(continued on page 2)

(continued on page 2)

n my first day as a graduatestudent in economics at theMassachusetts Institute of Tech-

nology, the professor introduced thediscipline by intoning,“All of econom-ics is a subset of the theory of separat-

ing hyperplanes.”(You don’t want to knowwhat that mathematical term means.)

I started to giggle. But then I lookedaround. Everyone else was scribblingnotes. So I wiped the smirk off my faceand muttered, only to myself, that I hadthought economics was about theplight of people living in sub-SaharanAfrica or the impact of technologicalchange on living standards. ApparentlyI thought wrong––and wonderedwhether I had made a terrible careerchoice.

Decades later, I find economicsgraduate students asking themselves thesame question: where is the economicsubstance in graduate economics pro-grams? I recently joined several dozenfirst- and second-year students at aconference in Airlie,Va., that was con-vened to help them find their waytoward applied economics––analyzingproblems that real people face. During

the weeklong conference, organized bythe Social Science Research Counciland paid for by the John D. andCatherine T. McArthur Foundation,eminent scholars presented lectures onapplied topics ranging from the plightof low-income mothers under the1996 welfare law to the long-termdeterminants of innovation.

To noneconomists, these lectureswould no doubt appear heavily theoret-ical, laced with mathematical and statis-tical derivations. But at least since thewritings of Paul Samuelson, Nobel lau-reate from MIT, in the 1940s, econo-mists have used large doses of mathe-matics to create insight and clarity.

The difference at Airlie was that theobject of the lectures was to improveunderstanding of the relationshipsamong people rather than amongmathematical symbols. After the lec-tures students met in small groups to

Students Seek SomeReality Amid the Math Of Economics by Michael M. Weinstein

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Craig Calhoun Named New President of SSRC

n June, the Social ScienceResearch Council’s (SSRC)Board of Directors named

Craig Calhoun, professor ofsociology and history andchair of the sociology depart-ment at New York University,as the organization’s presi-dent.The SSRC was foundedmore than 75 years ago toimprove interdisciplinary re-search in the social sciences.Working in partnership withnational and internationalfunders including the Ford,MacArthur, Mellon andRockefeller Foundations, itfocuses research on key pub-lic issues, supports advanced

education of younger scien-tists in areas of high need andorganizes networks of lead-ing scholars to develop fields ofemerging importance. Currentinitiatives address transitions todemocracy, nationalism andethnic conflict, technologicalinnovation, the transforma-tion of higher education inthe US and new challengesfor global peace and security.Building collaborative rela-tions on every continent, theSSRC has been especiallyinfluential in the internation-alization of social science.

Mr. Calhoun describesthe Council as the “world’s

leading institutional base forinterdisciplinary and inter-national social science.” It iswell positioned, he suggests,to play an important roleboth in improving social sci-ence research and in bring-ing social science to bear oncrucial public issues. “Crisesfrom the Balkans to the Hornof Africa, shifting US rela-tions with East Asia, theglobalization of capitalism andthe media and the develop-ment of new local culturaland political movements aroundthe world,” he explains, “allcall for serious and innova-tive social science that tran-

scends disciplines and nation-al boundaries.”

Paul B. Baltes, chair of theCouncil’s Board of Direc-tors, pointed out that Mr.Calhoun “continues the longtradition of SSRC presidentswho are outstanding leaders

Craig Calhoun

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Contents

Council Announces New President 1

Students Seek Some Reality Amid the Math ofEconomics, Michael M. Weinstein 1

Response to Weinsten, Jerry R. Green 4

Measuring International Collaboration, Itty Abraham and Tina Harris 6

Council Announces New Working Group onReligion, Immigration and Civic Life 8

Increasing Support for Third Country Comp-arative Research, Richard J. Samuels 9

Working Group Battles Hurricane for FreeExercise 12

New Arts Program 13

A Word from the President 14

Current Activities at the Council 17

Recent Council Publications 25

Religion and Immigration Fellowships 26

in the American social sciences.” Mr.Calhoun succeeds Kenneth Prewitt, wholeft the Council to direct the UnitedStates Bureau of the Census, and InterimPresident Orville Gilbert Brim, who pre-viously headed the Russell SageFoundation and the Foundation forChild Development.

An eyewitness to the TiananmenSquare protests of 1989, Mr. Calhounwrote a prize-winning book aboutChinese students and the struggle fordemocracy, Neither Gods Nor Emperors(California, 1994). He is also a leadingexpert on nationalism and conflicts ofculture and identity, themes that shapetwo of his other recent books: Nation-alism (Minnesota, 1997) and CriticalSocial Theory: Culture, History and theChallenge of Difference (Blackwell, 1995).Mr. Calhoun has published several otherbooks and more than 50 scholarly arti-cles and essays on topics from the 19th-century industrial revolution to theimpact of computer technology and theimpact of tort law on business corpora-tions.As a theorist, he has been especiallyconcerned with bridging gaps betweenhistorical and cultural research and socialscience explanations. Mr. Calhoun is edi-

tor-in-chief of the forthcoming OxfordDictionary of the Social Sciences and iscompleting a five-year term as editor ofthe journal Sociological Theory.

Before coming to New York Uni-versity, Mr. Calhoun received his doc-torate from Oxford University andtaught at the University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill, from 1977 to1996.There he also served as dean of thegraduate school and was the foundingdirector of the University Center forInternational Studies. A sociologist witha background in anthropology and his-tory, Mr. Calhoun has taught and con-ducted research in Europe, Africa andEast Asia, particularly China.

Mr. Baltes, who also directs the Centerfor Lifespan Psychology at the MaxPlanck Institute for Human Developmentin Berlin, noted that Mr. Calhoun “poss-esses a deep knowledge of the diversity ofintellectual streams that characterize thesocial sciences around the world. In thisspirit, he embodies the Council’s visionthat its future as an institutional force willbe intimately connected with its interna-tional presence and ability to enlist andnurture the best of social science aroundthe world.” n

Craig Calhoun Named New President of SSRC(continued from page 1)

pose follow-up questions and designresearch strategies. The idea was tomotivate them to do applied work andgive them a head start in developing anapplied focus for their Ph.D. theses.

David Weiman, the former directorof the Council’s program and now atthe Russell Sage Foundation, hopesthat the summer conference andresearch grants that the Council pro-vides can offset what he sees as a lam-entable tendency among young gradu-ate students. Too often, he says, theyallow mathematical technique to dic-tate the questions they ask rather thanfirst seizing a pressing social questionfrom which the choice of appropriatetechnique would then follow. Graduate

programs, he says, “emphasize teachingstudents how to prove theorems, mis-leading them into thinking that eco-

nomics is a deductive exercise, the mereapplication of mathematical logic.”

Prof.Alan Blinder of Princeton Uni-

Students Seek Some Reality Amid the Math Of Economics (continued from page 1)

versity considers it damning to some ofthe country’s most prestigious graduateprograms that their students need toflock to summer camp to find an outletfor their interest in applied work. Mr.Blinder, a former member of PresidentClinton’s Council of Economic Ad-visers and a driving force behind theCouncil’s efforts to promote appliedeconomics, said in a recent interviewthat too much of what young scholarswrite these days is “theoretical drivel,mathematically elegant but not aboutanything real.” He attributes the prob-lem in part to the first year of training,or what he calls mathematics bootcamp, during which students are hand-ed a steady diet of theory but not

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taught to connect it to the real world.They soon forget the issues that attract-ed them to economics.

Mr. Blinder makes an important dis-tinction. He remains scrupulouslyagnostic over whether graduate train-ing is overly theoretical. “That’s atough issue.” But he is unwaveringwhen he criticizes the training as“increasingly aloof and self-referential.”

Indeed, the students at Airlie seemedsurprisingly unfamiliar with many cur-rent economic issues. Chatting at lunchwith a half-dozen of so of the graduatestudents, a guest lecturer referred to theearned-income tax credit as theE.I.T.C., the country’s most successfulanti-poverty program next to SocialSecurity. “What’s that,” one studentasked. Nor could many of the studentsdistinguish Medicare from Medicaid ordemonstrate familiarity with simplefacts about the American economy.They had studied the theory of finan-cial markets, but not its connection tothe crisis sweeping through Asia.

Many of these students admittedthat they do not read newspapers. Nordo many see much of a connection be-tween knowledge of economic realityor government policies and their cho-sen course of study.

Gary Burtless of the Brookings Insti-tution lectured the group about the eco-nomic factors that determine when peo-ple decide to retire. I joined a half-dozenstudents in their follow-up session. Thestudents were asked what interestingquestions Mr. Burtless’s lecture pro-voked. After a slightly awkward silence,one student launched into the specula-tion that the group could develop a“two-sector general equilibrium model”that could be tweaked in this or thatdirection.When the students were askedagain to pose questions, not design mod-els, the conversation drifted once moretoward mathematical modeling.

So has graduate economics trainingrun off the rails? There is another side.Economics professors and graduatesfrom the very schools––Michigan,MIT, Columbia, Stanford, Wisconsin,Harvard, Colorado, University ofPennsylvania, New York University––

that supplied students for the confer-ence do a great deal of excellentapplied work. Compared with 20 oreven 10 years ago, there has been anexplosion in the number of academicswho are consultants to think tanks forpolicy analysis, corporations and Gov-ernment agencies.

Franklin Fisher of MIT is the JusticeDepartment’s chief economist in theMicrosoft antitrust trial; his colleague,Richard Schmalensee, is Microsoft’schief economist. Harvard’s LawrenceH. Summers is Secretary of theTreasury; Stanford’s Joseph Stiglitz issenior vice president of the WorldBank; MIT’s Stanley Fischer is deputymanaging director of the InternationalMonetary Fund. Harvard’s Lawrence F.Katz and Princeton’s Alan Kruegerdesigned labor-force policies for the

Clinton Administration. Harvard’sDavid Ellwood designed PresidentClinton’s original welfare proposal.

Research economists at the influen-tial think tanks and nonprofit researchorganizations, like the Brookings Insti-tution and the American EnterpriseInstitute, were trained at many of thesame graduate programs feeding stu-dents to the council’s summer confer-ence. The National Bureau of Econ-omic Research, led by Prof. MartinFeldstein of Harvard, turns out hun-dreds of papers each year on appliedtopics by some of the nation’s best aca-demic economists.

Claudia Goldin, an economic histo-rian at Harvard and a prolific author ofreports for the bureau, says that “appliedeconomics is perfectly healthy and fine,at least at the better graduate programs.”Her point is that students at the majorPh.D. programs do not have to lookvery far to find faculty heavily involved

in applied research to serve as role mod-els and advisers. But Ms. Goldin doesecho part of Mr. Blinder’s anxiety thatthe first year of courses can be relent-lessly abstract, creating at least a tempo-rary barrier to those who started outthinking they want something applied.

Then perhaps economics has stum-bled onto an unwittingly workable life-cycle for many academics. During thefirst couple of years of training, professorspile on a formidable amount of abstracttheory at the only time that students canstudy uninterrupted at the feet of theirmasters. But, Mr. Blinder observes, asprofessors age, they turn increasingly toapplied subjects. Though graduate pro-grams make it hard for students to followapplied interests early on, many eventu-ally find their way.

Even so, problems remain. Many ofthe students at Airlie complained thattheir Ph.D. programs provided fewclues on how to do applied researchand even less encouragement. That,Mr. Blinder says, may contribute to agnawing anxiety, pinpointed in 1991by a commission appointed by theAmerican Economic Association, thatPh.D. programs are not attracting theirshare of the brightest undergraduates.The increasingly sterile nature of earlycourses may be driving many under-graduates to other disciplines. Mr.Weiman’s and Mr. Blinder’s goal is toshorten the time it takes graduate stu-dents to tackle the applied problemsthat captivated them as undergraduates.

Neither Mr. Blinder nor Mr.Weimanare calling for wholesale change ingraduate training. Economics is heavilymathematical and usefully so. But earlytraining may have evolved to a dysfunc-tional extreme. Prof. Lawrence J.Whiteof the Stern School of Business at NewYork University observes, “It’s ironicthat economists, who make their livingtelling everyone else what’s efficient,can’t figure out whether their owneducational process is efficient.” n

Michael M. Weinstein formerly wrote the“Economic Scene” column for the New York Times; heis now a member of the paper’s editorial board. Hepreviously taught economics at Haverford College.Copyright©1999 by the New York Times Co.Reprinted by permission.

The sterile nature of earlycourses may drive undergrad-uates to other disciplines.

Mr. Michael M.WeinsteinEditorial BoardThe New York Times

Dear Mr.Weinstein:

commend your article “Students Seek Some Reality Amid the Math of Economics” and want to offer some comments on it. I have an unusual and perhaps unique perspectiveon this issue as I am one of three co-authors of a leading graduate text in microeconomic

theory (Mas-Colell,Whinston and Green, Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press, 1995),and teach two first-year graduate courses on this subject at Harvard. In the economics depart-ment, where I teach the required first-year theory course with three of my colleagues, we pro-ceed precisely as described in your article. My other course, which is offered to all doctoral stu-dents at Harvard except those in the economics Ph.D. program, the same theoretical material ispresented along with a series of applied papers, so that the theory can be seen in action. Ibelieve that the latter method of teaching should be adopted by the economics course and byother economics Ph.D. programs, because it is actually a better way of learning theory. Thereare, however, some barriers to changing the mode of instruction and learning in first-year eco-nomic theory courses. I hope to add to the insights in your article by explaining how thesebarriers arose and what we can do about it as a profession.

Before going forward I should say that I am proud of our book and of the influence it hashad on the teaching of economics. Nevertheless, my views on the structure of first-year theo-ry courses changed as a result of my experience as provost of the university, which just preced-ed our book’s publication. As provost, I had extensive contact with many students and graduateprograms beyond economics (public policy, government, business, public health, etc). I realizedthat a good, rigorous first-year course in economics is important to all those who would beusing economics in their research, even though they are not economists themselves. Such stu-dents are not well served by “intermediate theory” courses, nor are courses based on books suchas ours quite right. Neither of these approaches prepares them to use economic theory in theway that most of them will require. Knowledge not used is knowledge quickly lost.

As a result of this experience I created a new course in economic theory, at the same level asthe economics department’s course but with a different focus. In the new course each topic ispresented by means of an application. The idea of the course is to learn the theory by seeinghow it is used, and how it has advanced applied economics. A typical lecture goes as follows:Here is a real economics problem, now what concepts and what methods do you need to solveit? How does the theory help you organize your data? Does the theory help you decide whatdata to collect? How does the theory point out pitfalls in data collection or interpretation?

It is essential to recognize that lecture time, and the students’ studying time, are scarceresources. Because I concentrate more on how the theory is used, I must omit some materialthat is extensively covered in the pure theory course. I deliberately spend little time on methodsof “proving” mathematical results. I insist that students understand the results and be able to usethem, but not that they can offer mathematical arguments, however elegant these might be.

Now I want to shed some light on how the economics profession got into the situation youdescribe and what we can do to get out of it. The problem has three main sources:

I

Department of Economics, Harvard University.

Absence of collegial pressure: Economics departments tend to be collegial places. Successin the marketplace and in the halls of government, and emulation by other social sciences inacademe, leads to a certain contentment with the status quo. Economics departments havefew of the doctrinal or disciplinary disputes that often tear humanities departments apart.Theory is left to the theorists to teach. Applied economists, partially out of respect for theirtheorist colleagues, do not press hard enough to influence the theoretical training that theirown future students receive in the first year.

Absence of student pressure: The “general examination,” a milestone that marks the progressof a student from the introductory phase of training into the specialist stage, also plays an importantrole in shaping first-year theory courses. As long as the general examination in economic theory isset by the same people who teach the first year theory courses, students will want to take a coursethat mirrors, as closely as possible, the material that they can expect on that exam. Students wouldcomplain quickly and loudly if they were examined on different material than they were taught, oreven on the same material but in a different style. Instead of focusing on the long-run benefits ofthe theory course they are forced to take, students will accept, and even demand, the course thatbest prepares them for their general exam.

Absence of market pressure: The job market for new Ph.D.’s does not exert any disci-pline on the first-year teaching program. Economists might believe that better trained studentswould do better on the job market, and the urge to have one’s students succeed would pushdepartments to change the way they organize their programs.The fact that this just does nothappen is the great irony that your article points out. Perhaps the connection between first-year theory courses and finished dissertations is too remote. Moreover, as long as no majoreconomics department breaks the mold, there is no point of comparison and therefore nocompetitive pressure for change.

I propose the following remedies:

First, departments should change their general examination policy. The exam should be setby a cross-section of the members of the department and should not be the exclusive provinceof the theorists. The goal of the exam should be to see whether the students have the prepara-tion in theory required to read articles in the major economics journals, which is what they willhave to do as they go on in their studies. Once the exam is structured in this way, student pres-sure will develop to make the courses an effective preparation for it.

Second, a good textbook and appropriate other teaching materials should be written anddesigned specifically for a course such as the one I have described. When the leading candidatesfor a text are rather abstract, proof-oriented books, it is hard for the courses to be very different.

Third, more articles like yours need to be written and more gatherings such as the Airlie conf-ference you report on should take place. How about a follow-up meeting for second- and third -year students? Only they can report to their faculty mentors on the efficacy of their preparations.

I am sending a copy of this letter to some of the people mentioned in your article, in thehope of keeping the conversation going. My department at Harvard will be reviewing its first-year theory courses this year, and I will be trying to push them in the directions indicated above.Perhaps some other leading departments are doing likewise. Once this educational innovationgathers some momentum, economic theory would predict that competitive pressures willincrease. The market will then converge to a new and better equilibrium.

Again let me say how much I appreciated your article.

Yours sincerely,Jerry R. Green

he call to scholarly collabora-tion in the social sciences is a familiar one these days. For

both political and intellectual reasons,foundations, donor agencies and scien-tific organizations all encourage morecollaboration between scholars fromdifferent parts of the world. However,in the United States at least, institution-al reward systems—tenure, promotionand disciplinary status—focus almostcompletely on the individual, some-times even seeing collaborative work asindicative of inadequacy. There is sub-stantial variation within the social sci-ences, with some fields, e.g., clinicalpsychology and physical anthropology,having a long tradition of team work(sometimes across national boundaries),and others, like political science andhistory, far more prone to privilege theimage of the individual scholar. Withevery additional call to collaborate werealize that we still know very littleabout the basic qualities of collabora-tion––how it is done, how it is donewell and when it can become self-sus-taining. In the case of international col-laboration, especially between scholarsand institutions from North and South,

we must also consider how the socialelements of interaction are complicatedby the political economy of difference.

A year ago the Council establishedan inter-regional working group oninternational scholarly collaboration1

to explore how a fuller understandingof the nature and form of internationalscholarly collaboration might benefitacademia, institutions and individualsin practical ways, and draw attention toexamples of unequal and asymmetricinternational scholarly relations. Fol-lowing two planning meetings held inAugust 1998 and April 1999, the work-ing group decided to identify andexamine select cases of North-Southcollaborations, paying special attentionto the processes of collaboration. Theworking group is preparing reports onfour cases of international collabora-tion, ranging from interinstitutionallinkages to interpersonal ones.2

As a necessary complement to thesestudies, we outline below a broadquantitative view of the scope of col-laborative research in the social sci-ences. The standard technique is tocount jointly authored articles andbooks, even though it is clear that joint

authorship as a index undercounts theuniverse of collaborative activities,3

gives no indication of the process andmechanisms by which collaborationtook place and offers no insight intopower dynamics between the researchers.

The most comprehensive databaseavailable for the study of bibliometricstatistics in the social sciences is theSocial Sciences Citation Index (SSCI),published by the privately owned andUS-based Institute of Scientific Infor-mation (ISI). The SSCI provides bibli-ographic information––including citedreferences––in a print version for theyears 1956-1980 and a CD-ROM ver-sion from 1980 onward. This databasenow covers 1,737 international jour-nals in the social sciences, of which thegreat majority are drawn from theUnited States and Western Europe;very few nonEuropean-language jour-nals are included. In addition, thestructure of the SSCI database onlyallows for the selection of certain fields(author name, title name, journal name,cited references, authors’ addresses andtheir Boolean combinations), and is notorganized under subject headings, fur-ther reducing its utility.4

Measuring International Collaborationby Itty Abraham and Tina Harris

Notes. Total articles based on 50 selected journals and 50 selected countries. All data from the SSCI.

Table 1 Sample of international co-authored journal articles, 1985 and 1995

T

A A S E E S G H P S P S W S T

Field Total Co- Int’l Co- Total Co- Int’l Co-Articles Author- Author- Articles Author- Author-1985 ships ships 1995 ships ships

Given these constraints,we attempted to measurethe scope of internationalcollaboration using dataon joint authorship inselected social sciencedisciplines over the decade1985 to 1995. Makingthe assumption that high-er per-capita public ex-penditures on sciencewere a measure of thestrength of the scientificcommunity in a given country, wechose the top 50 Southern countries inthis category in order to maximize thechances of picking up our unit ofmeasurement. We searched approxi-mately 50 journals in all fields in thesocial sciences, and acquired detailedresults for the fields of anthropologyand area studies. After obtaining acomprehensive list of the articles ineach section, we examined the institu-tional address of the authors in order todetermine whether they were interna-tional co-authorships.

Based on this sample, we see that theabsolute number of international collabo-rations in the social sciences (measuredthrough co-authorship) has increased inrecent years. This finding is consistentwith a larger study looking at the physicalsciences (based on ISI’s Science CitationIndex [SCI]) which reports that the num-ber of international collaborations dou-bled from 1981 to 1996.5

In our sample, there were 24 inter-nationally co-authored articles in 1985;10 years later, there were 54. However,the relative proportion of domestic andinternational joint-authored articlesdid not reflect this trend. In 1985, 43%of all articles were jointly authored, ofwhich 23% involved international co-authors. In 1995, 37% of all articleswere jointly authored, with only 19%having collaborators from differentcountries. The proportion of interna-tional co-authored articles to all co-authored articles remained roughly thesame, dropping from 55% in 1985 to51% in 1995. Moving from aggregatefigures to particular fields, the datashows that by far the most collabora-

tions took place in economics and psy-chology. Within these fields too, the pro-portion of internationally co-authoredarticles declined from 1985 to 1995.

That psychology and economicsstood out did not strike us as surpris-ing. Both fields have over time consid-erably internalized the patterns andforms of physical science disciplines:just as we would not be surprised tosee a large number of collaborations inphysics or chemistry, so also thesefields. What surprised us a little morewas to see some evidence of collabora-tion in area studies and anthropology,both fields in which culture and histo-ry are important and in which jointwork is relatively less common. Wedecided to explore these fields in moredepth, both to see how anomalousthese results were and also because itwas relatively practical to do a censuson these fields based on their small sizewithin the SSCI database.

Taking anthropology first, we foundthere was a slight drop in the proportionof jointly published articles to all arti-cles, from 47% to 44%. One-quarter ofall articles were the product of interna-tional collaboration in both time peri-ods. In other words, 50% of all collabo-rations involved scholars from two ormore countries. Three-fourths of allinternational collaborations were North-South and the remaining numberNorth-North. South-South collabora-tions were nonexistent.

In the area studies field, with farfewer articles, we found that the pro-portion of jointly-authored articlesincreased over time (from 11% to 20%)

while the number of international col-laborations as a proportion of all collab-orations did not drop below 50% in thetime period studied. International col-laborations in this area were even morebiased toward North-South interac-tions––over 80% of all internationalcollaborations in the two time periodssurveyed. Here too, South-South col-laborations were nonexistent.

Breaking down these numbers byjournal, the majority of internationalcollaborations in anthropology wereconcentrated in three journals, AmericanJournal of Human Biology, AmericanJournal of Physical Anthropology andJournal of Human Evolution. All threejournals straddle the social and physicalsciences, with a clear orientationtoward the latter. It should not surpriseus to find that patterns of scholarlypractice mimic patterns typical of thehard sciences, with an emphasis onteam work and joint publications. Inthe area studies field, nearly all theinternational joint publications werefound in the journals Asian Survey,Europe-Asia Studies and Journal of Inter-American and World Affairs.

How reliable are these findings?Besides the limitations described earli-er, the SSCI database also ignores theincreasing amount of scholarship thatcomes out of the nongovernmentalsector. Not all NGO publicationsqualify as academic scholarship, andeven less of this work is produced fol-lowing academic norms of reliability(e.g., peer review), but there is stillmuch that does qualify as social sci-ence, is produced by practicing social

Note:All 50 anthropology and 35 area studies journals indexed in the SSCI were included.

Table 2 International collaborations by world regions: anthropology and area studies, 1985 and 1995

Field and Year Anthropology Anthropology Area Studies Area Studies1985 1995 1985 1995

T AC-AI CN-NN-SS-S

scientists and often has far more impactthan much that comes out of social sci-ence journals. We hope some of theselimitations may be addressed in theongoing discussions at the NationalScience Foundation to set up a socialscience database similar to its Scienceand Technology Indicators.6

All of this goes to say that whateverresults we might draw from quantitativestudies are likely to undercount thedegree of collaboration. But quantita-tive studies can only give us a broadsketch of the trends. We still need tounderstand how collaboration takes

place, why it fails or succeeds and howsuccessful collaboration can be sus-tained over time. These are preciselythe questions being addressed by theCouncil’s working group on interna-tional scholarly collaboration. n

The authors are, respectively, program director andprogram assistant, South Asia and Southeast Asia pro-grams, and act as staff to the Working Group onInternational Scholarly Collaboration. The authorswould like to thank Olle Persson and Diana Hicks fortheir help in preparing this article.

1 Working group members are Paul Drake,University of California, San Diego; David Ludden,University of Pennsylvania; Georges Nzongola,Howard University; Sujata Patel; University of Pune;Lilia Shevstova, Carnegie Endowment, Moscow.

2 These cases are the Nordic Africa Institute; the

Indo-Dutch program on Alternatives in Development;the NEH regional literatures project, University ofChicago; and the SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee onLatin American Studies.

3 This point is made in Goran Melin and OllePersson, “Studying research collaboration using co-authorships” Scientometrics 36, 3 (1996): 363-365.

4 Other limitations include inconsistencies in coun-try names (e.g., Russia listed as USSR and Senegal asSenegambia in 1985), journal entries (e.g., Antipodewas not listed until after 1985, Journal of ComparativePsychology was not included in 1995) and multiplelistings (e.g., Social Dynamics is included in both theanthropology and area studies lists)

5 Melin and Persson,“Studying research collaboration.”6 For some of the issues being considered see Diana

Hicks’ presentation to the National Science Found-ation, “New bibliometric indicators for the social sci-ences,” February 25, 1999, mimeo.

n June 1999 the Council received a grant for $930,000from the Pew Charitable Trusts to establish a new Working Group on Religion, Immigration and Civil Life.The

group, which will develop theoretical understandings andsupport research on the role of religion in the incorporationof immigrants into US society, is a collaborative project ofthe International Migration and Culture, Health andHuman Development Programs.The grant will support oneyear of predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships [seeannouncement on page 26] and three years of research plan-ning activities linked to those of the parent programs.

Despite a respected tradition of social science researchand writing about the relation between immigration andreligion (Oscar Handlin’s influential chapter on religion inThe Uprooted, for example, or Will Herberg’s classic Protestant-Catholic-Jew:An Essay in American Religious Sociology, both fromthe 1950s), consideration of the role of religion in immigrantincorporation has been strikingly limited in contemporaryscholarship.Three recently published and otherwise compre-hensive textbooks on post-1965 immigration, as well as thevolume most widely used as an introduction to the subject incollege courses, contain only passing reference to religion.Even the volume that the SSRC Program on InternationalMigration has prepared to serve as a comprehensive reviewand assessment of the state of theory in US immigration stud-ies [The Handbook of International Migration, eds. CharlesHirschman, Josh DeWind and Philip Kasinitz, just publishedby Russell Sage, see p. 25] does not take up religious issues.

One result of the omission of religion from immigrationscholarship has been incomplete theoretical explanations ofimmigrant incorporation into US social life. While singleand multigroup ethnographies have illustrated the centralityof churches in particular immigrant communities, the contri-butions that such studies might make to broader theoreticaldebates about immigrant incorporation (related to labormarket entry, gender adjustment within immigrant families,school performance and so on) have not yet been systemati-cally considered.

Likewise, members of the Council’s Working Group onEthnic Customs, Assimilation and American Law––an inter-disciplinary group of legal scholars, political theorists, socialpsychologists and anthropologists, who are investigating andseeking to clarify challenges that multiculturalism (or plural-ism) pose within a liberal democracy—have not as yet con-sidered conflicts related to the diverse religious practices ofAsian, African, Mexican, Latin American and Caribbeanimmigrant populations in the US. It is apparent, however,that questions prompted by such practices lie at the intersec-tion of legal and constitutional theory, civic life and the plu-rality of immigrant groups and family practices that charac-terize contemporary America.

Council Announces NewWorking Group on Religion,Immigration and Civic Life

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Increasing Support for Third Country Comparative Researchby Richard J. Samuels

t is time for US universities andeducational funders to think morebroadly about the way they support

research in comparative politics. Com-parativists in US political science de-partments usually make a critical deci-sion in the transition from the disserta-tion project to the second substantiveresearch project: Either we follow oursubstantive/theoretical interests to anew geographic venue, or we roamacross the same real estate examining adifferent substantive/theoretical issue.David Laitin has observed correctly1

that most comparativists head off tofind a second problem to solve on thesame soil, remaining more closely iden-tified with the country or regionwhere they undertook their firstextensive field research (C1) than with

the questions they asked there.Either implicitly or explicitly, com-

parativists compare C1 with their homecountry (C2). Since many practicingcomparativists are Americans, the Unit-ed States becomes a common C2. Inthis essay I want to follow up some pre-liminary discussions held recently underthe auspices of the Social ScienceResearch Council and the Abe Fellow-ship Program concerning the specialproblems faced by that smaller numberof specialists who eventually venturefurther afield and apply their hard-earned C1 expertise and tacit C2knowledge to a new, third case (C3).This may happen at any time in a com-parativist’s career and is as consequentialfor the scholar and his or her homedepartment as is the choice to follow

theory or regional specialization in sec-ond projects.

The C3 problem is not everyone’s.The language and cultural skills ofArabists or Latin Americanists areportable in ways that others can onlyenvy. Even Sinologists have multiplevenues in which to apply their skills.Many Europeanists, for their part, seemto have little difficulty engaging mate-rials from three or more national cases.Note, for example, the success withwhich Gregory Luebbert reviewed thetransformation of social coalitions acrossall of interwar Europe.

C3 is a particular problem for thosecomparativists who specialize in coun-tries like Japan, Korea,Turkey, India orRussia, where the ratio of investmentin language and contextual learning to

I

A primary purpose of this project, then, is to stimulatescholars of immigration to take up neglected questions ofreligion in immigrant life and scholars of religion to consid-er how their perspectives might contribute to new interpre-tations of immigration issues. These goals will be realizedthrough activities that will link religion and immigrationexperts with one another and to other networks of scholarswho are examining how immigrants’ diverse ethnic practicesintersect with mainstream and minority US institutions.Working group activities will bring together the theoreticalperspectives of these scholars in order to develop conceptu-al frameworks and theoretical syntheses that will deepen ourunderstanding of the relation of religion to immigrantassimilation. These, in turn, will be used to orient futureresearch and promote interdisciplinary scholarship and intel-lectual cohesion in immigration studies.

A planning meeting of 18 scholars and three SSRC staffmembers was held in New York City on June 29-30, 1999,to suggest guidelines for soliciting research fellowship appli-cations and to begin defining the intellectual tasks of theworking group. Participants encouraged Council staff to takea broad, historically comparative perspective, and to giveapplicants and working group participants latitude to deter-mine which aspects of American life would be their focus oftheir studies of immigrant incorporation. Like the membersof the Council’s board of directors, who enthusiasticallyapproved the project at their June 1999 meeting, they alsourged that the working group, which will at first focus on

religion and immigration in the United States, to adopt aninternationally comparative perspective should the funds todo so become available. Religion and immigration, bothgroups argued, are phenomena whose global and local inter-connections have not yet been studied fully.

When the working group is eventually created, its mem-bers will be charged with the responsibility to organize aseries of workshops and conferences aimed at developingnew theoretical perspectives and planning future researchagendas. It will organize activities that will link juniorresearch fellows with each other and, through the workinggroup, with wider networks of senior immigration and reli-gion scholars. The tangible results of these efforts willinclude papers on research and analysis, special issues of jour-nals, edited academic books, magazine articles and a tradebook. Because religion and immigration are topics of gener-al interest, the project will attempt to extend its networksbeyond academia and share its results with a wider public. Inthe end, the project will bring religious issues and systematicscholarship on religion, immigration and civic life closer toone another and to the center of social science scholarship. n

Participants: Talal Asad, Graduate Center, City University of New York; RichardAlba, visiting scholar, Russell Sage Foundation; Peter Benda, New School for SocialResearch; Jose Casanova, New School for Social Research; Diana Eck, HarvardUniversity; Ana Paula Sales Guinote, University of Massachusetts; CharlesHirschman, visiting scholar, Russell Sage Foundation; Karen Leigh King, DivinitySchool, Harvard University; Peggy Levitt,Wellesley College; Jon Miller, Universityof Southern California; Martha Minow, Harvard Law School; Al Raboteau,Princeton University; Richard Shweder, University of Chicago; Alex Stepick,Florida International University; Nomi Stolzenberg, University of SouthernCalifornia Law School. Staff: Josh DeWind, Frank Kessel, Scott Giampetruzzi.

the opportunities for their applicationis particularly high. There is a doublewhammy in these cases: It takes consid-erably longer to acquire C1 expertiseand, with respect to many analyticquestions, there are many fewer placesto apply it. When starting a new proj-

ect, these “high ratio” comparativistsmay have little time or energy left forduplicating the detailed learning theydid when they began working on theirfirst country.

Over the course of a career, there-fore, many such scholars write singlecountry case studies in seriatim. Theymight write an initial book on ThePolitics of Subject X in C1. This positionsthem to become one of two kinds ofniche players: Either they become the“go to” author for a chapter on SubjectX in a book on C1 or the author ofchoice for the chapter on C1 in theedited volume on Subject X. Thissame process can be repeated after theauthor’s second book: The Politics ofSubject Y in C1. In African studies, asLaitin pointed out, this meant thatscholars who started out working onnation-building inthe 1960s becamespecialists on debtin the 1970s, demo-cratization in the1980s and failedstates in the 1990s.The sorts of C1 and(at least tacit) C2contributions (i.e.,books spun off intochapters in editedvolumes) that resultfrom such intrare-gional roaming arecertain to be con-textually deep. Butthey may not beconceptually broad,and in a disciplinethat celebrates bread-th and depth as one

route to fuller theory, such contribu-tions are apt to be discounted heavily.

Whether because their work findsso consistently limited a niche orbecause they grow bored with work onthe same country, some area specialistshave begun to get restless. Some haveforsaken their country studies andembarked theoretical pursuits. Othersin greater numbers than ever are reach-ing out to third and fourth cases. Butmoving from C1 to C3 is fraught withperil—both for the field and theresearcher. The field risks losing criti-cal expertise as its deep area specialistsmigrate to new venues.Researchersrisk becoming dilettantes who knowmore and more about less and less. But tothe extent that there is a potential payoffin better theory, the incentive tomigrate remains.

The path of professional migrationfrom C1 to C3 varies with the kinds ofquestions that interest the researcherand with the sorts of analytic skills s/hehas acquired. Two extremes frame theissue of how well defined research ques-tions must be before C3 comparisonscan properly be made. If a researcher isinterested in many case, many variable,“large N” research problems, advanced“quantoidal” training is undoubtedlymore important than language or deep

cultural understanding. Here the issue isabout preparation for “Cn” cases––wheren can be in the dozens or more. Whilethe researcher may need the best multivari-ate statistical training money can buy,this is not the C3 problem I have identi-fied or am trying to solve.

If, on the other hand, the researcheris a “narratoidal” process-tracer, thens/he has to make a tough choice be-tween dependence on English-lan-guage sources and investing in learningan additional foreign language. Thechoice is not always easy or obvious.Some––particularly those armed withspecific questions derived from a well-designed concepts wrapped in a coher-ent theory––will find that English lan-guage sources are sufficient to allow aninformed rough sketch of the situationin C3. The researcher will hold thesketch up against the more detailedaccount of C1 and (typically) theUnited States. This often works quitenicely as long as the researcher thensubmits drafts to C3 researchers whocan read and critique it to prevent fatalmisinterpretation. He/she can gener-ate reasonable hypotheses and identifyrelationships that the standard C1-C2pairing might miss.

Others (particularly those on a moreinductive hunt for parallels and differ-

ences, and with asomewhat greaterthreshold for thefrustration of intel-lectual culs-de-sac)are likely to needdirect access to C3language materials.How they get thataccess depends inlarge part upon theproblem they arestudying. If theirprocess-tracing is par-ticularly fine-grained(e.g., comparativestudy of decisions toextend suffrage orredistrict electoralsystems or of socialpolicy formation),there may not be

Researchers risk becomingdilettantes who know moreand more about less and less.

Where Theory Meets Context at 3C

secondary sources available in English.If, on the other hand, the research istargeting particularly well-documentedcases (e.g., decisions for war and peace),there may be better prospects for thenon-speaker of “C3-ese.” Researcherswith the latter sorts of projects can usesecondary material and be relativelyindependent, while those with projectsof the former type will need researchassistance, and hence are likely to bemore senior scholars.

There are many roads to C3 re-search. Different scholars follow differ-ent trajectories because different quest-ions demand different approaches. Someprojects require “thin” area skills, whileothers require “thick” area skills. Thatis, in some cases language fluency andcultural intimacy are the sine qua nonfor success, while in others a fewmonths’ visit will suffice to get specificanswers to specific questions. Forexample, John Campbell claims that“for many kinds of research, one wouldget 75 percent of the value of the thirdcase in three or four weeks of readingand traveling.”

On the other hand, there are projectsthat have “thick” or “thin” theoreticalambitions. Many journalists residewhere thin area skills meet thin theoreti-cal ambition. Barrington Moore livedwhere thick area knowledge meets thicktheory. So do Theda Skocpol and AvnerGreif. This is the realm of both histori-cal sociology and narrative game theory.Clifford Geertz and the political anthro-pologists he inspired value detaileddescription over grandiose theory. Sodo those who, like Michel Crozier, focusintently upon single bureaucratic insti-tutions. Gary Cox and other students ofcomparative electoral systems valuecoherent, deductive theory over exces-sive description. The range of routestoward C3 can be mapped as follows:

Even if we would prefer living in oneof the three ideal type corners whereone or both of our central pursuits is“thick,” most comparativists live in amiddle neighborhood where most theo-rizing neither explains history acrosscenturies for multiple countries norposits a parsimonious and universal

explanation for political behavior.Instead, most of us try to provide theo-retically sensitive explanations built uponclose examination of empirical cases.

But if it is that “doubly thick” vari-ant of C3 we are pursuing, there maybe two ways to get there. The mostcommon route—and likely the onetaken by incumbents like BarringtonMoore and Peter Gourevitch—requiresreliance on C3 research assistants andother English-speaking local interlocu-tors. This option may be more availableto senior scholars than to dissertationstudents. But career stage ought to be asecond order problem. Levels ofexpertise must first be matched to par-ticular research agendas. Well trainedand properly funded junior researcherscertainly can complete contextually

rich and theoretically informed C3research. In a recent presidential mis-sive, the APSA’s David Collier saw “acareer sequence that moves from a sin-gle-country dissertation to multi-coun-try research” as both common and log-ical, and while this is certainly has beenthe path many have trod (myselfincluded), I wonder if one size fits all.

It is instructive to look closely at thosemulticountry comparisons that includea close analysis of the case about whichthe scholar has the greatest expertise—i.e., C1—that work best and least well.In Japanese studies, for example, thereare several studies that exemplify thissort of C3 project. Few are by politicalscientists, however. Robert Cole’sstudy of auto workers in Japan, Swedenand the United States is a splendidexample of clear thinking across some-times unexplored cases—but Cole is anindustrial sociologist. Gregory Kasza’sstudy of mass organizations underauthoritarianism is the best example ofsuch a study by a political scientist.Each regional or area sub-field can takeits own C3 census.

As I have already suggested, few

comparative studies have been broaderor more influential than BarringtonMoore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship andDemocracy. We know that this was notbecause Moore mastered five foreignlanguages—or even because he gotevery case right. Theda Skocpol madea similarly bold effort in her study ofrevolutions, without pretending tomaster each case in the detail expectedof an area specialist. French specialistJohn Zysman included a detailedJapanese case in order to generalize hisargument about the importance offinancial systems in politics. That noneof these scholars’ efforts satisfied everyarea specialist does not detract fromtheir intellectual and analytical impact.

How can we make more of this hap-pen, should we wish to do so? Theobvious place to start is the graduatetraining programs. So-called “broaden-ing grants” are already an importantcolor on the SSRC palette. Collier’sletter warns that adding national casesto dissertations has been frustrated bythe practical and intellectual limitationsof dissertation writers. There are other,less obvious possibilities. Foundationsmight consider grants to research insti-tutes that encourage the sorts of team-teaching or interdisciplinary researchthat nurture exploration of new cases.Faculty who reside in functionallydefined research institutions (e.g.,Social Policy Research Centers, Cen-ters for Security Studies, ResearchCenters for the Study of Elections,Survey Research Centers) as well as inarea centers might be identified andrewarded with seed funding. So mightscholars from different regions or sub-fields who team-teach graduate re-search seminars. Others scholars couldbe provided summer grants to visit dis-sertation students they supervise whoare doing field research in third coun-tries. They might be given support todeliver papers and serve as discussantson panels at professional meetings incountries they have not yet studiedfirsthand.

In short, we should nurture net-works that nudge the serendipity ofscholarly inquiry across geographic and

Deep knowledge derived fromone case can profoundly illu-minate others.

nthropologist Rick Shweder teaches at the University of

Chicago, but spends his sum-mers on Martha’s Vineyard.About a year ago, he decidedto introduce his fellowmembers of the WorkingGroup on Ethnic Customs,Assimilation and AmericanLaw (a.k.a. the Free Exerciseof Culture group) to theautumnal beauty of theVineyard by holding a meet-ing there. Because there areno local conference facilities,the planning process wascomplicated, involving twoseparate inns, borrowedvehicles to meet the smallplanes and ferries that wouldbring the Free Exercisers tothe island, and the like.Finally, after months of plan-ning and coordination withCouncil staff (in particular,Frank Kessel, the programdirector, and Jolanta Badurain the SSRC travel office),

everything was set. Themeeting was scheduled toopen with a dinner on theevening of Thursday, Sept-ember 16. As it turned out,the only guest to arrive thatday was Hurricane Floyd.

Shweder hoped that every-one could make it to theisland by Thursday afternoonand safely sit out the storm.But by 10:30, rough seas

kicked up by the hurricane’smovement up the East Coasthad forced the ferry to close.

The only other way to get tothe Vineyard was via smallplanes—9- and 16-seaters—from Boston. By noon onThursday these too had beencancelled. Meanwhile, FreeExercisers were en routefrom as far afield as Atlantaand Detroit, California andNorway. By the time theisland’s links to the mainlandwere severed, many of them

were already in the air. Atthat point, the Shwederhousehold––in contact with

Council staff––became mis-sion control, as Shweder andhis wife and daughter moni-tored the travelers’ travailsvia e-mail and telephone. ByThursday afternoon, severalof the group were stuck inBoston, others in New York.Two graduate students hadflown into Newark Airportfrom Chicago and, unable tosecure a hotel room, rented acar and drove through rainand wind to a parental homein Connecticut. (As it hap-pened, at the same timeKessel and Badura were cop-ing with members of anoth-er group, who had convenedat the Council to discuss“Bio-Behavioral-Social Pers-pectives on Health” andfound themselves stranded inNew York City.)

By Friday morning thecenter of the storm hadpassed, but it was stillextremely windy. Could theFree Exercise crew make it

Working Group Battles Hurricane for Free Exercise

intellectual borders. The result, I sug-gest, will be simultaneously deeper andbroader knowledge. Getting there willdepend on acceptance of the premisethat deep knowledge derived from onecase can profoundly illuminate under-standing of other cases––and that thissort of illumination is not availablethrough deductive modeling orthrough quantitative data sets alone.This is not about “retooling” tired areaspecialists, but about broadening thework of some who will contribute to afuller comprehension of politics com-paratively. Some who travel this waywill build on their C1 knowledge bygenerating new theory. Others will testexisting theory. Some will identifyentirely new puzzles. Others willexplain important outlying cases.There are a great many ways in which

nurturing C3 capabilities can enhancecomparative political research. n

Richard J. Samuels is Ford International Professor ofPolitical Science at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. His most recent book, Rich Nation, StrongArmy: National Security and the Technological Trans-formation of Japan (Cornell University Press, 1994), wonthe John Whitney Hall Prize of the Association forAsian Studies. He is currently writing a book onpolitical leadership in Japan and Italy. This essay wasstimulated by discussion at the March 1999 workshopon “Third Country Research” sponsored by the AbeFellowship Program of the Social Science ResearchCouncil. He benefited enormously from conversationswith David Collier,TJ Pempel and James White.Thisessay first appeared in APSA-CP: Newsletter of theAmerican Political Science Association’s Organized Sectionin Comparative Politics.Volume 9, Number 2, (Summer1999), and is reprinted by permission.

1 Laitin, David. “Retooling in Comparativeresearch,” APSA-CP: Newsletter of the American PoliticalScience Association’s Organized Section in ComparativePolitics.Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1994.

2 This issue was first addressed by Donald T.Campbell.“‘Degrees of Freedom’ and the Case Study,”

Comparative Political Studies, Volume 8, Number 2,pp.178-193.

3 Luebbert, Gregory M. Liberalism, Fascism, or SocialDemocracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins ofRegimes in Interwar Europe. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1991.

4 John Campbell, “Trying to Study Long-TermCare Insurance in Germany,” Paper prepared for theSocial Science Research Council and Abe FellowshipProgram Workshop on The Third Case, Airlie House,Virginia, March 1999, p.1.

5 Thanks to TJ Pempel for help with this sorting.6 Cole, Robert. Work Mobility, and Participation,

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.7 Kasza, Gregory. The Conscription Society:

Administered Mass Organizations. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1995.

8 Moore Jr., Barrington. Social Origins of Dictatorshipand Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of theModern World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. Skocpol.Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A ComparativeAnalysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge, U.K.:Cambridge University Press, 1979.

9 Zysman, John. Governments Markets and Growth:Financial Systems and the Politics of Industrial Change.Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

A

Storm over, Free Exercise of Culture group can see clearly now.

to the island? At 10:45, theferry reopened. Claude Steeleand Hazel Markus, bothfrom Stanford, were on thefirst Cape Air flight out ofBoston at noon. The tinyplane took off and immedi-ately hit severe turbulence.“Turn back!” one of the pas-sengers screamed.

Shweder continued towork the phones, telling histravelers where they couldfind others of the group whomight be able to offer a seatin a rented car or share aferry reservation. The open-

ing dinner, delayed 24 hours,was now scheduled for 8:30on Friday night. Shwederand his family spent the daymeeting ferries and planes,and many of the groupshowed up. David Chambersdrove from Vermont toLogan Airport on Friday tofind that his flight to theVineyard had been can-celled. He got US Air to bushim to the ferry, and calledCandy Shweder from WoodsHole. When he walked intothe restaurant at 9:15, havingcarried his suitcase up from

the ferry, the dinner he hadordered was waiting on thetable.

In the end, 20 out of 25scheduled participants madeit to Martha’s Vineyard. Sat-urday and Sunday dawnedcrystal clear, and the grouptackled its compressed butcomplete agenda. Sharingstorm stories brought themcloser and, Shweder felt, lentan unusually candid, mutual-ly respectful and personalquality to the discussions ofsome intellectually difficultand socially challenging

issues. His explanation forthe willingness to find a waythere? The working groupmembers were able to standup to Hurricane Floyd be-cause so many of them areanthropologists and otheradventurers, used to ruggedtravel and unexpected changesin plans. Frank Kessel’s mul-tidisciplinary view is thatboth the nature of thegroup’s agenda and severalprior meetings had laid thefoundation for this commit-ment to the communaleffort. n

A New Program on the Arts for the Councilhe furor surrounding the Brooklyn Museum’s “Sensations” exhibit—New York City mayor Rudolph Guiliani’sattempt to evict the museum from its city-owned building over its display of what he terms “sick stuff ” andpeople’s reactions to it—raises many questions about the role the arts in general play in people’s lives. How

does having seen a particular painting impact on how one views the world, how one chooses to live one’s life and howone perceives the quality of one’s life as an individual and a member of society? How is the experience of engagementwith artistic expression shaped by the multidimensional context of that experience: the psychological, social, histori-cal, cultural and political factors that define the nature and impact of that experience? How do museums, educators,peer groups and the media, as well as level of income or education determine the nature of people’s encounters withart? What do different people come away with when they see a play, watch dance, listen to music or read poetry?What would constitute evidence of the ways in which the transformative power of art can be harnessed in the serv-ice of improving the quality of one’s life? What is the conceptual connection between engagement with the arts anda healthy social fabric? These are the kinds of questions the Social Science Research Council believes need to beanswered in order to produce data critical to discussions of the value of the arts to society as well as to policy debates.

It was to develop a research agenda on how the arts matter in people’s lives that the SSRC Program on the Arts wasestablished, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, in January 1999. Its purpose is to launch an intellectualdebate at the intersection of the arts and the social sciences that is not exclusively policy oriented and that goes beyondeconomic impact and participation studies. Its seeks to legitimate an interdisciplinary field of scholarly inquiry around asocial science of the arts.The program will encourage research on the question,“How can we demonstrate an impact ofart—be it positive or negative—on the lives of people who engage with it?” It assumes that any reasonable debate overthe wisdom of supporting the arts requires the kind of evidence only social science can provide.

A committee of distinguished social scientists has been appointed by the Council to spend the next few years devel-oping a strategy for integrating the arts into social science debates and the social sciences into debates on arts policy.The committee will also design incentives to encourage the pursuit of interdisciplinary research in this area. The com-mittee is chaired by Lynn Liben, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University. Other members include:Nicola Beisel, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University; Judith Blau, Department of Sociology, Universityof North Carolina; Faye Ginsburg, Center for Media, Culture and History, New York University; David Halle, LeroiNeiman Center for the Study of American Society and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles; Stevan Harrell,Department of Anthropology, University of Washington; Marc Miringoff, Institute for Social Policy and Innovation,Fordham University; and Walter Mischel, Department of Psychology, Columbia University. n

T

President

“Items and Issues.” Attentive readers will have noticeda change in the longstanding title of this newsletter. I hopeit signals that this is a place to engage with the basic

issues of social life and social science.The items to be pub-lished here are not simply about the Social Science ResearchCouncil. As the SSRC has gone through major changes inrecent years, it has spent a good deal of energy trying toexplain itself. Like many public efforts at identity manage-ment, this was also an attempt to achieve self-recognition. Myhope is that we can now do less of this, and focus our atten-tion more fully on innovations in social science. TheCouncil’s identity should be shaped by its intellectual activi-ties; its organizational structure is simply a support for these.

Moving from a university setting to the Social ScienceResearch Council this past summer, I was of course struck bya variety of differences.The corridors seemed extraordinarilyquiet––no undergraduates. Lunch cost more in midtownManhattan. One of the most striking contrasts, however, wasthe way colleagues said the word “committees.” In the uni-versity, committees are often assignments taken on reluctant-ly. They are commonly perceived as distractions from realintellectual life. The word “committee” has become almostsynonymous with the pejorative sense of “bureaucracy.” Atthe Council, by contrast, committees are where the action is,and the action is intellectual. Indeed, to a very large extent,the Council is an enormous network of social scientistslinked through membership on committees and conversa-tions at events these committees sponsor.

This network of contacts is what makes the Council mostdistinctive and valuable. It is nurtured by staff who watch andlisten for new ideas that need attention, new voices that needto be heard, new skills that need to be imparted, new projectsthat need support. The Council is valuable to the partnersthat fund its work largely because of its extraordinarily abili-ty to mobilize outstanding social scientists to guide fellow-ship programs, plan and carry out research, develop newfields and bring the findings of social science to policymakersand the public. Creating the right mix of expertise and per-spectives often means reaching across disciplines and nationsin ways that are difficult for universities and establishedresearch centers.The Council helps to create “invisible col-leges” of scholars who can tackle new themes and shape newagendas for research. In order to do this well, the Councilmust continually reinvent itself. Its networks––and indeed itscore staff and internal organization––must continually berenewed.

It is a pleasure and an honor to be a part of this process ofrenewal. New presidents bring new perspectives, as do new

I

A Word From the

program directors and committee members. Of course, noindividual can or should set the whole agenda for theCouncil. It is important, though, that the Council have aclear identity and sense of mission, in order to determine itspriorities.To this end, it seems appropriate in my first mes-sage as president to say something about how I see theCouncil working.

or nearly 80 years, the Social Science ResearchCouncil has played a central role in American—andoften international––social science. It was created

explicitly to do this, and I am not sure whether the foundersever felt a sense of irony in using such a phrase.Today, I do.There is no “center” of American social science, materiallyin terms of institutions or metaphorically in terms of intel-lectual orientations and work. Social science is a sprawlingnetwork of theories and research projects, disciplines andinterdisciplinary fields, departments and institutes, demon-strated empirical findings and burning new questions.Thereare prestige hierarchies, disparities in funding and dominantpositions in academic job markets. But none of these makesfor a singular center.

For the Council to play a central role, as I see it,means aboveall else making sure that issues of central intellectual impor-tance receive the attention they deserve. Rather than offer-ing a list of specific projects (which might risk reifying aprocess of development that needs to be more fluid) let meillustrate some directions in which I think we can fruitfullymove. In each case, the agenda includes continuing orenhancing efforts the Council has already launched as wellas undertaking new ones.

One priority is to focus attention on social institutions ofbasic importance that are inadequately studied by social sci-entists. Social science will serve the public better if it canoffer more insight into these institutions and their contribu-tions to the larger society; social science knowledge will bebetter if they are not neglected in formulating theory andempirical generalizations. It is remarkable, for example, howlittle the study of business institutions has cohered as a fieldof social science. Economists study markets and strategicaction, of course, and sociologists study organizations (someof which happen to be businesses, though that is often treat-ed as incidental). Political scientists focus on the politicalspending of business but very little on business itself; anthro-pologists frequently confront the impacts of multinationalcorporations and financial markets but rarely study theseinstitutions directly. Much the same picture could be paint-

F

ed for the study of higher education. Research takes place atthe margins of the social science disciplines, and in schoolsof education where concerns are often immediately practi-cal.Yet basic transformations are taking place.These bear onthe production of knowledge itself, as for example private for-profit investments in scientific research shape scholarly priori-ties and institutional practices in the dissemination of knowl-edge.A third relatively neglected institutional arena is philan-thropy, nonprofit and social movement organizations. For allthe recent spate of writing about civil society and civic partic-ipation, the importance of this institutional arena has not yetbeen well absorbed into the disciplines and is poorly repre-sented in the generalizations they offer. In none of the socialsciences would this kind of inquiry be widely recognized as asubfield within which a scholar could build a career.

Launching a cluster of initiatives on institutions can havea high payoff partly because in different ways a number ofscholars in different disciplines have begun to develop ana-lytic approaches to institutions. But these various “new insti-tutionalisms” do not share a common language or empiricalbase. Bringing them into dialogue in studies of specific insti-tutional arenas may help to develop valuable links amongthem. Developing a program on business institutions and

society and expanding existing programs on higher educa-tion and philanthropy and nonprofit organizations, will alsocomplement and inform our new program on the arts andcultural policy (described elsewhere in this issue). Similarly,an institutional perspective is important to the new programon Global Cooperation and Security that we have proposed,since a key issue in that field is to understand the range ofnon-state actors––NGOs, multilateral agencies, social move-ment organizations—and integrate them better into the pro-duction of knowledge on issues of peace and security.

Another important theme for Council attention is infor-mation technology. This is really a cluster of at least threeconcerns. First, there is the study of the social nature andimplications of new technology. It is remarkable how littlegood social science research has been done on the Internetand other developments in or out of information technolo-gy.The literature is largely anecdotal and speculative. A keyreason is that there is very little solid data available for analy-sis; until stronger data are available as a common resource itwill be hard to raise the level of discussion and theorization.A few projects that may change this are underway, but it ishard to raise the level of a weak literature without concertedaction linking the best researchers to each other. This is

something the Council can help provide. Second, it isimportant to consider information technology in social sci-ence itself. We need to address the ways in which computersand communication technologies are changing how wework and how knowledge is stored and disseminated. Weneed also to pioneer new approaches to collaboration andscholarly communication. For example, the Internet couldfacilitate better sharing of data among researchers in differ-ent parts of the world, bolstering comparative research andpossibly reducing the extent that data on developing coun-tries are only available in the libraries and research centers ofdeveloped countries. Third, we need to improve theCouncil’s own use of information technology. The SSRCseeks to be transnational, both operating programs through-out the world and achieving linkages among them.Information technology already helps to maintain these, butwe can do more, including more to enable researchers in dif-ferent regions to communicate directly with each other.

These two examples hardly exhaust the new initiatives theCouncil may take on. I hope we will develop more projectsbringing social sciences to bear on public health issues. Ourprogram on human sexuality is for the first time taking upissues of reproductive health internationally and we are in themidst of an inquiry into the formation of interdisciplinaryfields in the biosocial sciences and health. Bringing togetherthe different lines of research and theory building in the fieldsof risk and injuries could be very fruitful—and could alsoforge valuable links to legal research.The Council has recent-ly broken new ground with a project on migration and reli-gion. I hope we will continue to look at the cultural changesglobalization is bringing, and the ways in which it confoundsthe separation of domestic and international concerns.

Globalization also challenges us to return to one of thegreat areas of the Council’s past achievements and play animportant role in reinvigorating comparative research. Casestudies and attempts at generalization across contexts bothneed to be complemented by studies that are able to graspthe specificity of multiple settings. This is important bothwithin and across different regions of the globe. It at oncedepends on the kind of knowledge nurtured by area studiesfields and challenges researchers to reach beyond their tradi-tions.The meaning of “region” is itself contested, with cul-tural, political, economic and geographic definitions produc-ing different affinities and oppositions. That networks andboundaries are fluid and overlapping, however, doesn’t makearea-specific knowledge less important, only more difficult.Likewise, the challenges globalization poses to states (and theaspects of it that escape the purview of states) do not neces-sarily make states less important and may actually provokemore nationalism. It is increasingly recognized, though, thatnation-states are not the “natural” or most helpful units ofcomparison.

We need to pioneer new approach-

es to collaboration and scholarly

communication.

bviously, there is lots for us to do. Equally obviously,we cannot do everything. What should deter-mine which projects the Council should take on?

In no case is the answer a matter of obligation to an existingfield, whether disciplinary or interdisciplinary. Our obliga-tions are to social science more generally and to the publicswhich may benefit from social science. In deciding whichprojects to take on, five tests are basic:

Note that immediate practical usefulness is not one of themain criteria. The Council is founded partly on the beliefthat social science can be useful, and indeed that it is goodto guide it in the direction of public contributions. But theSSRC is not an applied research organization. It is part ofthe scholarly community devoted to the pursuit of basicknowledge about social life. It is through supporting this—and supporting public access to the results of thisinquiry––that it achieves its usefulness.

There is no great innovation in this list of tests. Two thingsare worth stressing, however. One is the reliance on theword “project.” The Council takes on projects, not perma-nent programs. Even long-running programs, like those cen-

tered on fellowship support, must be renewed periodically asprojects with specific agendas and finite time-spans.Secondly, the stress falls on intellectual quality and potentialachievements.The Council does work to build infrastructureand shore up human capital but its primary emphasis is onthe intellectual quality of social science.

Back, then, to the issue of identity. It is by our programsthat we shall be known.These exist to facilitate collaborativeresearch, to prepare new generations of researchers, to encour-age scholarly communication, to promote the international-ization of social science and to foster interdisciplinary link-ages.At any one time, the programs will address only a minor-ity of social science concerns and they will never be represen-tative of all of social science. But they will change continually,and they will (we hope) achieve centrality because of theintellectual excitement and connections they generate. n

Craig Calhoun

O

. Is the intellectual quality of the project high?. Will success in the project result in substantial

improvement in the quality of social science?. Does the project address an issue of public

importance?. Is the Council the right organizer for the project?

This includes subsidiary tests:a) Does the project depend on bringing together

researchers in ways difficult for an individual uni-versity or research center to accomplish (e.g., acrossnational or disciplinary lines)?

b) Is there enough work going on in the field to makea collective project feasible and not so much that itwill happen anyway?

c) Can an intervention from the Council bear fruit within a reasonable time frame (normally 3-5 years, though a fruitful project may be extended)?

. Is the project likely to attract funding from an appro-priate Council partner?

Editor’s Note:

In order to update the Items & Issues mailing list, we areasking US readers to re-subscribe. Please take a minuteto write your address on the prepaid postcard that youwill find in the center of this issue and drop it in themail. If you do not resubscribe, your subscription willbe terminated and you will no longer receive Items &Issues.

Note, however, that:Readers outside the US and libraries everywhere willcontinue to receive Items & Issues without resubscribing.

There is still no charge for Items & Issues.

Items & Issues will continue to be available on theCouncil website, www.ssrc.org.

Seteney Shami was named programdirector for the Near and Middle East effec-tive July 1. Ms. Shami is an anthropologistfrom Jordan with degrees from the AmericanUniversity in Beirut (B.A.) and the Universityof California, Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.). Afterteaching for 14 years and establishing the first

graduate department of anthropology in Jordan at YarmoukUniversity, Ms. Shami moved in 1996 to the regional office of thePopulation Council in Cairo as director of the Middle EastAwards in Population and the Social Sciences (MEAwards). Shehas also been a visiting professor at the University of California,Berkeley; Georgetown University; University of Chicago;Stockholm University and the Swedish Collegium for AdvancedStudy in the Social Sciences (Uppsala).

Ms. Shami’s research interests center around issues of ethnicityand nationalism in the context of globalization, urban politics andstate-building strategies, and population displacement andtransnational movements. Her publications include a co-authoredbook, Women in Arab Society:Work Patterns and Gender Relations inEgypt, Jordan and Sudan (Berg, 1990); an edited volume onPopulation Displacement and Resettlement: Development and Conflictin the Middle East (CMS, 1994) and on Amman:The City and ItsSociety (Centre de Recherches et Etudes Sur le Moyen OrientContemporain, 1996). Forthcoming articles include “Prehistoriesof Globalization: Circassian Identity in Motion” in Public Culture(special millenium issue) and “Towards an Ethnography ofGovernance: Urban Spaces and Identities in the Middle East,” inR. Stren and P. McCarney, eds., Urban Governance in Action.

Ms. Shami is on the editorial board of several journals includ-ing Cultural Anthropology, Ethnos and International Migration Review.She is a member of several international research networksincluding the Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization and theGlobal Urban Research Initiative. She has also been a consultantfor a number of organizations including UNICEF, ESCWA andthe Ford Foundation.

Yaw Nyarko, a professor of economics atNew York University, has joined the Councilas an acting program director for the Programin Applied Economics. Mr. Nyarko was edu-cated in Africa (B.A., University of Ghana)and the United States (Ph.D., CornellUniversity). He specializes in game theory,

learning theory, human capital theory and growth theory, and haspublished widely in journals including Econometrica, EconomicTheory and the Journal of Economic Theory. At NYU he teaches thegraduate course in microeconomic theory and also runs theAfrica Social Science Seminar, a speaker series.

Mr. Nyarko will direct the Program in Applied Economics andassist in developing other projects until a permanent director canbe appointed.

Doug Guthrie was appointed programdirector for the new initiative on business insti-tutions and society effective July 1. Mr.Guthrie, an assistant professor of sociology atNew York University, received his Ph.D. insociology from the University of California,Berkeley. His main areas of interests are in

economic sociology, state-market relations, the study of businessorganizations and work and the study of economic transition inChina. In 1997, his research on economic reform in China wasawarded the American Sociological Association’s prize for thebest dissertation in the discipline, and he recently published abook on the topic, Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit:The Emergence ofCapitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 1999). He haspublished articles on state-market relations in the AmericanSociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, China Quarterlyand China Business Review.

Mary Byrne McDonnell, a keymember of the Council’s professional staff formany years, has been promoted to the newlycreated position of executive director. In thisnew role, Ms. McDonnell will work closelywith the president in planning and adminis-tering the Council's diverse activities in

research, education and scholarly communication.While programdirectors will continue to report directly to the president, Ms.McDonnell will be the senior officer responsible for programadministration and the internal coordination of Council activi-ties. In addition to taking on new Council-wide managerialresponsibilities, Ms. McDonnell will continue to play an activerole in some of the Council's specific intellectual programs,including especially the Human Capital Program.

Ms. McDonnell received the Ph.D. in history from ColumbiaUniversity with a focus on Southeast Asia and Arab Middle East.Her dissertation examined the impact of the Hajj on Malaysiansociety. She has master’s degrees in both international affairs andjournalism, also from Columbia, and worked as a journalist cov-ering Asian and Middle Eastern affairs before joining theCouncil in 1984. For many years, Ms. McDonnell was the pro-gram director for East Asia and Indochina programs. In June1997 she was appointed executive program director, the positionbeing redefined in broader terms as executive director.

In addition to her work directly for the Council, Ms.McDonnell has written widely on East and Southeast Asia. Shehas also become a prominent resource for universities and col-leges as they consider the reorganization of international studies.Ms. McDonnell is a section editor for the InternationalEncyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. She also served aschair of the Association of Asian Studies’Vietnam Studies Groupand is a member of the Indochina Roundtable and the Councilfor Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific.

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SSRC-Mellon Minority Fellowship SummerConference

The eighth annual SSRC-Mellon Minority FellowshipConference was held at Brown University from June 24-27, 1999. The conference theme, “Mellon Fellows in theNew Millennium:Enhancing Academic Diversity”provid-ed the backdrop for keynote presentations by leading aca-demics in the fields of English (Michael Harper, BrownUniversity), mathematics (Richard Tapia, Rice University),physical anthropology (MichaelBlakey, Howard University), his-tory (Robin Kelley, New YorkUniversity), sociology (Juan Flores,Graduate Center, City Univer-sity of New York) and Africanpolitics (Pearl Robinson, TuftsUniversity). In addition, 16Mellon fellows presented original papers in four themesessions: “The Social Discourse of Race in TransnationalPerspective,” “Memory and Music: The AmbiguousResistance of Identity,” “The Dynamic Construction ofPower, Language and History” and “The Social Structureof Racial Dynamics in the United States.” One hundredtwenty-five fellows were joined by 28 faculty members (15of them from Brown) in a series of workshops, panels andconversations by discipline that addressed such issues assurviving graduate school, balancing family and the acad-emy, preparing for the job market, pedagogy for the teach-ing assistant and academic publishing. Next year’s confer-ence will be held at Rice University in Houston, Texas,from June 22-25, 2000.

Staff: Beverlee Bruce and Sara Robledo.

CGP-SSRC Seminar Series: Workshop onComparative Cases

A workshop entitled “Research Strategies for ComparativeStudy,” held in conjunction with the Abe FellowshipProgram as part of the CGP (Japan Foundation Center forGlobal Partnership)-SSRC Seminar Series, took placeMarch 19-21, 1999, at Airlie Center, Airlie,Virginia. TheAirlie workshop was viewed as a brainstorming sessionamong scholars from a variety of different research tradi-tions and interests.The goal was to look in a concentratedfashion at issues that arise when the individual scholarseeks to incorporate new countries and/or regions as casesof comparison into his/her work. The group developed

Conferences and Workshops the term “C3,” which stands for adding a “third case” or siteto the single researcher’s research repertoire in addition tothe home country and the first country of expertise.

This workshop was organized in response to a discussionof the intellectual challenges of “stretching” at the secondAbe Fellowship retreat in 1998. Specifically, participants feltthat the issues surrounding the research design––singleresearcher/multicase comparison––that the Abe Fellowshippromotes are an important but challenging strain of com-parative research. Questions about the individual and infra-structural resources needed to conduct this kind of worksuccessfully anchored the four discussion sessions.

Abe Fellowship Program Committee Chair James Whitepresided over the event. Participants included past and pres-ent Abe fellows as well as scholars who have activelyengaged in multi-case comparisons of various kindsthroughout their careers and those who are just nowbeginning to do so.With North American, Latin Americanand European as well as East Asian expertise represented intheir number, the group drew from a range of comparativestrategies and disciplinary perspectives as well as regionalspecialties and methodological practices. A second work-shop on multicase research is planned for March 2000 inTokyo.

Participants: John Campbell, University of Michigan; Laura Campbell,Environmental Law International; David Collier, University of California, Berk-eley; Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University; Chieko Kitagawa-Otsuru, JapanCenter for Area Studies; Mary Byrne McDonnell, SSRC;TJ Pempel, Universityof Washington; Rachel Rosenfeld, University of North Carolina; RichardSamuels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Judith Sedaitis, SSRC; BarbaraStallings, CEPAL; Mark Tilton, Purdue University; James White, University ofNorth Carolina. Participants submitting papers who could not attend includedNobuhiro Hiwatari,Tokyo University and Saskia Sassen, University of Chicago.Staff: Sheri Ranis and Fumika Mori.

International Peace and Security Meetings

The International Peace and Security Program sponsoredseveral research workshops during 1999.

The organizers of a research workshop on “Democracy,Force and Global Social Change” held at the University ofMinnesota on May 1-3, 1998 (see Items, December 1998 )held a series of public presentations and reviews on theworkshop’s outcome. The aim of the project was to drawscholarly attention away from the investigation of a singlehypothesis regarding liberal democracy and war and to

Pledges of Aid: A Correction

Due to an editorial error, the names of participants at ameeting on “Investing in Peace: Donor Support forPost-Conflict Reconstruction and Transition” spon-sored by the Pledges of Aid project of the Social ScienceResearch Council and the Center on InternationalCooperation (CIC) at New York University (NYU) andheld at NYU on November 13-14, 1998, were omittedfrom the March 1999 Items.They were:

Nicole Ball (Overseas Development Council), Martin Barber (UnitedNations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), Andrea Bartoli(Columbia University), Rex Brynen (McGill University), HughCholmondeley (private consultant, formerly of the United Nations StaffCollege Project), Michael Doyle (Princeton University), John Eriksson(World Bank), Michael Foley (Catholic University), Shepard Forman (CIC),Antoinette Handley (South African Institute for International Affairs andPrinceton University), Marianne Heiberg (Norwegian Institute forInternational Affairs), Zlatko Hurtic (World Bank), Jehangir Khan (UnitedNations Department of Political Affairs), Odin Knudsen (World Bank), ChrisLandsberg (Centre for Policy Studies, South Africa), Stewart Patrick (CIC),Sorpong Peou (Institute of South-East Asian Studies, Singapore), HermanRosa (PRISMA, El Salvador), Dirk Salamons (Praxis Group), AmelaSapcanin (Johns Hopkins University), Douglas Stafford (formerly of theUnited States Agency for International Development), Mark Taylor (FAFOInstitute for Applied Social Science, Norway), Thomas Weiss (BrownUniversity), Clare Woodcraft (Middle East Petroleum and EconomicPublications), Elizabeth Wood (NYU), Susan Woodward (BrookingsInstitute), and Kenji Yamada (International Development Centre of Japan).Research team and advisory panel members unable to attend includeHisham Awartani (Centre for Palestine Research and Studies), ThomasBiersteker (Brown University), Michael Bratton (Michigan State University),Sam Brown (private consultant), Shijuro Ogata (former member of the TaskForce on United Nations Financing), and Volker Rittberger (University ofTubingen, Germany). SSRC staff: Ron Kassimir, Amini Kajunju, ThurkaSangaramoorthy.

redirect it toward the broader universe of relations betweendemocracy, war and liberalism. The presentations weredelivered at Columbia University, April 1, 1999; theUniversity of Wales,Aberystwyth on May 17, 1999; and theSchool of Oriental and African Studies, University ofLondon, May 19, 1999.

Organizers: Tarak Barkawai, King’s College London;Mark Laffey, Kent State University

A workshop on “The Impact of Ethnic Politics onDemocratic Stability” was presented at the University ofChicago on May 22-23, 1999.The workshop attempted toreassess the impact of ethnic politics on democratic stabilityby explicitly juxtaposing ethnic and nonethnic forms ofmobilization in their impact on democratic institutions.Thepapers identified conditions and processes which might leadethnic politics to be more or less destabilizing.A second goalof the meeting was to stimulate a collective research agendaand develop possibilities for further collaboration.

Organizer: Kanchan Chandra, Harvard University and SSRC-MellonFoundation Fellow in International Peace and Security. Participants: James Fearon,Stanford University; Elise Guiliano, University of Chicago; Charlie Hale,University of Texas; Stathis Kalyvas, New York University; Mikael Karlstrom,University of Chicago; David Laitin, University of Chicago; Shannon Mattiace,University of Texas; Dan Posner, University of California, Los Angeles; StevenWilkinson, Columbia University; Deborah Yashar, Princeton University.

CPG-SSRC Seminar Series: Economic Statecraftand International Security

As part of the CGP (JapanFoundation Center for GlobalPartnership)-SSRC SeminarSeries, the Abe Fellowship Pro-gram held a workshop on “Eco-nomic Instruments to AchieveSecurity Objectives: Incentives,Sanctions and Non-prolifera-tion” on March 25-27, 1999, atthe Shonan International VillageConference Center, Hayama, Japan. Eighteen researchersand practitioners, including seven current and former Abefellows, particpated.

Convener Michael Mochizuki, a member of the pro-gram committee, prepared a list of suggested themes, andparticpants responded with five-page discussion memosthat were were circulated in advance. The workshopbegan with a theoretical overview, followed by a sessionon American and Japanese perspectives and policies; casestudies on North Korea, China and South Asia; and a dis-cussion of nonproliferation and other arms controlregimes.The meeting concluded with an attempt to drawtogether lessons and policy implications.

The themes of the discussion ranged from the efficacyof economic sanctions and incen-tives to promote security objec-tives––a major point of con-tention in both the academic andpolicy communities––to whetherthe Japanese freeze of grant aidafter China’s nuclear tests in 1995signaled a reassessment of Tokyo’spolicy toward Beijing and howrecent economic trends in the

Asia-Pacific region might affect security regimes there.A tentative conclusion that sanctions are ineffective

unless linked to incentives seemed to conflict with theperceived need of practitioners to do something––any-thing––in a crisis in response to domestic political expec-tations, whether or not measures such as cutting or threat-ening to cut development aid can actually be expected tocurb undesirable conduct. In South Asia, one speakernoted, even incentives intended to achieve limited objec-tives “have to be deployed as part of a comprehensivepackage that takes due account of security concerns.”

Participants: Hideki Kan, Michael Mochizuki and Akihiko Tanaka, formerAbe fellows; Muthiah Alagappa, Paul M. Evans, Juichi Inada,Vladimir Ivanov,Satu P. Limaye, Scott Snyder and Tetsujiro Suzuki, Abe fellows; Nobuyasu Abeand Kazuya Ogawa, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan;Alan Wong, US Embassy,Japan; Gill Bates, Brookings Institution; Hajime Izumi, Shizuoka University; EtelSolingen, University of California, Irvine; Paul Stares, Japan Center forInternational Exchange; and Seiichiro Takagi, Saitama University. Staff: FrankBaldwin and Takuya Toda.

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International Scholarly Collaboration

The International Working Group on InternationalScholarly Collaboration held its second planning meetingat the SSRC on April 23-24, 1999. The project seeks toinvestigate the processes of forming international researchcollaborations in the social sciences. Several guests wereinvited to speak to the group about their experience withinstitutional collaborations. They included PatriciaRosenfield of the Carnegie Corporation, Sara Seims ofthe Rockefeller Foundation and Steven Wheatley of theAmerican Council of Learned Societies. The presenta-tions helped the group identify certain key features of theprocess of collaboration such as goal formation, agendasetting and the importance of initiators, personnel, institu-tional structures and funding. In addition, the group real-ized the need to expand the scope of international collab-oration to observe also the effects on capacity buildingand retention, to consider the processes involved in thecollaborative creation of a new field or discipline and toidentify the opportunity costs of collaboration. Alongwith a brief examination of the quantitative data on inter-national research collaboration, the working group intendsto develop four separate case studies that will provide thebasis for a lengthier joint report to be issued next year.

Participants: Paul Drake, University of California, San Diego; David Ludden,University of Pennsylvania; Georges Nzongola, Howard University; Sujata Patel;University of Pune. Staff: Itty Abraham,Tina Harris

Working Group on Cuba

The ACLS/SSRC Working Group on Cuba held the firstin a series of three workshops on international cooperationand support for scholarly research on June 7-11, 1999, inHavana, Cuba. Conducted in close collaboration withCuba’s Academy of Sciences, the workshops seek to famil-iarize the Cuban academic community with the mecha-nisms through which international agencies identify prior-ities, solicit proposals and evaluate projects for support.This initiative is a response by the Working Group to theexpressed need of Cuban researchers to become acquaint-ed with the workings of international funding institutionsthat typically provide support on a project-specific basis.

Fifteen Cuban researchers attended sessions led byexperts from throughout the Americas. This first work-shop took an analytical, theoretical and historicalapproach to the topic, with lectures addressing the evolu-tion of US foundations, the history of UN agencies andeducational aid programs and the development and stateof international cooperation in Latin America.

A second seminar, held in October 1999, continuedthese themes and addressed in greater detail the nuts-and-bolts of proposal writing.

Presenters: Marie-Odette Colin (Universidad de las Américas, Mexico City);Scott Halstead (Johns Hopkins University); Stanley N. Katz (Woodrow WilsonSchool for Public Policy and International Affairs, Princeton University); MarciaRivera (United Nations Development Program, Honduras).

Participants: Orlando Brito (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, DirecciónAmérica del Norte, Havana); Fortunata Alba Camejo (Instituto SuperiorPolitécnico José Antonio Echevarría, Havana); Marianela Constanten (Universidadde Santiago de Cuba, Santiago); Maira Fernández (Instituto de Ecología ySistemática, Havana); Mariela Couzo (Ministerio de Educación, Havana); DaisyFonseca (Centro de Información, Gestión y Educación Ambiental, Havana); EnnaMaritza Hernandez (Universidad de Pinar del Rio, Viñales); Miguel Machín(Agencia de Ciencia y Technología, Dirección de Colaboración Internacional,Havana); Maira Mena (Agencia de Información, Havana); Antonio Pozas(Universidad de la Habana, Havana); Rubén Ramos (Ministerio para la InversiónEconómica y Cooperación Extranjera, Dirección Países Desarollados, Havana);Maria Elena Soler (Universidad de la Habana, Havana); Maria Isabel Torna(Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología, Havana); Rosa María Valcarce (InstitutoSuperior Politécnico José Antonio Echevarría, Havana); Orestes Valdés (Ministeriode Educación, Havana).

Academy of Sciences: Sergio Jorge Pastrana (Academia de Ciencias de Cuba,Havana).

Staff: Rachel Price.

International Predissertation Fellowship ProgramResearch Training Workshops

Last spring, the International Predissertation FellowshipProgram (IPFP) held workshops in Egypt and Bangladesh aspart of its continuing series on “Conducting Social ScienceResearch in the Developing World.” These workshops aredesigned to bring a small, multidisciplinary group of IPFPfellows together with graduate students in the developingworld to engage in critical discussions about the design ofsocial science research and to establish contacts with localscholars.

Students spend most of the four- or five-day workshopsin discussions of the perceived strengths and weaknesses ofeach others’ prelimi-nary plans for research.Topics vary, but the dis-cussions converge onthe adequacy of meth-odologies in addressinga given theoretical issue;adequacy of attentionto issues of context-sensitivity; problems ofdata collection, analysis and interpretation. Typicallyincluded on workshop agendas are one-on-one meetings

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between each of the students and a local scholar with sim-ilar research interests and visits to local research institutesand universities.

Cairo, Egypt (February 27- March 3, 1999)

This workshop was held in cooperation with Center forthe Study of Developing Countries at Cairo University.Professor Mustapha K. Al-Sayyid of Cairo University andProfessor Soraya Al-Torki of the American University inCairo were co-moderators. The four IPFP fellows whoparticipated in the workshop were residing in Morocco,Turkey and Egypt with the support of the IPFP at the timeof the workshop; the five local participants were all affiliat-ed with Cairo University.Together they considered topicssuch as Islamist discourse and the modern Arab state, thesocial history of labor in the Suez Canal Zone and identityand citizenships in a postcolonial context. Participants alsovisited the Al-Ahram Center for Political and StrategicStudies, met with the Steering Committee of the Egypt2020 research project and enjoyed a cruise on the Nile.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, (April 18-22, 1999)

This workshop was held in cooperation with theCentre for Social Studies at Dhaka University and co-moderated by Dr. H.K. Shah of the Department ofAnthropology at Dhaka University and Dr. KhaledaNazneen of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) inDhaka. Dhaka University students met with IPFP fellowspursuing their training programs in Baltistan, India, Nepal,Thailand and Uzbekistan and discussed topics such aschanging labor relations in rural Bangladesh, urban-basedreligious movements in Thailand and community forestrydevelopment and environmental education in Nepal. Theworkshop agenda also included a visit to several rural vil-lages currently receiving micro-credit grants and human-rights training from the Bangladesh Rural AdvancementCommittee (BRAC), and a meeting with scholars fromvarious departments at Dhaka University.

Cross-Regional Research Networks in Africa

On April 9-10, 1999, the Africa Program held a workshopon “Cross-Regional Research Networks in Africa:Towarda Strategic Framework” at the United Nations EconomicCommission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa,Ethiopia. Workshop participants included African andNorth American researchers, network managers and poli-cymakers from a variety of disciplines and institutions.

The workshop, funded by the Rockefeller Foundationand the International Development Research Center, wasorganized to follow up issues raised at a conference onCross-Regional Research Networks in Africa held in July1997. That conference had a strong focus on donor sup-port and donor-network relations, and included mostlywell-funded networks seen as relatively successful. TheAddis workshop brought together representatives of abroader range of research networks for mutual learningand building from particular experiences in order to comeup with strategies in a range of areas: capacity building,professionalization, multidisciplinary research, leadershipand governance and donor relations.

Several participants sought to put the idea of the net-working of researchers in an historical perspective, i.e. thatsuch ways of organizing the African research communitypredated the self-conscious use of the term “networks.”The author of a background paper for the workshopemphasized that the term network itself is a broad rubricunder which many types of organizations can fall: profes-sional associations that network to strengthen disciplines,networks formed to provide space for multidisciplinaryand often collaborative research, networks of institutions(and not simply individuals). Most research networks inAfrica are devoted to capacity building, the production ofnew knowledge and policy engagement, but they priori-tize these goals differently.

Many participants saw the value of mobilizing researchnetworks not only in the products created (publications,etc.) but also in the very process of networking itself,which was seen as a central incentive that bringsresearchers to networks in the first place. While the typesof experiences represented at the workshop wereextremely varied, there were several areas around whichcommon purposes emerged: a commitment to identifythe keys to network success, an understanding that net-works must complement institutions such as universities, asense that research results should be relevant and availableto a range of constituencies and the idea that mutuallearning across networks at meetings such as this was use-ful. Certain questions were seen as needing further atten-tion: how to nurture and provide incentives for networkleadership; what is the current and potential role of dias-poric African researchers; how can the private sector beengaged as supporters, partners and audiences for researchnetworks; and how can donor funding be better calibrated

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to the needs of researchers? One participant asked,“Why do we get the kind of money we get?” and sever-al others felt that the case must be made for more corefunding of network activities.

It was also suggested that a handbook on networks,which would include guidelines for good networkpractice, could be produced. Current and prospectivenetwork managers, as well as donors, would be its prin-cipal audience. The possibility of producing a hand-book will be explored after the next workshop is heldin early 2000. This workshop will focus explicitly onthe relationship between networks and the institutionsat which most researchers are based (including universi-ties, independent centers, government ministries andnongovernmental organizations).

Participants: A.G.M.Ahmed (Organization for Social Science Research inEastern and Southern Africa, OSSREA), George Alibaruho (UNECA), K.Y.Amoako (UNECA), Emmanuel Anyidoho (Policy Analysis Support Unit[PASU] of the Organization of African Unity),Asmelash Beyene (OSSREA),Michael Chege (University of Florida), Philip English (World Bank), JeffreyFine (Jeffrey Fine Consulting), Nancy J. Hafkin (UNECA), Anthony Ikpi(African Rural Social Sciences Research Networks, ARSSRN), DeborahKasente (Gender and Economic Reform in Africa, GERA), EleneMakonnen (UNECA), Elzbieta Matynia (New School for Social Research),Paul Nkwi (Pan-African Association of Anthropologists, PAAA), HeinzRuther (University of Cape Town), Dieynaba Tandian (Secretariat for Institu-tional Support for Economic Research in Africa, SISERA), Shu Shu Tekle-Haimanot (UNECA), Jean K.Thisen (UNECA), Judy W.Wakhungu (AfricanTechnology Policy Studies Network, ATPS), Martin West (UniversityScience, Humanities, and Engineering Partnerships in Africa, USHEPiA),Godfrey Woelk (Social Science and Medicine Africa Network, SOMA-Net).Staff: Ron Kassimir,Amini Kajunju.

Vietnamese Social Scientists Visit Council

On March 29, 1999, a delegation of senior Vietnamesesocial scientists paid a visit to the SSRC. Most of themwere affiliated with the National Center for SocialSciences and Humanities of Vietnam (NCSSH) inHanoi, a government-affiliated research institution thatprovides scientific information for the policy process.The goal of their American sojourn, organized by theAmerican Council of Learned Societies and supportedby the Ford Foundation, was to explore research trendsand methodologies in the social sciences and humanitiesin the United States. The visit to the Council was aneffort to increase the amount of collaboration betweenthe two organizations, which have worked togethersince 1988.

The NCSSH delegation heard Executive ProgramDirector Mary Byrne McDonnell describe the fundingof social science in the United States, the organizationsand institutions involved in the production of US socialscience research and the history and activities of theSSRC itself. Program Directors Itty Abraham and EricHershberg discussed the Council’s international pro-gram. The visitors then reported on some of the

research projects currently underway at NCSSH. A lunchwith the full staff followed.

The delegation included Nguyen Duy Quy, president, NCSSH; Nguyen DuyThong, director, Department of International Cooperation, NCSSH; Trinh DuyLuan, director, Institute of Sociology, NCSSH; Khong Dien, director, Institute ofEthnology, NCSSH; Ha Minh Duc, director, Institute of Vietnamese Literature,NCSSH; and Nguyen The Nghia, director, Institute of Social Sciences, Ho ChiMinh City.

Sexuality Research Fellowship Program Fellows’Conference

The Sexuality Research Fellowship Program (SRFP) held its1999 fellows’ conference on September 23-26, 1999 at theKinsey Institute, Indiana University. The conference wasattended by all 1999 SRFP fellows, selected 1998 and 1997fellows, members of the SRFP selection committee, SRFPstaff and guest speakers. The conference consisted of formalpresentations on pertinent topics such as policy issues forsexuality research, researcher identity and research dissemi-nation for diverse constituencies. Over the course of thethree days, the fellows participated in large and small groupdiscussions and one-on-one “conversations”with each other.During one lunchtime session, the former fellows in atten-dance provided recommendations and other useful informa-tion for those beginning a fellowship tenure.

John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute and theco-host for the conference, provided an update on ongoingresearch activities of the Institute; and the Institute’s staff ledan extensive tour of the collection, which allowed for anappreciation of the historical significance of the Institute andfor archival techniques of data-collection. In bringingtogether current and former fellows, invited guest speakersand members of the SRFP Selection Committee, the con-ference provided an important opportunity for the fellowsto meet and form productive alliances, discuss their work inprogress and gain a greater understanding of significantresearch issues.

International Peace and Security Fellows’Conference and Summer Institute

On August 19-23, 1999, the Program on International Peaceand Security sponsored its 13th annual SSRC-MacArthurFoundation Fellows’ Conference at the India Habitat Centrein New Delhi, India. It featured plenary presentations high-lighting a number of issues important to India and the regionincluding nuclear policy and understandings in India; biodi-versity, food security and environmental resources; partition;and conflict, ethnicity and diversity. Fellows gave seminarpresentations about their own research and training activitiesand participated in a program-sponsored workshop panel onethics and methods of research as well as a roundtable lunch-eon discussion on gender, identity and security. More than40 people attended the conference, including 1997 and 1998

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SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipients, localscholars and activists, members of the Program onInternational Peace and Security steering committee,MacArthur Foundation officers and SSRC staff.

The Program also sponsored a Summer Training In-stitute on Security Issues from August 26-29, 1999 inHanoi,Vietnam. This institute was co-organized with theInstitute for International Relations in Hanoi and RamsesAmer from the Department of Peace and ConflictResearch of Uppsala University, Sweden. The Instituteaimed to explore ways in which collaboration acrossnational borders could enhance the knowledge and skills ofthe participants, contribute to the exchange of perspectiveson security in the region across a wide set of relevant issuesand forge longer-term networks for future collaborationand exchange.

Speakers and panelists at the SSRC-MacArthur Fellows Conference: SurendraGadekar,Anumuki; Praful Bidwai, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library; UdayBhaskar, Institute for Defense and Strategic Analysis; Kanti Bajpai, JawaharlalNehru University;Yogendra Yadav, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies;Jayadeva Uyangoda, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka; E. Sridharan, Universityof Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India; R.V. Arunadha,Environmental Action Group; Afsar Jafri, Research Foundation for Science,Technology and Ecology; Utkarsh Ghate, Centre for Ecological Sciences of theIndian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Sunil Kumar, Delhi University; GyanPandy, Johns Hopkins University; Sandaran Krishna, University of Hawaii; MukalKesavan, Jamia Millia Islamica, New Delhi; Urvash Batalia, Kali for Women; SmituKothari, Lokayan (NGO). Staff: Craig Calhoun, Robert Latham and JessicaOlsen.

Participants in the Summer Training Institute: Bui Thanh Son, Do Van Bach,Ha Hong Hai, Hoang Anh Tuan, Huynh Minh Chinh, Le Linh Lan, Ngo DuyNgo, Nguyen Dinh Luan, Nguyen Phuong Binh, Pham Cao Phong -- Institutefor International Relations, Hanoi; Fiona Adamson, Kanchan Chandra, KathyMcAfee, Srirupa Roy, Etel Solingen; SSRC-MacArthur Fellows; Renee deNevers, Jim Furman; MacArthur Foundation; Yuen Foong Khong, NanyangTechnological University, Singapore; Steve Smith, University of Aberystwyth,Wales; Ramses Amer, Uppsala University, Sweden; Le The My, Ministry ofDefense; Luu Duc Hai, University of Natural Science; Nguyen Duy Thieu,Southeast Asia Institute; Nguyen Ngov Sinh, Ministry of Science,Technology andEnvironment; Nguyen Xuan Thuy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Pham Ngoc Ho,University of Natural Science; Sharon Saddique, Sreekumar Saddique &Company; Carlyle Thayer; Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies; Ton SihnThanh, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Robert Latham, SSRC.

German-American Young Scholars SummerInstitutes

Last summer four German-American Young ScholarsSummer Institutes took place at universities in Germanyand the United States. Since 1994, 20 outstanding USand German young scholars have been chosen each yearto participate in these two-summer-long seminars oninterdisciplinary social science themes. The 14-day insti-tutes, held one year at a US and the next at a Germanuniversity (or vice versa), allow fellows to explore disci-plinary and national aspects of the chosen theme.Fellows work closely with each other and with seniorscholars, the institute convenors, to prepare internationalcollaborative research projects. The German-AmericanYoung Scholars Summer Institute program has sponsored12 institutes and 240 young scholars to date. The pro-gram is funded by the German-American AcademicCouncil and coordinated by the Wissenschaftskolleg zuBerlin and the SSRC.

Last summer, the second sessions of the two summerinstitutes that began in 1998 convened at StanfordUniversity and the University of Bielefeld. The secondsession of the ninth GAAC institute on “Institutions andEconomic Performance in Advanced Economies Since1945” met at the National Bureau of EconomicResearch and the Center for Advanced Study in theBehavioral Sciences at Stanford University on July 20-31, 1999. Peter Lange, provost of Duke University, DavidSoskice of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, GianniToniolo of the University of Rome and Lars-KendrickRoller of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin served as con-venors. The seminar was organized around the presenta-tion of fellows’ collaborative research papers.Topics cov-ered included the role of the European Central Bank infiscal policy, economic growth in advanced economies,technology and the economy and the economics of thepublic sector and the welfare state. Fellows will revisetheir papers for a volume to be published by theWissenschaftzentrum Berlin in early 2000.

The second session of the 10th German-AmericanYoung Scholars Summer Institute on “The Evolution of

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Research on the Impact of the Arts on Peopleand Communities

The Social Science Research Council’s recently-estab-lished Program on the Arts (see p.13 for a description ofthe program and list of committee members) held its firstresearch workshop on October 3-4, 1999, at the Counciloffices in New York. Members of the committee and sev-eral guests heard presentations on research on arts educa-tion (Bennett Reimer, Northwestern University andEllen Winner, Boston College and Harvard University);community arts (Brenda Jo Bright, University of Mass-achusetts and Mark Stern, University of Pennsylvania);and the arts and social conflict (Paul DiMaggio, Prince-ton University). The speakers also participated in a paneldiscussion moderated by Carol Becker of the School ofthe Art Institute of Chicago.

Serials

ABE NEWS, vol. 8, Spring 1998. Produced by the AbeFellowship Program Tokyo office.

SSRC-MACARTHUR FOUNDATION PROGRAM ON

INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY NEWSLETTER,vol. 12, May 1999. “NGOs in the Field of InternationalPeace and Security: Problems and Perspectives.” Edited byBetts Fetherston.

Miscellaneous

A GUIDE TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH

COUNCIL ARCHIVES AT THE ROCKEFELLER ARCHIVE

CENTER, compiled by Kenneth W. Rose. Sleepy Hollow,NY: Rockefeller Archive Center, 1999.

This introductory guide to the more than 440 cubicfeet of Council records at the Rockefeller Archive Centeris intended to help researchers identify particular parts ofthe collection that may be relevant to their projects.Prepared with funds donated by the Ford Foundation, theguide includes “An Introduction to the Social ScienceResearch Council” by Council staff member Kenton W.Worcester. [His historical essay, “The Social ScienceResearch Council: Plus Ça Change,” appeared in Itemsvol. 52, no. 4.]

The guide, which will be distributed to seriousresearchers looking at Council holdings at RAC, willsoon be available on the Center’s website,www.Rockefeller.edu/archive.ctr.

Intelligence: The Comparative Analysis of Cognition”took place on July 10-22, 1999, at the University ofBielefeld, Germany. Institute convenors were HolkCruse, University of Bielefeld, and Terrence Deacon,Boston University. This session centered on fellows’ proj-ects and covered topics such as language evolution,bounded rationality, emotions and memory.

Additionally this summer, two institutes were held atMassachusetts Institute of Technology and the Universityof Erfurt. The 11th German-American Young ScholarsSummer Institute on the topic “The Unification ofGermany––Problems of Transition in ComparativePerspective” took place from July 25 to August 6, 1999, atthe University of Erfurt in Germany. The institute con-venors were Wolfgang Schluchter, University of Erfurt,and Peter Quint, University of Maryland Law School.The institute dealt with numerous topics relating toGerman unification, including constitutional challenges,political culture, economic transition and the EuropeanUnion, and Eastern Europe. Speakers invited to discusstopics relating to fellows’ research included Karl-UlrichMayer, Max Kaase and Konrad Weiss.The second sessionof this institute will be held at the University of Marylandin summer 2000.

The 12th German-American Young Scholars SummerInstitute on the topic “The Economics and Politics ofLabor in Advanced Societies” took place on August 23-September 3, 1999, at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology in Cambridge. The institute convenors wereMartin Rein, MIT, and Claus Offe, Humboldt UniversityBerlin. Session topics included consumption, collectivebargaining, work-to-welfare programs and the women’slabor market. Guest speakers included David Ellwood,Juliet Schor and Tom Kochan. The second session of thisinstitute will take place at Humboldt University Berlin insummer 2000.

Staff: Christian Fuersich and Kelly Kleinhandler

Recent Council Publications

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ENGAGING COUNTRIES: STRENGTHENING COMP-LIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL

ACCORDS, edited by Edith Brown Weiss and HaroldK. Jacobson. Sponsored by the Research Consortium onCompliance with International Environmental Accords ofthe Committee on Research on Global EnvironmentalChange (1989-1998). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998. 615 pp.

Treaties and other international accords are a primarymeans of dealing with environmental problems involving twoor more countries,but we know very lit-tle about what happens after statesbecome parties to such accords.The cul-mination of a massive theoretically-basedempirical research project, this bookshows how and why implementationand compliance vary among countriesand treaties and change over time. It alsoanalyzes the factors that affect the extent of compliance withinternational accordsand offers prescriptions for strengthening it.

The book focuses on compliance in eight countries(Brazil, Cameroon, China, Hungary India, Japan, the RussianFederation and the Unites States) and the European Union,and on five major accords. An article by Weiss and Jacobsonsummarizing the book’s principal findings appeared in theJuly/August 1999 issue of Environment.

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CIUDADANÍA POLÍTICA Y FORMACÍON DE LAS

NACIONES: PERSPECTIVAS HISTÓRICAS DE

AMÉRICA LATINA [POLITICAL CITIZENSHIP

AND THE FORMATION OF NATIONHOOD: HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES ON LATIN AMERICA], edited by HildaSabato. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin AmericanStudies (1959-96). Mexico City: Fideicomiso Historia de lasAméricas/Fondo de Cultura Economica/Colegio deMexico, 1999. 449 pp.

This volume results from a 1995 conference co-sponsoredby the Joint Committee on LatinAmerican Studies and the Instituto deEstudios Políticos y Relaciones Inter-nacionales (IEPRI) of the UniversidadNacional de Colombia in Bogota.These 16 original essays,written byleading historians of Latin Americafrom throughout the region as well asfrom Europe and the US, are revised versions of papers ofpapers delivered there.

The essays analyze how Latin American societies of thelate 19th and early 20th centuries confronted emergingdemands for political citizenship. The volume seeks to illu-minate the relationship between the emergence of new pat-terns of civic and associational life, trends in public opinionand political attitudes and the configuration of what came tobe known as the public sphere. In so doing, it sheds light ona crucial period of Latin American history while informingcurrent debates about democratization and citizenship.

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LA GUERRA DE 1898 [THE WAR OF 1898], edit-ed by Manuel Lopez Diaz. Sponsored by theACLS/SSRC Working Group on Cuba. San Jose:

Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO)-Costa Rica, 1999. 218 pp.

This volume brings together original essays by 11 Cubanhistorians whose research focuses on the War of 1898 andthe characteristics of Cuban societyduring that pivotal period of theisland’s history. It was sponsored by theACLS/SSRC Working Group onCuba as one of several initiativesdesigned to commemorate the war’scentennial anniversary. The book’spublication in Costa Rica and its cir-culation throughout the Americas as well as in Cuba reflectsthe Working Group’s desire to facilitate scholarly interactionbetween Cuban historians and their counterparts elsewhere.The quality and sophistication of this work by members ofan emerging generation of historians in Cuba testifies to thepotential utility of such dialogue.

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THE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRA-TION: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, edited byCharles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz and Josh

DeWind. Sponsored by the Program on InternationalMigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. 600 pp.

This book is the long-awaited product of the SSRCInternational Migration Program committee’s efforts to pro-duce a volume that both reflects and contributes to theemerging coherence of US immigration studies as a subfieldwithin the social sciences. Based on an interdisciplinary con-ference held on Sanibel Island, Florida, in 1996, the volumeis the first attempt to develop an overview of theoreticalunderstandings of the field’s fundamental themes: the ori-gins, processes and outcomes of immigration to the UnitedStates.

To establish broad and clear understandings of thesethemes and theories, the volume’s many authors provideassessments, reconceptualizations and syntheses of perspec-tives from across the social science disciplines. But, the edi-tors argue, field building results not only from scholars’reaching for broad theoretical consensus but also from theirengagement with one another in clarifying distinctive dis-ciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Taking bothapproaches, the volume’s 24 essays are divided into 3 partsfocused on international migration theory and research,immigrant adaptation to American society and responses ofthe native-born Americans to immigration.The authors, allprominent researchers in the field, are drawn from sociolo-gy, anthropology, history, political science, demography,economics and geography.With its shared topical foci anddiversity of perspectives, the book provides a model thatcould be used in the development of other interdisciplinaryfields.

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With funding from The PewCharitable Trusts, the SocialScience Research Council

SSRC) announces a competition for fellow-hips to support predoctoral and postdoctoralesearch on the relationship between religionnd the incorporation of immigrants into

American society.*

GOALS

Contemporary immigration is contribut-ing to the religious diversity of the

United States. Although the interconnectionsbetween religion and immigration have been aocus of past scholarship, more recent researchnd writing have given such issues relativelyittle systematic attention.The SSRC seeks totimulate new interest and foster research andnalysis that will illuminate how the origins,

processes and outcomes of immigration to theUnited States both influence and are affectedby immigrant and native-born religiousbeliefs, practices, identities, groups and institu-ions. The SSRC encourages scholars of

diverse disciplinary training to adopt innova-ive perspectives and develop new understand-ngs of religion as it affects immigrants’ partic-pation in American civic life and their rela-ions with native-born Americans.

POSSIBLE RESEARCH TOPICS

While the SSRC expects that in prepar-ing research proposals applicants will

determine their own topics, analytical per-pectives and methodologies, the following

questions illustrate the wide variety andbreadth of issues suitable for funding:

1How do immigrant and American religiousidentities, beliefs, practices and organizations

hape––at individual, communal and nationalevels––processes of emigration from the homeountry and subsequent settlement in the UnitedStates?

What impact do the religions of immigrantshave on their incorporation into ethnic and non-

ethnic community life? And how important is religionin immigrants’ adjustments in relation to or relative tofamily, gender, generational, racial or ethnic issues?

3How are immigrants’ economic, political andsocio-cultural relations with native-born Ameri-

cans affected by immigrant and American religiousidentities, orientations and institutions?

4How do differences and similarities––actual orperceived–––between the religious identities

and practices of immigrants and native-bornAmericans stimulate or ameliorate conflicts andfoster divisions or alliances?

5How do American civic culture, values and lawsreflect, accommodate or shape the differences and

similarities in the religious lives of immigrants andnative-born Americans?

Priority in the awarding of fellowships will begiven to those proposals that seem most likelyto provide theoretical explanations of signifi-cant intersections between religion and immi-gration in American life. While the programemphasizes contemporary immigration to theUnited States, applicants are also encouraged toadopt historical and/or transnational perspec-tives. Comparative international research mustexplicitly illuminate the American experience.

Applicants who receive fellowships will beinvited to meet and compare perspectivesprior to undertaking the SSRC-fundedresearch and to report their findings at a conference that will be organized once their research is completed.

PREDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS ANDELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Fellowships of $15,000 ($12,000 stipend;$3,000 research expenses) will be available

for 12 months of full-time research that mustbegin between June 1 and August 30, 2000.Applicants may be US citizens, permanent res-idents or international students who arematriculated in a US university. Applicants

must have approval for their proposed researchfrom their dissertation committees and musthave completed all course and examinationrequirements for a Ph.D. prior to June 1,2000. All applicants are encouraged to seeksupplemental funds from other sourcesthough the SSRC reserves the right to reduceits awards should the funds raised exceed theproject’s necessary total budget.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPSAND ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Fellowships of $20,000 (to be budgeted forsalary and/or research expenses by the

applicants) will be available to support a min-imum of six months of full-time research tobe undertaken between June 1, 2000 andAugust 31, 2001. Applicants must be US cit-izens, permanent residents or internationalscholars who will be affiliated with a US aca-demic or research institution during the fel-lowship period. No awards will be made toapplicants who do not have the Ph.D. by June1, 2000. All applicants are encouraged to seeksupplemental funds from other sourcesthough the SSRC reserves the right to reducea fellowship award should the funds raisedexceed the project’s necessary total budget.

APPLICATION DEADLINE

January 12, 2000

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION& APPLICATION MATERIALSPLEASE CONTACT

Religion and Immigration FellowshipsSocial Science Research Council

Seventh AvenueNew York, NY USA

telephone fax

religion@ssrc.org e-mailwww.ssrc.org web

The SSRC does not discriminate on the basis of age,color, creed, disability, gender, marital status, national ori-gin, race or sexual orientation.

The SSRC International Migration Program offersdditional predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships toupport research on immigration to the United Stateshat does not focus on religious topics. For furthernformation or application forms contact the Interna-onal Migration Program at the SSRC; e-mail shoulde addressed to: migration@ssrc.org. Applicants maypply to only one of these fellowship competitions.

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2000 - 2001 SSRC Research Fellowships on Religion and Immigration

DIRECTORSARJUN APPADURAI

University of ChicagoPAUL B. BALTES

Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin(Chair)

IRIS B. BERGER

State University of New York, Albany (Secretary)NANCY BIRDSALL

Carnergie Endowment for International PeaceCRAIG CALHOUN

Social Science Research CouncilALBERT FISHLOW

Violy, Byorum and Partners HoldingsSUSAN FISKE

University of MassachusettsELIZABETH JELIN

University of Buenos AiresSHIRLEY LINDENBAUM

Graduate Center, City University of New YorkCORA B. MARRETT

University of MassachusettsBURTON H. SINGER

Princeton UniversityNEIL SMELSER

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences SIDNEY VERBA

Harvard UniversityKENNETH W. WACHTER

University of California, BerkeleyMICHELLE J. WHITE

University of Michigan (Treasurer)

OFFICERS CRAIG CALHOUN, President

MARY BYRNE MCDONNELL, Executive DirectorKRISTINE DAHLBERG, Chief Financial Officer

ELSA DIXLER, Editor

STAFFITTY ABRAHAM

JOHN AMBLER

FRANK BALDWIN (TOKYO)BEVERLEE BRUCE

JOSH DEWIND

DIANE DI MAURO

AMY FROST

DOUG GUTHRIE

ERIC HERSHBERG

RONALD KASSIMIR

LEILA KAZEMI

FRANK KESSEL

ROBERT LATHAM

YAW NYARKO

ELLEN PERECMAN

PAUL PRICE

SHERI H. RANIS

SETENEY SHAMI

PETER SZANTON

JENNIFER WINTHER

KENTON W. WORCESTER

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ouncil was incorporated in the State of Illinois,D

ecember 27,1924,for the purpose of advancing research in the social sciences.

Nongovernm

ental and interdisciplinary in nature,the Council advances the quality and usefulness of research

in the social sciences.T

he activities of the Council are supported prim

arily by grants from private foundations and governm

ent agencies.