AUGUST 2018 NEWSLETTER

Browse     Subscribe/Read Online    Events

CHANGING SOCIAL NORMS

"We persist in what we are doing because that is the safe or safer course of action." --Elke Weber

The initial impetus behind our organizing an issue on social norm change was our interest in the question of why some norms change relatively quickly, such as the shift from not wearing seatbelts to wearing them, or eve...

Our August 2018 newsletter features the Spring 2018 issue of  Social Research on "Changing Social Norms" and explores articles from past issues that also address this theme. In their article, "Rights, Norms, and Politics: The Case of German Citizenship Reform"  (Vol. 77, No. 1, Spring 2010),  James D. Ingram and Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos discuss how various international normative pressures influenc...

Our August 2018 newsletter features the Spring 2018 issue of  Social Research on "Changing Social Norms" and explores articles from past issues that also address this theme.  In these excerpts from the article "Fairness and Norms" (Vol. 73, No.  2, Summer 2006), Jon Elster uses the work of Ernst Fehr and his collaborators to theorize the concepts of social norms and moral norms, and their relationship...

Our August 2018 newsletter features the Spring 2018 issue of  Social Research on "Changing Social Norms" and explores articles from past issues that also address this theme.  In “The Seriously Erotic Politics of Feminist Laughter” (Vol. 79, No. 1, Spring 2012), Cynthia Willett, Julie Willett, and Yael D. Sherman, posit that humor can serve as a particularly effective means of changing social norms:

“Scholars have … no...

Our August 2018 newsletter features the Spring 2018 issue of Social Research on "Changing Social Norms" and explores articles from past issues that also address this theme. In “Expanding Military Intervention: Promise or Peril?” (Vol. 62, No. 1, Summer 1995), J. Bryan Hehir notes that

“[t]he erosion of the classical notion of state sovereignty has been a pervasive aspect of world politics” since the 1960s. "A combination of for...

Our August 2018 newsletter features the Spring 2018 issue of  Social Research on "Changing Social Norms" and explores articles from past issues that also address this theme.  In Elke Weber’s “Climate Change Demands Behavioral Change: What Are the Challenges” (Vol. 82, No. 3, Fall 2015)  she discusses the difficulties in fostering actions mandated by climate change and how they are impeded by norms described as "the s...

Chasing Democracy in an Age of Mistrust

In the Social Research issue on “Fraud,” political scientist E.E. Schattschneider is quoted by Andrew Gumbel as saying, “Democracy as we now understand it has been superimposed on an old governmental structure which was inhospitable to the idea.” His statement does not refer to democracy as a concept, but specifically to the strain of democracy that exists in America. In the article “Elec...

Staying Mindful during the Giving Season

The winter holidays account for one of the largest shopping seasons each year. Many people will—often unknowingly—purchase gifts made in countries where corporations do not follow regulations to protect their employees, which raises questions of human rights. During this season of giving, how can we bear in mind the people whose labor creates the gifts we give?

In her 2012 Social Research...

NEW FROM SOCIAL RESEARCH: “THE FUTURE OF SCHOLARLY KNOWLEDGE”

“Is scholarly knowledge good for the public?” This is the question with which guest coeditor Kenneth Prewitt, vice president for global affairs and Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, opens the fall issue of Social Research, “The Future of Scholarly Knowledge.” No longer confined to the realm of higher education, scholarly knowledge is now pr...

The Roots of Violence against the Rohingya

On August 23, just days before thousands of Rohingyas began fleeing their homes in Rakhine State, Aung San Suu Kyi’s recently appointed Rakhine Advisory Commission, established in 2016, submitted its final report. The engaging of an independent commission, tasked with recommending new ways to improve the lives of Rohingya Muslims, Myanmar’s most deeply persecuted minority group, seemed...