Social Science Research Council

Recent SSRC web features:

Charles Tilly, a sociologist who was among the most distinguished of contemporary social scientists, received the SSRC's 2008 Hirschman Prize a few weeks before he died on April 29. We feature here some tributes from a few of his colleagues and students, including: Javier Auyero, Craig Calhoun, Michael Hanagan, Doug McAdam, John Merriman.

In this year of the unusual political candidate, Abe Fellow Jeffrey Broadbent reports on another first: the candidacy of Ikuo Kabashima for a governor of a Japanese prefecture, reportedly the first time in history a seated Tokyo University professor has withdrawn from his position to enter politics. From political science to politics: How will the new governor cope? Broadbent, who first got to know Kabashima-san in their graduate school days, provides a first-hand account of the landmark campaign and of the challenges his friend will soon be facing.

Since when did religion get reduced to a game of true confessions?, asks Omri Elisha in his recent posting to The Immanent Frame on the Compassion Forum, which brought Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama together to discuss how their faith and moral convictions have shaped their views. Questions about religion and politics too often "are meant to highlight the particular faithfulness (or lack thereof) of individual political figures," writes Elisha, rather than the cultural and historical dynamics that "animate our legal, economic, educational, political, and penal systems in subtle yet profound ways."

On the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. America faces the prospect of its first black presidential candidate in Senator Barack Obama. A mark of progress? A group of leading scholars on race and ethnicity—including two SSRC Board members, Michael Dawson and Claudio Lomnitz—discuss the significance of Obama's candidacy and analyze his claim that America is stuck in a "racial stalemate." They suggest a wealth of social sciences studies to inform Obama's proposed national dialogue on race.

Anthopologist Miriam Ticktin embedded herself in a state medical office and a refugee appeals commission in France to study the movement by undocumented immigrants—les sans-papiers—for basic human rights. She discovered that very few were granted asylum, and those few who succeeded were almost always construed as exceptional victims. Most exceptional of all were Muslim women who had suffered abuse.

When Fidel Castro announced that he would not continue as president of Cuba, some commentators saw the end of an era and others said little had changed. But to understand change in the Cuban context, it is necessary to think more deeply than the typical account of communism or Castro invites. To aid in this exercise, the SSRC has invited leading scholars of Cuba to explore the Cuba of today and its prospects for tomorrow—beginning with essays by Sujatha Fernandes on the dynamics of Cuban civil society and by Miguel Ángel Centeno on Cuba under Raúl. NOTE: This forum is open for comments and discussion. New essays will be posted as they come in.

The discussion of Steven Spielberg's decision to end his involvement in this summer's Beijing Olympics on Making Sense of Darfur leads this week's blog roundup. Mia Farrow heralds Spielberg's action as a "defining moment," but Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Alex de Waal are less than convinced. It may be a defining moment for China, writes de Waal, but the impact on Darfur is "still in the balance." (Also included: New posting on Turkish headscarves in the Immanent Frame and a new Societas podcast on religion in American politics.)

In a new feature for SSRC.org, we round up our blog postings on current events, beginning with the Immanent Frame's coverage of the latest flaring of Europe's head scarf controversy, this time in Turkey. Princeton's Joan Wallach Scott warns against conflating secularism with equal rights for women, while social anthropologist Jenny White says that head scarves are a kind of red herring that keep us from examining the best ways for liberal democracies to treat special interests. (Also included: Postings on universities and open access in Knowledge Rules, and on Chad in Making Sense of Darfur.)

In the wake of the early primaries, many said that the presidential race is getting mired in identity politics. In this inaugural podcast for his blog Societas, SSRC President Craig Calhoun speaks with Paul Price about gender, ethnicity, race and nationalism and the need to adjucate among these competing claims in shaping one's political identity. Societas: The Podcast is broadcast every two weeks. Listeners can subscribe through the blog's RSS or through iTunes. The next show will examine religion and American politics.

"Boy, if you're an immigrant, you'd better hope your case never makes it to the Supreme Court." Anna Law never forgot this remark by her boss at the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform . Ultimately, it led her to registering for Ph.D. studies in U.S. immigration policy. But despite her dedication to the topic, Law found that the rigors of doctoral research presented some surprising methodological challenges, beginning with the need to combine the disciplines of political science and law. She leads us through the maze in this article and audio interview for SSRC.org.

According to D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist who studies America's evangelical movement, Mike Huckabee remains a force to be reckoned with because of his ability to translate his evangelical appeal into broader support. In a January 15 posting to The Immanent Frame , Lindsay writes that Huckabee is "singularly poised" to unite both the populists and the cosmopolitans, convincing both camps that he is one of them.

In the wake of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, John Esposito—director of Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a member of the SSRC's working group on religion, secularism, and international affairs—urges Pervez Musharraf and George W. Bush to rethink what has proved a dysfunctional relationship of failed policies. "Their joint war on terrorism and promotion of democracy have in fact resulted in a dangerous increase of the former and a threat to the latter," he writes in a Jan. 2 posting to The Immanent Frame.

"Benazir Bhutto was my classmate at Oxford in the 1970s." So begins an essay by SSRC President Craig Calhoun reflecting on Bhutto's assassination and the importance of social science knowledge to providing the context for understanding such events.

Public engagement was a strong feature of the social sciences from their birth. In this new essay, SSRC President Craig Calhoun considers why the concept of public social science seems so much more challenging to today's social scientists, particularly those who work within the academy. He suggests steps that could be taken to turn the situation around.

Program director Alex de Waal visited the North Darfur town of Kutum last week after a 22-year gap. As described in his blog, Making Sense of Darfur, nothing had changed (the physical landscape looked largely the same) and everything had changed: most of the surrounding villages are now abandoned, their residents living either in the much-expanded outskirts of Kutum, or in the displaced camps of Kassab and Fata Borno. He argues that more has to be done to establish good relations with Darfur's Arabs and to factor in their story. PLEASE NOTE: De Waal's blog is now open for comments.

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? According to SSRC President Craig Calhoun, this policy impoverishes not only the social sciences, which are prevented from becoming truly global, but also society as a whole, which loses out on important opportunities to advance public knowledge.

In an October 22 article for Inside Higher Ed, SSRC program director Diana Rhoten and Stephanie Pfirman of Barnard College consider the twin trends of an "interdisciplinary arms race" and the effort to diversify the scientific enterprise. Could one trend support the other, if more women are attracted to interdisciplinary science? While agreeing that the promise of interdisciplinary research could be a significant lure, women will not stay in the sciences, they say, unless measures are also taken to reform systems of work, evaluation and promotion.

In an interview with Pakistani journalist Huma Mustafa Beg, John Esposito—director of Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a member of the SSRC's working group on religion, secularism, and international affairs—reflects on the necessary conditions for democracy to take root in the Middle East and fields a range of questions concerning Islam and its relations with the West.

Rummaging through the collections of the Rockefeller Archive Center, SSRC research fellow Nicolas Guilhot stumbled upon the minutes of a 1954 meeting that, he thinks, sheds new light on the moment of the birth of international relations discipline. Here the Paris-trained sociologist talks about the workshop he has organized around this buried treasure and his belief that political realists are about to make a comeback.

In today’s interconnected world, the notion of the Far East seems like a relic of earlier, era, when countries were designated near, or far, or in the middle, in relation to the vantage point of the supreme power of Europe. But for Seteney Shami, a program director at the SSRC, east and west are not the only concepts that have lost their relevance. The concept of Asia itself is changing.

In commemoration of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, the SSRC has convened five leading social scientists to comment on how well the United States and other governments have responded to issues that have arisen in the tragedy’s aftermath, including the rise of Islamic radicalism, threats of violence from non-state actors, and the tension between civil liberties and the need for effective law enforcement.

Kai Erikson, chair of the SSRC's task force on Katrina and the Gulf Coast, observes that although two years have passed since the storm, the disaster is far from over. It continues to exact a high toll not only in lives lost but in lives permanently altered, particularly among those who are still displaced.

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is the winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize. To mark this occasion, and also in anticipation of Taylor's forthcoming work, A Secular Age (due out in September from Harvard University Press), the SSRC has convened a virtual roundtable of leading social scientists who have known Taylor personally as well as professionally.

Journalist Nayan Chanda, who serves on the SSRC's Abe Fellowship Committee, has a new book that explains how and why the world became bound together long before the buzzword "globalization" was invented.

In today’s interconnected world, minor events in the world’s lesser-known regions can have major geopolitical consequences. According to former Eurasia Program committee member Robert Kaiser, this is precisely what happened when Estonia, a tiny Baltic state, decided to relocate a Soviet war memorial that for many years had stood in its capital city. Kaiser argues that moving the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn had the effect not only of chilling Estonia’s relations with Russia still further but also of reviving cold war thinking and rhetoric in the European Union and the United States.

Eighteen years ago, SSRC President Craig Calhoun marched along with the China’s democracy protesters, sat in Tiananmen Square and joined in conversations, and watched nervously with others when the army made its presence felt. The experience moved him to write his award-wining book, Neither Gods Nor Emperors. In this interview with ssrc.org, Calhoun recalls his memories of that period and tells us how he now views his landmark study.

Program director Alex de Waal now has his own blog on the Darfur crisis. His first entry responds to John Prendergast’s “Plan B” strategy paper on Darfur—which formed the substance of a recent discussion between the two experts at the U.S. National Holocaust Museum. While agreeing on many points, de Waal and Prendergast clashed over the issue of whether to use the threat of military force against the Sudanese government. Prendergast was in favor of keeping the threat of military action on the table; de Waal was opposed.