NYLON was created in 2001 by Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett of New York University. It began as a network of young scholars within the two institutions and collaboration between them. Today, NYLON has expanded beyond its original boundaries; it now includes members from Cambridge and Oxford in the U.K.; from Chicago and Los Angeles in the U.S.; and on the Continent from Paris, Budapest and Frankfurt. NYLON researchers share a broad interest in culture and qualitative research methods; more, with ways that social processes turn into concrete cultural forms through practical activity. We are thus exploring informal, improvised social practices, as well as the bones of institutions; again, we try to integrate cultural analysis with an understanding of politics and political economy.

NYLON is supported by New York University, London School of Economics, Cambridge University, Goldsmiths College-London and the Watermill Center for the Arts and Humanities.

activities
NYLON hosts weekly workshops in London and New York, in which members present everything from raw ethnographic data to draft journal articles to book proposals. The group also convenes annually for a conference that brings together members from across the global network. These joint conferences provide an intensive working environment in which participants are encouraged to engage collectively in the constructive critique of members' works in progress. Participants have consistently found it illuminating to discover the differences in style, assumptions, and intellectual sensibilities across multiple social science disciplines and national intellectual traditions - even where broad orientations are similar.

publications
Members publish individually and collectively in professional journals, as well as in the mainstream press and emerging media. Additionally, the first of the edited collections of NYLON members' research - Practicing Culture - was published in August 2007 as part of the Routledge series Taking Culture Seriously. The second collection in the series - Creating Authority - is forthcoming.

Our activities tend to emphasize the following key themes:

ethnography
NYLON emphasizes the importance of rich qualitative social research, both within the academy and beyond. Ethnography enables us to challenge both the handed-down concepts of orthodox social science and dominant public analyses of social and political trends.

narrative-based approaches to understanding social life
Only through understanding how individuals make sense of their own circumstances can social science restore dignity to subjects who are otherwise reduced to statistics. NYLON researchers treat interview material with the greatest attention to detail to highlight the processes through which individuals create meaning and structure their lives.

inter-disciplinarity
The NYLON network consists of sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and philosophers. The challenge of uniting critical thinking with empirical research is not confined to any single discipline, and is made easier when disciplinary divisions are interrogated.

theoretical literacy
NYLON researchers have a broad range of theoretical concerns, which are brought to bear on everyday topics. This enables researchers to refashion the tools and categories of social science, while addressing enduring philosophical questions of community, identity, technology, values and the public sphere.

engagement with matters of public concern
NYLON researchers are committed to the principle of "real time social science," providing intellectuals with channels for disseminating their work beyond the academy, and demonstrating both its efficacy and its value to professional communities and in public life.