Social Research: An International Quarterly

Our Summer 2025 issue “The Embattled University” is out, a little bit ahead of schedule! 🎉🎉 It is available to read on @ProjectMUSE 🔗 muse.jhu.edu/issue/54948 @JHUPress @NSSRNews

Sociologist Neil J. Smelser was born on this day in Kahoka, Missouri, in 1930. #botd He’s perhaps best known for his work applying sociological theory to social movements, economics, and collective behavior. He conceptualized the value-added theory, which explained that social…

For this #SundayRead, we’re looking inward. How do we characterize ourselves against an impossibly large backdrop of individual selves? How does the self factor into one’s art? How does the self drive a narrative? Check out “Reflections on the Self,” our Spring 1987 issue, with…

Nelson Mandela was born today in 1918. He was a radical anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he served as South Africa’s first democratically elected and first Black president. Although himself not a contributor to Social Research, Mandela’s tireless efforts…

#TBT Is social science a field isolated from political agendas? Contributor Theodore Porter argues that “the idealization of impersonal objectivity as the model of public rationality, sometimes even at the expense of accuracy, is not necessarily what champions of science have…

“The higher education system has been split open by the engineered decline of public universities. . . . For the general public, the overwhelming consequence has been a loss of faith in the university as a space of knowledge and freedom.”—Supriya Chaudhuri Read Chaudhuri’s…

Philosopher Jacques Derrida was born 95 years ago today in El Biar, Algeria. #botd Derrida wrote Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, Specters of Marx, and several other books and essays. He’s known for assigning language to “deconstruction,” or the theory that examines the…

Today marks 236 years since revolutionaries stormed the Bastille Prison in Paris—igniting the French Revolution. #ViveLaFrance To commemorate today’s importance, we’re returning to our Spring 1989 issue, “The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity.” Contributors include…

For this #SundayRead, we’re returning to our Winter 2022 issue, “Photography and Film as Evidence.” What does it mean that a majority of the West has access to a cell phone which can capture “objective reality” through videos, pictures, and recordings? What is “reality” if—and…

Harold Bloom, often dubbed the “most notorious literary critic in America,” was born on this day in 1930 in East Bronx, New York. #botd Bloom, a long-time professor at Yale, was known for his defense of the Western literary canon. He published The Western Canon and How to Read…

#TBT In honor of French writer Marcel Proust’s 154th birthday, we’re returning to Serge Moscovici’s article from Spring 1986, “The Dreyfus Affair, Proust, and Social Psychology,” in which he uses themes from Proust’s novels, like Remembrance of Things Past, to analyze the…

Franz Boas, the “father of American anthropology,” was born on this day in 1858 in Minden, Germany. #botd Perhaps best known for his theory of cultural relativism, Boas advocated for a Western “deemphasis” of cultures—that is, cultures should be understood within their own…

How are democratic values understood, upheld, and protected within academic contexts? In our Summer 2025 issue, philosopher Judith Butler weighs in on the boundaries between academics’ intra- and extramural speech and different protections given to each by universities. 🔗:…

For this #SundayRead, we return to our Spring 2016 issue, “The Fear of Art.” Contributor David Freedberg argues that “fear of art and love of art are two sides of the same coin.” How is art both yielded and suppressed—by democracies and totalitarian regimes alike? In addition…