SSS congress 2015 in Lausanne

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Luc Boltanski

Luc Boltanski is a Directeur of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. After receiving his PhD in sociology, he became an assistant professor in the same institution and contributed to the creation of the Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales journal, working with Pierre Bourdieu and his group at the Centre de sociologie européenne. In 1983, he co-founded, with Laurent Thévenot, the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale and contributed actively to the development of a pragmatic sociology that is attentive to the critical skills of social actors.

Research
His early research focused on early childhood education processes, focusing on the links between moral and social class. Moral issues remain at the heart of his research today. A decade later, his research on the transformations of dominant ideology was pursued through a sociological study of practical social arrangements and forms of public justification. He focuses in particular on the critical skills manifested by social actors and especially the transformation of the critical repertoires under the “new spirit of capitalism”. Later, he studied the decision-making processes related to childbearing and abortion (La condition fœtale 2004). After having written a book on the relation to institutions and the opportunities for criticism (De la critique 2009), Luc Boltanski studied the different forms of inquiry outlined in the detective novel (Enigmes et complots 2012). His current research focuses on the transformation of valorization processes in current capitalism, in relation to the growing role of heritage.

Publications
Luc Boltanski has published numerous books and articles, including Le bonheur suisse (1966, et al.), Prime éducation et morale de classe (1969), The making of a class : cadres in French society (1987), Distant suffering : morality, media and politics (1999), Love and justice as competences (2012), On justification : economies of worth (2006, with L. Thévenot), The new spirit of capitalism (2005, with E. Chiappello), La Condition fœtale (2004), On critique : a sociology of emancipation (2011), Enigmes et complots (2012), Vers l’extrême : extension des domaines de la droite (2014, with A. Esquerre).

Jacques Commaille

Jacques Commaille is a researcher at the Institut des sciences sociales du politique (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Cachan), Emeritus Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan. He holds a PhD in Sociology, and he also has a State Doctorate in Arts and Social sciences, and an Honoris Causa from the University of Brussels. He was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award for 2014.

Research
His studies have made a significant contribution to a political sociology of law and justice linked with a sociology of public action in a multidisciplinary perspective, based on sociology, political science and law. His research has focused on the elaboration process of law in the field of family policies and more generally on different public policy issues: on justice policies and their institutional and political dimensions, on the relationship between legal and political regulation. They aim at building a more general theory of political regulation articulated to legal regulation.

Publications
Jacques Commaille has published numerous books, chapters and journal, articles), including : Familles sans justice ? : le droit et la justice face aux transformations de la famille (1982), Les stratégies des femmes : travail, famille et politique (1993), L’esprit sociologique des lois : essai de sociologie politique du droit (1994), Misères de la famille, question d’Etat (1996), Les nouveaux enjeux de la question sociale (1997), La question familiale en Europe (1998, with F. de Singly), Les métamorphoses de la régulation politique (1999, with B. Jobert), La politique de la famille (2002, and al.), La fonction politique de la justice (2007, et al.). Many of these publications have been translated and published in English, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish. He is currently preparing a book to be published by Gallimard, provisionally entitled: Les sens politiques du droit.

Sighard Neckel

Sighard Neckel studied sociology, philosophy and law at the University of Bielefeld and at the Free University of Berlin. After PhD graduation in 1990, he defended a habilitation thesis in sociology, in 1996. After teaching at the Free University of Berlin, he has held professorships in sociology at the universities of Siegen, Wuppertal, Giessen and Vienna. Since 2011, he is Professor of Sociology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and he is also on the Board of the Institute for Social Research.

Research
His research topics range from economic sociology and inequality research to cultural sociology and the sociology of emotions. After his early work on “Status and Shame”, he examined the relationship between achievement and success in free-market societies and the role of emotions in the economy. His recent research projects on the world of banking and financial markets focus on the question of ethics and responsibility in the financial sector. In close connection is his current research on the process of “refeudalization” within contemporary society. His empirical research often uses ethnographic methods, and always aims to articulate sociological theory with a concern for the practical implications of the phenomena under study in contemporary societies.

Publications
Sighard Neckel has published numerous books and articles, including, Status und Scham. Zur symbolischen Reproduktion sozialer Ungleichheit (1991), Waldleben. Eine ostdeutsche Stadt im Wandel seit 1989 (1999), Die Macht der Unterscheidung. Essays zur Kultursoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft (2000), Flucht nach vorn. Die Erfolgskultur der Marktgesellschaft (2008), Kapitalistischer Realismus. Von der Kunstaktion zur Gesellschaftskritik (2010), Sternstunden der Soziologie (2010), Strukturierte Verantwortungslosigkeit. Berichte aus der Bankenwelt (2010), Leistung und Erschöpfung. Burnout in der Wettbewerbsgesellschaft (2013).

Katherine Stovel

Katherine Stovel is the Director of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. In January 2013, she became the (North American) Editor of the British Journal of Sociology. Stovel holds a BA in Political Science from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent a year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In her extra-professional life, Stovel enjoys a multitude of outdoor activities, cooking, and learning about early 20th century expressionist art.

Research
Stovel is a sociologist whose research addresses basic questions concerning the sequential dynamics of social organization and relations. Her work, which follows in the tradition of social networks analysis, is motivated by a desire to understand how common social processes are expressed in particular historical contexts, and why these processes occasionally result in new institutional arrangements or new identities for individuals. A distinctive feature of Stovel’s work is the range of methods she employs, methods that emphasize the dynamic, sequential, interactive, and multi-level nature of social phenomena.

These methods allow her to tackle questions traditionally asked—often in a much less systematic way– by historical sociologists and others concerned with the dynamic interaction of individuals and their local context. Stovel’s research spans a variety of topics, including the micro-dynamics of brokerage relations, the impact of networks on employment segregation, the emergence of modern career systems, the process of becoming a Nazi, and temporal patterning in lynching in the Southern US. She also has a long-standing interest in how social context affects the health of adolescents.

Publications
Stovel’s research has been published in major journals in sociology and related disciplines, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and private foundations. Her 2004 article, “Chains of Affection” (http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/chains.pdf), a study of the structure of adolescent sexual networks, was awarded the Roger Gould Prize by the American Journal of Sociology.