Social Science Research Council

 
The "public" is distinct from community or even civil society in general. Publics connect people who are not in the same families, communities, and clubs; people who are not the same as each other. As such, they are central to the functioning of modern societies. What are the forms, locations, and conditions of public life? How do publics work, how are they supported by different kinds of physical and virtual communicative spaces, how do they figure in political and cultural life? And what are the consequences of the unsettling of familiar boundaries between the public and the private as we begin the 21st century?

Several Council programs deal with these and related questions.

Media, Technology and Culture
Changes in the technologies and structure of the media are transforming public life in the U.S. and around the world. These changes affect not only the ways in which media content is delivered—via digital broadcasting, the Internet, and other new channels—but more fundamentally the ways in which we understand the world, communicate with each other, and participate in public discourse. Advances in digital technologies, the concentration of media ownership, the privatization of communications infrastructures, and the expansion of intellectual property regimes are underlying features of this global transformation. What do these developments mean for a democratic society? What does a rich democratic culture look like under these new conditions of public life and how can we achieve it?

Religion & the Public Sphere
Among the striking but not always recognized dimensions of globalization is a more or less simultaneous revitalization of religious engagement. This includes private devotion and renewal of theological study and debate, but it is also, centrally, a claim to public relevance. The prominence of religion in American public life has grown, as have the religious dimensions of international conflicts and terrorism. Religion has also increasingly offered resources for resolving conflicts and seeking reconciliation, through the efforts of international movements of peace and the work of faith-based nongovernmental organizations, and, controversially, in the functioning of state-sponsored truth commissions. The SSRC examines these and other changes in the relationships between religion and the public sphere.

The Privatization of Risk, Catastrophes, and Inequality
Efforts to replace public institutions with private sector mechanisms shift the burden of life's many risks disproportionately to those without substantial private wealth. This is a pressing concern not only with regard to natural disasters and "homeland security" but with regard to pensions and social security, the availability of health insurance and health care, and the stability of financial institutions and markets. In a cluster of related projects, the SSRC seeks to advance work on different dimensions of the privatization of risk, catastrophes, and inequality.

Strategic Emphasis: Bringing timely and necessary knowledge to the public sphere
In addition to programmatic work on the public sphere, a strategic emphasis of all the Council's activities is to bring the expertise and insights of social science to bear on current and pressing issues of public life. This commitment is reflected in our "Real Time Social Science" initiative, which includes online Forums where some of the world's premier social scientists examine contemporary issues such as debates over immigration policy, the privatization of risk and the social and political implications of Hurricane Katrina. The SSRC also has a long history of publishing the best social science through major university presses. Building on this tradition, recent publications make the expertise of social scientists quickly available and intelligible to a wide reading public. The Council produces a variety of books and digital products that inform and shape public debates, bringing timely and necessary knowledge to the public sphere.