Collaborative Research: Understanding the Economic Crisis and its Social Impacts through Postdoctoral Fellowships

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Abstract SES-0957962 Karen S. Cook David Grusky Stanford University SES-0957200 Victor Nee Kim Weeden Cornell University SES-0957900 Paul DiMaggio Princeton University SES-0957923 Bruce Western Harvard University SES-0958093 Neil Fligstein University of California-Berkeley SES-0956546 Erik Wright Joel Rogers University of Wisconsin-Madison The United States and the world economy are currently experiencing the most extensive and intense downturn since the Great Depression. A six-university team hosted by Centers for the study of economic sociology and social inequality associated with the Sociology Departments at Cornell, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Wisconsin that share outstanding reputations and strong track records in economic sociology and related specialties will complete research on the causes and consequences of this historic economic crisis. The recession itself presents a fundamental challenge to the economic sociology of efficient markets and to conventional understandings of concepts like risk and trust that are central to all of the social sciences. It is also likely to have important effects on social inequality -- not just inequality in income, but in economic behaviors like savings, job-hunting, and investments in education, as well as such outcomes as health and wellness, fertility and divorce, and criminal victimization. The project will support twelve postdoctoral research fellows who will work with faculty at the six universities to complete independent research while receive training and mentoring, that will cast light on the causes of the crisis and its impact on social inequality and on U.S. institutions. Broader Impact: The research will help to inform our understanding of the social consequences of the recession. Specifically, the project will bring a sociological perspective to three pressing questions: (1) how did the financial crisis happen, (2) what are the social consequences of the recession, and how is its impacts distributed, and (3) what are the policy responses to the economic crisis and what are their consequences? The project will also provide a career development opportunity for a diverse set of new Sociology Ph.D.s at a time of declining endowments in the private university sector and declining tax revenues in the states. By providing a footing for a group of young scholars and enabling them to contribute to our understanding of the very crisis that has challenged the labor market into which they are moving, the investigators hope to prevent the loss of talent that the field has experienced in previous severe recessions, and to ensure that graduate-training institutions have a robust and consistent pipeline of new talent as faculty hired in the 1970s and 1980s move towards retirement.