Craig Calhoun

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Craig Calhoun is an American sociologist. He has been president of the Social Science Research Council since 1999. He is also University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University.

[edit] Biography

Dr. Calhoun completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Southern California. In 1974 he obtained his first master's degree in anthropology from Columbia University, a year later he got his second one in social anthropology from Manchester University. In 1980 Craig Calhoun obtained his doctorate in sociology and history from Oxford University. Afterwards he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1977 to 1996, where he was dean of the Graduate School and the founding Director of the University Center for International Studies. He has also taught at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and the University of Asmara, University of Khartoum, University of Oslo, and Oxford itself. He was also editor in chief of the Oxford Dictionary of the Social Sciences.

[edit] Work

The social problems that form the bulk of his work include social theory, social history, political sociology (social movements, democracy, and nationalism) the impact of technological change; culture and communication; the relationship among tort law, risk, and business organizations; jurisprudence; law and morality; the anthropological study of education, kinship, and religion; forms of social solidarity (collective identity, community, kinship, and formal organization), the organization of community life; and problems in contemporary globalization and internationalization of social processes. In geographic terms he has studied China, Horn of Africa, and Europe.

Calhoun has written more than 90 academic articles as well as several books, among which his most famous one is a study of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (California, 1994). His other books include Nationalism (Minnesota, 1997), Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Blackwell, 1995), and several edited collections including Habermas and the Public Sphere (MIT, 1992), Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics (Minnesota, 1997), Understanding September 11th (New Press, 2002), Lessons of Empire (New Press, 2005), and "Sociology in America: A History" (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Calhoun's work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Thesis Eleven (2006, Vol. 84, No. 1) devoted a special issue to his work titled "Craig Calhoun: Critical Social Sciences and the Public Sphere."