"The Foundations of Finance: Charisma, Aura, and Uncertainty," Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma "The Futures of Finance Conference," Arjun Appadurai "The Emerging Context for Social Science Practice," Prabhat Patnaik "What Has the Occupy Movement Done for Scholars?" Robert Meister "Do We Have the Nerve to Know Finance as Class War?" An Exchange with Robert Meister and Timothy Mitchell (Edited by Peter Dimock) "Reclaiming the Public: Social Science and the University in an Age of Privatization," Craig Calhoun "Figure and Ground in Multiple Spheres of Exchange: How Do We Interpret Islamic Finance?" Bridget Kustin "The Present Gathering is Our Opportunity: Administered Derivatives," Randy Martin "Capturing Opportunity in the Futures of Finance," Robert Wosnitzer "Editor’s Note: What Publishing Model Do We Need for an Activist Knowledge of Finance?" Peter Dimock

The story of the rise of radicalism in the early nineteenth century has often been simplified into a fable about progressive social change. The diverse social movements of the era—religious, political, regional, national, antislavery, and protemperance—are presented as mere strands in a unified tapestry of labor and democratic mobilization. Taking aim at this flawed view of radicalism as simply the extreme end of a single dimension of progress, The Roots of Radicalism emphasizes the coexistence of different kinds of radicalism, their tensions, and their implications.

In his new book, Craig Calhoun reveals the importance of radicalism’s links to preindustrial culture and attachments to place and local communities, as well the ways in which journalists who had been pushed out of “respectable” politics connected to artisans and other workers. Calhoun shows how much public recognition mattered to radical movements and how religious, cultural, and directly political—as well as economic—concerns motivated people to join up. Reflecting two decades of research into social movement theory and the history of protest, The Roots of Radicalism offers compelling insights into the past that can tell us much about the present, from American right-wing populism to democratic upheavals in North Africa.

In 1950, only 22 percent of American adults were single. Today, more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million—roughly one out of every seven adults—live alone. People who live alone make up 28 percent of all U.S. households, which makes them more common than any other domestic unit, including the nuclear family. In GOING SOLO, renowned sociologist and author Eric Klinenberg proves that these numbers are more than just a passing trend. They are, in fact, evidence of the biggest demographic shift since the Baby Boom: we are learning to go solo, and crafting new ways of living in the process.

Klinenberg explores the dramatic rise of solo living, and examines the seismic impact it’s having on our culture, business, and politics. Though conventional wisdom tells us that living by oneself leads to loneliness and isolation, Klinenberg shows that most solo dwellers are deeply engaged in social and civic life. In fact, compared with their married counterparts, they are more likely to eat out and exercise, go to art and music classes, attend public events and lectures, and volunteer. There’s even evidence that people who live alone enjoy better mental health than unmarried people who live with others and have more environmentally sustainable lifestyles than families, since they favor urban apartments over large suburban homes. Drawing on over three hundred in-depth interviews with men and women of all ages and every class, Klinenberg reaches a startling conclusion: in a world of ubiquitous media and hyperconnectivity, this way of life can help us discover ourselves and appreciate the pleasure of good company.

With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who go solo, Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of living alone is transforming the American experience. GOING SOLO is a powerful and necessary assessment of an unprecedented social change.

Across America police have been called to clear protestors from parks and university campuses. Ostensibly progressive cities like Portland and Oakland have been in the vanguard of evictions. From Harvard to Berkeley, university presidents have joined mayors in using police in riot gear to remove students and other protestors from campus lawns.

How do major US newsmagazines imagine emergencies? This essay explores widely circulated visual narratives that, in sum, are patterned in ways that express a vision of what constitutes, in particular, a humanitarian emergency. We have analyzed visual narratives of humanitarian emergencies from two major US newsmagazines—Time and Newsweek—from the years 2007 and 2008. Our analysis focuses on the photographs and the dominant text that accompanies them. Based on the data emerging from the interplay between image and text, we argue that the stories appearing in mainstream US newsmagazines work to inform, produce, and naturalize the very idea of emergency and the kinds of responses perceived as needed. More specific, we suggest that such representational practices contribute to and make possible the perception that individual ethical impulses by well intentioned Westerners on non-Western others are more effective than deliberative political action. Likewise, crises presented as humanitarian in scope satisfy the need to urgently respond to emergencies in the short-term, and eclipse long-term political solutions in the process.

The Possible Future Series includes three books co-edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian:

The Possible Futures Series Introduction.

Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown | Table of Contents
The Deepening Crisis: Governance Challenges and Neoliberalism | Table of Contents
Aftermath: A New Global Economic Order | Table of Contents

The series also includes:

Russia: The Power of Transformation, co-edited by Piotr Dutkiewicz and Dmitri Trenin

From the publisher: The Possible Futures series gathers together leading social scientists to address the significance of the global economic crisis in a series of short, accessible books. Each volume takes on the past, present, and future of this crisis suggesting that it has an informative history, that the consequences could be much more basic than the stock market declines, and that only fundamental changes -- not fiscal band-aids -- can head off future repetitions.

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Immanuel Wallerstein, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, James Kenneth Galbraith, Manuel Castells, Nancy Fraser, Rogers Brubaker, David Held, Mary Kaldor, Vadim Volkov, Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, and Fernando Coronil.

Excerpt: "Public social science depends on addressing public issues and informing public understanding. Simply reaching a broader public is only part of the story. Certainly a social science turned in on itself fails to achieve much public significance. But more important than the desire to promulgate what social scientists know is the effort to bring knowledge to bear on pressing public issues."

Blog posted on the SSRC website in "Essays and Statements."

The purpose of the Public Sphere Guide is to facilitate and advance the study of the transformations of the public sphere. It creates a map of this fragmented interdisciplinary field of study. The Guide was developed in partnership with the Social Science Research Council. The beta version is intended to expand incrementally over time. The guide is linked to and receives input from the online essay forum Transformations of the Public Sphere.

The Societas podcast is recorded by IPK Director and Social Science Research Council President Craig Calhoun at the SSRC.

Tribute to Charles Tilly. Hosted at the SSRC and part of a Tribute to Charles Tilly memorial series.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world. The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things. Richard Sennett is professor of sociology at New York University and at The London School of Economics. Before becoming a sociologist, he studied music professionally. He has received many awards and honors, most recently the 2006 Hegel Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences.

"Europe is an object of aspirations – and anxieties – on the European continent. It is as exciting and controversial in Britain. And it is also an object of global interest. At the moment, each of these is focused largely on the notion of a more cosmopolitan Europe. This idea of cosmopolitan Europe is developed in a range of academic analyses. But it is rooted in an amalgam of three different sets of intellectual and popular images. Europe has long been seen as sophisticated, worldly wise, the continent of independent cinema auteurs and profound philosophers, Gaulloises cigarettes, Italian suits, and German music. This continues. Cosmopolitanism is in considerable part a name for sophistication." Chapter 35 in Sage Handbook of European Studies

"Salman Rushdie (2000) writes that 'among the great struggles of man – good/evil, reason/unreason, etc. – there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away, the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey'. Cosmopolitanism is a central way in which the modern era has organised 'the fantasy of Away'. The term is operative in culture and commerce, ethics and politics. Whether as the fashionable man of the world or the responsible (and gender neutral) citizen of the world, the cosmopolitan inhabits the world." *This is the ASEN/Nations and Nationalism Ernest Gellner Nationalism Lecture, delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 16 April 2007. Vol. 14:3, 427-448.

Practicing Culture seeks to revitalize the field of cultural sociology with an emphasis not on abstract theoretical debates but on showing how to put theoretical sources to work in empirical research. Culture is not just products and representations but practices. It is made and remade in countless small ways and occasional bursts of innovation. It is something people do—and do in rich variety and distinctive contexts as engaging case studies from the book reveal. For example; * In Russia’s most Western city, Kaliningrad, residents dig for artifacts symbolizing a German past – even though their parents only migrated to what was once Konigsberg after WWII. * From Spain to Poland to Canada advertising firms are hired to make nations into "brands", a globally reproduced strategy for claiming to be distinctive in attractive and conventional ways. * In Buenos Aires, opera listeners stand in packed galleries, listening as passionately as singers perform, closing their eyes and claiming to be elevated and remade by the music. * In the U.S. fans of professional wrestling pride themselves on being smart enough to know how much is trickery and how the tricks work yet still believe in the contest. Practicing Culture will reshape and invigorate the sociology of culture not only through internal development but through enhanced connections to the interdisciplinary social theory and to related fields like the Sociology of Knowledge and Ethnography. It will prove an essential tool for students and researchers of Cultural Theory, Contemporary Social Theory and Cultural Sociology.

Vol. 21:2, 211-236. Reprinted in P. Ho and R. L. Edmonds, eds.: Embedded Environmentalism: Opportunities and Constraints of a Social Movement in China. London: Routledge, 2007.

"Imagining democracy requires thinking of "the people" as active and coherent and oneself as both a member and an agent. Liberalism informs the notion of individual agency but provides weak purchase at best on membership and on the collective cohesion and capacity of the demos. In the modern era, the discursive formation that has most influentially underwritten these dimensions of democracy is nationalism." Vol. 19:1, p. 151-173.

Craig Calhoun re-examines nationalism in light of post-1989 enthusiasm for globalization and the new anxieties of the twenty-first century. Nations Matter argues that pursuing a purely postnational politics is premature at best and possibly dangerous. Calhoun argues that, rather than wishing nationalism away, it is important to transform it. One key is to distinguish the ideology of nationalism as fixed and inherited identity from the development of public projects that continually remake the terms of national integration. Standard concepts like 'civic' vs. 'ethnic' nationalism can get in the way unless they are critically re-examined – as an important chapter in this book does.