Theda Skocpol
Theda Skocpol (born May 4, 1947 in Detroit , Michigan) is an American sociologist and political scientist, active as a professor at Harvard University (2006 dean of the " Graduate School of Arts and Sciences "). The advocate of historical-institutional and comparative research approaches, including research on revolution , has written many specialist and popular scientific works.
Career
Skocpol received her bachelor's degree from Michigan State University in 1969 . Then she studied a. a. at Barrington Moore Jr. at Harvard, where she received her doctorate in 1976. In 1979 she published her book " States and Social Revolutions ", a comparative analysis of political revolutions in Russia, France and China. Later she also published works on research methods and theories, especially her work “ Bringing the State Back In ”, which was groundbreaking for the recent social science interest in the state as an actor in political and social change. After a few arguments, she was the first woman to take a sociology chair at Harvard in 1985.
She was awarded the 1993 Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize of the Phi Beta Kappa Society for her historical non-fiction book Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States . In 1994 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 2006 to the American Philosophical Society and in 2008 to the National Academy of Sciences . She has honorary degrees from Amherst College , Michigan State University, and Northwestern University .
Fields of work
Lately Skocpol has been focusing on topics related to the United States as a subject of research. Her work “ Soldiers and Mothers ”, an analysis of the American welfare state , which was created in this context , received an award. Skocpol devoted himself to the topic of civil society engagement and published here pioneering work on the development of associations and unions in the USA over the last 200 years. In her 2003 book " Diminished Democracy ", Skocpol searches for explanations for the decline in civic engagement in the US over the past few decades. She also leads to lively controversy with other researchers such as Robert D. Putnam on this question . Skocpol emphasizes here the institutional change rather than the creative force of civil society life.
Her research approaches are partially assigned to the structuralist school. For example, she wants to show how the emergence of social revolts can be explained with recourse to the specific structures of agricultural societies and their states. However, it also takes into account international influences on the state and society of the respective nations. Their methodology differs significantly from works that tend to examine the role of revolutionary population groups, psychological factors or the centrality of so-called "revolutionary consciousness" in the emergence of revolutionary processes.
literature
- Willfried Spohn : New Historical Sociology: Charles Tilly , Theda Skocpol, Michael Mann . In: Dirk Kaesler (ed.): Current theories of sociology. From Shmuel N. Eisenstadt to postmodernism (= Beck's series 1648). Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52822-8 , pp. 196-230.
- Ann Shola Oloff; Theda Skocpol: Why not equal protection - explaining the politics of public social spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880s-1920 [1]
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Member History: Theda Skocpol. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 27, 2018 (with biographical notes).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Skocpol, Theda |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American sociologist and political scientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 4, 1947 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Detroit |