Ann Swidler | |
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Born | December 11, 1944 |
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Organization Without Authority (1975) |
Doctoral advisor | Arlie Russell Hochschild |
Influences | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Sociology |
Sub-discipline | |
Doctoral students | |
Notable students | |
Notable works |
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Ann Swidler (born December 11,1944) is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of California,Berkeley. Swidler is most commonly known as a cultural sociologist [1] and authored one of the most-cited articles in sociology,"Culture in Action:Symbols and Strategies". [2]
Swidler was born on December 11,1944. She was raised in Knoxville,Tennessee. [3] Her father was an attorney with the Tennessee Valley Authority and her mother was a secretary. [3] Her family,which is Jewish,experienced anti-Semitism in Tennessee. [3]
She began studies at Radcliffe College (at the time,the women’s part of Harvard University) in the fall of 1962. [3] She graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966 [3] and received her Master of Arts degree in 1971 and Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1975 from the University of California,Berkeley. [3] Her dissertation was titled Organization Without Authority:A Study of Two Alternative Schools,it was published as a book in 1979 as Organization Without Authority:Dilemmas of Social Control in Free Schools. Her advisor was Arlie Hochschild,and was also mentored by Robert N. Bellah,Reinhard Bendix,and Neil Smelser.
In 1982 she was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. With sociologists John W. Meyer and W. Richard Scott,Swidler received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for "Due Process in Organizations",and in 2009–10 she was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar. [4] In 2013 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [5] [6]
Habits of the Heart (1985),co-authored with Robert Bellah,Richard Madsen,William M. Sullivan,and Steven M. Tipton,was finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, [7] won the Los Angeles Times Book Award in 1985 and received Highest Honors for a Book in Education from the American Educational Studies Association. Habits of the Heart sold over 500,000 copies [8] which,according to sociologist Edward Tiryakian,places the work among "that rare breed of sociological works:a literary event,with sales figures beyond the total number of practicing sociologists in the world,past and present." [9] [10]
"Culture in Action:Symbols and Strategies" [11] (1986),argues that rather than just a form of internalized norms controlling behavior—argued by,for instance,Talcott Parsons—culture is a collection or "tool-kit" that people draw on to accomplish particular strategies of action. [12] This is one of the most widely cited articles in sociology [2] and informs the contemporary view in cultural sociology that culture is both constraining and enabling.
Inequality by Design:Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996),is a well-known reply to The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein and attempts to show that the arguments in The Bell Curve are flawed.
Talk of Love:How Culture Matters (2001) attempts to describe the reality of love in relationships amid the idealized and romanticized "talk of love" within American culture. In a review in the American Journal of Sociology ,sociologist Michèle Lamont describes the book as "theoretically ambitious" as it "propose[s] nothing less than the reconceptualization of the role that culture plays in organizing social action." [13]
Public sociology is a subfield of the wider sociological discipline that emphasizes expanding the disciplinary boundaries of sociology in order to engage with non-academic audiences. It is perhaps best understood as a style of sociology rather than a particular method,theory,or set of political values. Since the twenty-first century,the term has been widely associated with University of California,Berkeley sociologist Michael Burawoy,who delivered an impassioned call for a disciplinary embrace of public sociology in his 2004 American Sociological Association (ASA) presidential address. In his address,Burawoy contrasts public sociology with what he terms "professional sociology",a form of sociology that is concerned primarily with addressing other academic sociologists.
Robert Neelly Bellah was an American sociologist and the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California,Berkeley. He was internationally known for his work related to the sociology of religion.
Neil Joseph Smelser (1930–2017) was an American sociologist who served as professor of sociology at the University of California,Berkeley. He was an active researcher from 1958 to 1994. His research was on collective behavior,sociological theory,economic sociology,sociology of education,social change,and comparative methods. Among many lifetime achievements,Smelser "laid the foundations for economic sociology."
The sociology of culture,and the related cultural sociology,concerns the systematic analysis of culture,usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society,as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel,culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Culture in the sociological field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing,acting,and the material objects that together shape a group of people's way of life.
Robert John Wuthnow is an American sociologist who is widely known for his work in the sociology of religion. He is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Princeton University,where he is also the former chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion.
Lifestyle enclave is a sociological term first used by Robert N. Bellah et al. in their 1985 book,Habits of the Heart:Individualism and Commitment in American Life. In the glossary of the book,they provide the following definition:"A lifestyle enclave is formed by people who share some feature of private life. Members of a lifestyle enclave express their identity through shared patterns of appearance,consumption,and leisure activities,which often serve to differentiate them sharply from those with other lifestyles." This term is contrasted with community,which Bellah et al. claim is characterized by social interdependence,shared history,and shared participation in politics.
Kim Voss is a professor of sociology at the University of California,Berkeley whose main field of research is social movements and the American labor movement.
Claude Serge Fischer is an American sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the University of California,Berkeley. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in urban sociology,research methods,and American society at UC Berkeley. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2017.
Michèle Lamont is a Canadian sociologist who is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and a professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is a contributor to the study of culture,inequality,racism and anti-racism,the sociology of morality,evaluation and higher education,and the study of cultural and social change. She is the recipient of the Gutenberg Award and the Erasmus award,for her "devoted contribution to social science research into the relationship between knowledge,power,and diversity." She has received honorary degrees from five countries. and been elected to the British Academy,Royal Society of Canada,Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques,and the Sociological Research Association. She served as president of the American Sociological Association from 2016 to 2017.
Sheilaism is a shorthand term for an individual's system of religious belief which co-opts strands of multiple religions chosen by the individual usually without much theological consideration. The term derives from a woman named Sheila Larson,who is quoted by Robert N. Bellah et al. in their book Habits of the Heart as following her own "little voice" in a faith she calls "Sheilaism".
Pragmatic ethics is a theory of normative philosophical ethics and meta-ethics. Ethical pragmatists such as John Dewey believe that some societies have progressed morally in much the way they have attained progress in science. Scientists can pursue inquiry into the truth of a hypothesis and accept the hypothesis,in the sense that they act as though the hypothesis were true;nonetheless,they think that future generations can advance science,and thus future generations can refine or replace their accepted hypotheses. Similarly,ethical pragmatists think that norms,principles,and moral criteria are likely to be improved as a result of inquiry.
Settler society is a theoretical term in the early modern period and modern history that describes a common link between modern,predominantly European,attempts to permanently settle in other areas of the world. It is used to distinguish settler colonies from resource extraction colonies. The term came to wide use in the 1970s as part of the discourse on decolonization,particularly to describe older colonial units.
Charles Young Glock was an American sociologist whose work focuses on sociology of religion and survey research.
Margaret M. Weir is an American political scientist and sociologist,best known for her work on social policy and the politics of poverty in the United States,particularly at the levels of state and local government.
Lynette Patrice Spillman is a sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame,and a Faculty Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies,as well as the Center for Cultural Sociology,Yale University. She is particularly known for the application of cultural sociology to the sub-fields of political sociology and economic sociology.
Julia Potter Adams is an American sociologist who works in the area of comparative and historical sociology. Julia Adams is a professor of Sociology. She conducts research in the areas of state building,gender and family,social theory and knowledge,early modern European politics,and Colonialism and empire. Her current research focuses on the historical sociology of agency relations and modernity,gender,race,and the representation of academic knowledge on Wikipedia and on other digital platforms. Adams is Professor of Sociology and International &Area Studies and Head of Grace Hopper College,Yale. She also co-directs YaleCHESS and is on the Board of Reed College.
Michael Hout is a Professor of Sociology at New York University. His contributions to sociology include using demographic methods to study social change in inequality,religion,and politics. His current work used the General Social Survey (GSS) to estimate the social standing of occupations introduced into the census classification since 1990. He digitized all occupational information in the GSS (1972–2014) and coded it all to the 2010 standard. Other recent projects used the GSS panel to study Americans' changing perceptions of class,religion,and happiness. In 2006,Mike and Claude Fischer published Century of Difference,a book on twentieth-century social and cultural trends in the United States. Other books include Truth about Conservative Christians with Andrew Greeley,Following in Father's Footsteps:Social Mobility in Ireland,and Inequality by Design
Wendy Griswold is an American sociologist,professor of sociology and the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University,prior to that she was the Arthur E. Andersen Research and Teaching Professor,also at Northwestern University. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and well-known for her contributions to the sociology of culture and the sociology of literature. She is the author of nine books,among them,Bearing Witness:Readers,Writers,and the Novel in Nigeria won the "Best Book" award from the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association in 2002 and the academic journal Choice named it one of the year's outstanding academic books.
Ruth Ann Wallace was a sociologist and professor.
Richard Madsen is distinguished Professor of Sociology the University of California,San Diego,specializing in sociology of China.