go to the SSRC blog The Immanent Frame, especially the posting by D. Michael Lindsay on Mike Huckabee’s new brand of evangelicalism and its coverage by in the U.S. News & World Report blog, Faith Matters, by Jay Tolson.

 

 Societas #2: Feb. 19, 2008 [14:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The first in a series of podcasts seeking to bring out social science issues related to the US presidential election contest, the episode takes up the theme of identity politics, at the moment when it first surfaced in the democratic primaries. Calhoun argues that there are good reasons to be troubled when people say that voters’ predetermined identities dictate political outcomes. For a start, this viewpoint contradicts the very possibilities of the political process to reshape identities as well as the way issues are framed. Calhoun also parts company with the critics of identity politics who imagine that there is some sort of pure world of rational interests where identities don’t matter. He argues, rather, that politics always includes establishing which of people’s many possible identities will shape their participation and their understanding of their interests. So there’s an identity politics in trying to convince wage-earners to identify with the working class rather than with racial or ethnic groupings; there’s an identity politics to nationalism as well as to cosmopolitanism.

 

 Societas #1: Feb. 5, 2008 [13:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Editor’s Note: You can also download a footnoted version of this essay of the original essay, “Social Science for Public Knowledge” (pdf, 31 pages, 132 KB).

Benazir Bhutto was my classmate at Oxford in the 1970s. That is not the opening sentence of a feel-good encomium to cosmopolitanism. Nor is it the start of a personal reminiscence or statement of regret, though I am sad. It is a small note of personal connection to the growing political tragedy in Pakistan. What follows is a reflection on that tragedy.

Editor’s Note: This essay originally appeared as a posting on the SSRC blog The Immanent Frame

Open scientific communication is essential for advancing democratic goals. Then why is the United States closing its borders to important social scientists, such as Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland and Adam Habib of South Africa?

Robert K. Merton, one of the towering figures on whose shoulders contemporary sociology rests, died Sunday, February 23, 2003. He was 92. Merton was born July 4, 1910, and his extraordinary life story evokes both a very American trajectory appropriate to the holiday birthday and the universalism of science.

Editor’s Note: This essay tribute originally appeared in the March 2003 Footnotes, a publication of the the American Sociological Association.

Pierre Bourdieu was the most distinguished European sociologist since Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, and made major contributions to a range of other fields. No one would describe Bourdieu’s writings as easily accessible, yet few social scientists in our era have had broader influence…

Editor’s Note: This essay tribute originally appeared in Items & Issues 2.3-4 (Winter 2001).