Theda Skocpol

Theda Skocpol ( born May 4, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American sociologist and political scientist, a professor at Harvard University (2006 Dean of the " Graduate School of Arts and Sciences "). The advocate of the historical- institutional and comparative approaches to research, including also the revolution research has authored numerous professional and popular science works.

Career

Your bachelor's degree earned Skocpol 1969 at Michigan State University. She then studied inter alia in Barrington Moore Jr. at Harvard and received his PhD in 1976. 1979 she published her book " States and Social Revolutions" a comparative analysis of political revolutions in Russia, France and China. Later, she also published papers on research methods and theories, here is primarily her work " Bringing the State Back In " to call, which seemed groundbreaking for the newer social scientific interest in the state as an actor in the political and social change. After some disputes could take 1985 as the first woman a sociological Chair at Harvard.

She was for her historical fiction book Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of awarded Social Policy in the United States 1993, Ralph Waldo Emerson - Prize of Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Fields of work

Lately Skocpol took more topics around the United States as a research object. Your resulting in this context work " Soldiers and Mothers ," an analysis of the American welfare state was excellent. Skocpol was devoted to the theme of civic engagement and here published pioneering work on the development of the association and association essence of the USA in the last 200 years. In her book " Diminished Democracy" from 2003 Skocpol looking for explanations for the decline of civic engagement in the United States during the last decades. It leads to this question also lively controversy with other researchers such as Robert D. Putnam. Skocpol is here rather out institutional change as a creative force civil social life.

Her research approaches are partly associated with the structuralist school. For example, she wants to show how the development of social revolts with recourse to the specific structures of agrarian societies and their states can be explained. However, it also takes account of international influences on state and society respective nations. Your methodology here differs markedly from work, rather examine the role of revolutionary groups, psychological factors or the centrality of so-called " revolutionary consciousness " in the development of revolutionary processes.