Article | Spring 2005
ISERP Affiliates Appointed Visiting Scholars at the Russell Sage Foundation
The Russell Sage Foundation, the only foundation to exclusively support research in the social sciences, appointed six visiting scholars in 2004-2005 with current or past affiliations with ISERP. With an almost hundred-year tradition of support for the social sciences, Russell Sage dedicates itself to "strengthening the methods, data, and theoretical core of the social sciences as a means of improving social policies." Each year, the Foundation invites a select number of scholars to its New York headquarters to investigate topics in the social and behavioral sciences with most projects building on the Foundation's three active programs of research—Future of Work, Immigration, and Cultural Contact.
Current ISERP faculty fellows at the Foundation include Ira Katznelson (Ruggles Professor, Political Science and History; Director, American Institutions Project), Adam McKeown (Associate Professor, History), and Mignon Moore (Assistant Professor, Sociology). Francesca Polletta (Associate Professor, Sociology), the recipient of an ISERP seed grant and an affiliate of the Institute's Center for Organizational Innovation, and former ISERP graduate fellows, John Lapinski (Assistant Professor, Yale Political Science) and Rose Razaghian (Assistant Professor, Yale Political Science), are also scholars in this program.
Ira Katznelson, John Lapinski, and Rose Razaghian have formed a working group to analyze Congressional roll call votes throughout United States history to determine how the type of policy under debate influences political alliances and outcomes. As the director of the American Institutions Project at ISERP and through NSF funding, Katznelson has been conducting related research on the dynamics of legislative performance in Congress from 1877 to 2002 for the past year (featured in Vol. 1 Issue 2 of the newsletter).
Adam McKeown will contribute to the Foundation's long-standing program of research on immigration through an historical study of the modern system of immigrant documentation, particularly passports and visas.
As part of the Foundation's Cultural Contact program, which focuses on understanding and improving relations between racial and ethnic groups, Mignon Moore is examining the culture and values of black and Latina lesbian women, who face the dual challenge of being racial and sexual minorities. This study got its start through the ISERP seed funded project "Invisible Families of New York: A Sociological Study of Gay Relationships and Motherhood among Black and Latina Women," also the title of her current book project.
Francesca Polletta will advance the Foundation's research on the social consequences of the September 11th terrorist attack on New York City. Polletta is studying the public deliberations on the rebuilding of lower Manhattan in order to examine the effectiveness of such community forums in policy making, a topic she began investigating with David Stark through ISERP seed funding. Pilot research allowed Polletta to begin considering whether and how digital technologies of deliberation are transforming traditional modes of citizen participation in urban governance.
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