The Harvard University Department of Sociology

Harvard Sociology News


Recent Books by Our Faculty:

"What makes a successful society?" (Harvard Gazette, October 16, 2009) highlights co-edited volume of essays by Peter A. Hall and Michele Lamont  Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Matter for Health (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

ConnectedConnected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives is new book by Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler. For more information including video of the authors, visit www.connectedthebook.com. Their research was a feature article in the New York Times magazine of September 13. See "Are Your Friends Making You Fat?"

Frank Dobbin's book, Inventing Equal Opportunity, is featured in the August 4, 2009 issue of the Harvard Crimson. Read Prof. Dobbin's blog featured in the July 28, 2009 issue of "Today's Workplace" here.

Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, by Mary C. Waters received the 2009 Mirra Komarovsky Award for the best book, awarded by the Eastern Sociological Society at the recent annual meeting in Baltmore. (Please see the article in The New York Times and the NPR interview).

William Julius Wilson's book More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009) was reviewed by Richard Thompson Ford "Why the Poor Stay Poor" (New York Times, March 6, 2009) and by Sudhir Venkatesch "How to Understand the Culture of Poverty" ( Slate, March 16, 2009). Wilson and Sudhir Venkatesh were interviewed on NPR's "Talk of the Nation (heard on NPR March 23, 2009) about The Culture of Poverty.

Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research (Analytical Methods for Social Research) by Stephen L. Morgan and Christopher Winship (Cambridge, University Press, 2007)

A review of Michèle Lamont's book How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2009) was published in the March 4th on-line issue of Inside Higher Ed. See : The 'Black Box' of Peer Review. The book is also featured in a March 31, 2009 article available at the National Science Foundation website, along with a video interview. Please also see "Reviewing the Reviewers", in the April 3, 2009 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University hosted a discussion with Michèle Lamont that can be heard here.

More publications by our faculty.

______________________________________________________________

Harvard Professors Michèle Lamont and Peter A. Hall have contributed an article, The Wear and Tear of Our Daily Lives, to the Opinions page of The Globe and Mail (November 13, 2009).

Anthony A. Braga, lecturer in Sociology, was one of 12 individuals recognized last month by the US Attorney General for his work to combat Boston gang crime. The Harvard Crimson, November 1, 2009.

Sociology alum, Arne Duncan, (A.B., Harvard, 1987) has been chosen to serve as secretary of education in the Obama administration. (See Schools Chief from Chicago is Cabinet Pick, New York Times, December 16, 2008).

The following awards were presented during this year's 104th ASA Annual Meeting in San Francisco: Lauren Rivera, Best Student Paper Award, Sociology of Law section for her paper, "Cultural Reproduction in the Labor Market: Homophily in Job Interviews." Christopher Bail and Lauren Rivera, Best Student Paper Award, Political Sociology section. Christopher Bail's article, "The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe", was published in the February 2008 ASR, 73:1, 37-59. Lauren Rivera's paper, "Managing 'Spoiled' National Identity: Tourism, War, and Memory in Croatia," was published in the August 2008 issue of ASR, 73:4, 613-34.

Nicholas Christakis was included among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the category of scientists and thinkers.

Robert J. Sampson talks with Jeff Stein, AIA in "Street Smarts" found in the spring 2009 issue of Architecture Boston.

Jovonne Bickerstaff gave a speech at the residence of the French Ambassador to the U.S. for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of The Franco American Commission on Educational Exchange, which administers the Fulbright Program in France.

The Genes in your Congeniality (Harvard Science, Culture & Society, January 26, 2009) discusses research by Nicholas Christakis, and fellow researchers James Fowler and Christopher Dawes (both of UC San Diego). This the first study to examine the inherited characteristics of social networks and to establish a genetic role in the formation and configuration of these networks.

The Moynihan Report Revisited: Lessons and Reflections After Four Decades (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 621, No. 1) is now available at Sage Journals on-line.

Michèle Lamont has been named senior adviser on faculty development and diversity in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. See article in the Harvard Gazette (December 11, 2008).

Research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler (UC-San Diego) on the social network effects of happiness was the Research News feature of December 5, 2008 on NPR. To read more and view happiness clusters in a social network see: Happiness: Is it Contagious? . See also Having Happy Friends can Make you Happy (Harvard Science Matters). For a copy of the paper click here.

Laura Tach and Sarah Halpern-MeekinASA Family Section's 2008 award for the best graduate student paper went to our students, Laura Tach and Sarah Halpern-Meekin (pictured at left) for their paper "Heterogeneity in Two-Parent Families and Adolescent Well-Being." See Family Forum (fall 2008) for a description of their paper.

An Eternal Revolution, an op-ed piece by Orlando Patterson appeared in the New York Times, November 7, 2008 edition. The New Mainstream appeared in the November 10, 2008 edition of Newsweek magazine.

The Yard“The New Social Science” was the focus of the fall/winter 2007 issue of The Yard, highlighting the research being done by Harvard social scientists.  See: “America’s rising inequality and what we can do about it”; Knowledge in action: Confronting social problems; and “Challenging assumptions.”

William Julius Wilson spoke on October 1 at the first colloquium of the year of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. A summary of his talk was featured in the October 16 issue of the Harvard Gazette. See " Wilson perceives social structure and culture as key causes of poverty".

Michèle Lamont is serving as chair of an international blue-ribbon panel
charged with studying and revising the peer review process of the Social
Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

 

Updated: November 20, 2009

Back to top