Political and Historical Sociology

We are sicker when we live in stingier societies

March 2, 2017

People living in the United States today live lives that are sicker and end earlier than people living in other high-income countries.  The facts are described in two recent reports [https://www.nap.edu/catalog/13497/us-health-in-international-perspective-shorter-lives-poorer-health and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62369/] sponsored by the National Academy of Science. Jason Beckfield has joined sociologists, demographers, and epidemiologists in ongoing efforts to explain the growing US health disadvantage, and he recently published a new study in Social Science & Medicine that shows US life expectancy would be approximately 3-5 years longer if the US were not a social policy laggard.

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2017 Feb 27

Josh Pascewicz: Partisans and Partners: The Politics of the Post-Keynesian Society

4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

William James Hall 1550

Politics and Social Change Workshop/Transnational Studies Initiative Joint presentation by Josh Pascewicz, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Brown University.

 

Discussant:

Jocelyn Viterna, Faculty Associate. Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

 

Chairs:

Peggy Levitt, Associate. Chair; Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology,...

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Ya-Wen Lei

The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China

January 5, 2017

Conventional wisdom imagines political life in authoritarian contexts to be bleak and suffocating, and popular understandings of China are no exception. Nonetheless, since the mid-2000s, a nationwide contentious public sphere has developed in China—providing an unprecedented forum for Chinese citizens to influence the public agenda and demand government accountability.

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2016 Oct 31

Michael Kenned, Martha Tedeschi, Fred Wherry: The Politics of Culture and the Political Role of Cultural Institutions

4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

William James Hall 1550

Culture and Social Analysis Workshop (Co-sponsored with the Transnational Studies Initiative and Politics & Social Change Workshop) presentation by 

Speakers:

Fred Wherry, Department of Sociology, Yale University

Michael Kennedy, Department of Sociology, Brown University

Martha Tedeschi, Director of Harvard Art Museums

Chairs:

Peggy Levitt, Associate. Chair...

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2016 Sep 23
2016 Sep 12

Fangsheng Zhu: More Fair, More Contentious: Unintended Consequences of Formalization in China

4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

William James Hall 1550

"First Organizing and Planning Meeting for Transnational Studies Initiative (TSI) & Politics and Social Change (PSC) Seminar, 2016-17”

 Chairs: 

Peggy Levitt, Professor and Chair of Sociology, Wellesley College; Co-Director of TSI, Weatherhead Center, Harvard University.

 Jocelyn Viterna, Associate Professor of Sociology, Harvard University; Co-Director of TSI, Weatherhead Center, Harvard University.

 

The first organizing and planning meeting for people who might be interested in participating in a small, informal joint...

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SOC 3316 Politics and Social Change

Following a years-long hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Politics and Social Change Workshop (PSC) returns in a moment where the global interconnectedness of political actors and the importance of their political decisions have perhaps never been clearer.

This seminar explores the study of politics and society in transnational and comparative perspective. How do nationalist ideologies gain power in an interconnected society? Why do certain political narratives succeed in some countries while failing in others? How do transnational linkages between social movements shape...

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