Theda Skocpol (born May 4, 1947 in Detroit, Michigan) is a sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University, presently serving as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Influential in sociology as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, Skocpol has written widely for both popular and academic audiences. Jump to: navigation, search May 4 is the 124th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (125th in leap years). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1947 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes - this motto was adopted after the disastrous 1805 fire that devastated the city) Nickname: The Motor City and Motown Location in Wayne County, Michigan Founded Incorporated July 24, 1701 1815... Jump to: navigation, search Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... See also: Political Science Notable political scientists Kenneth Arrow - Nobel Memorial Prize winning economist who published influential paper on his widely cited Arrows Impossibility Theorem Robert Axelrod Duncan Black - Responsible for unearthing the work of many early political scientists, including Charles Dodgson Jean-Charles de Borda - 18th century mathematician... Jump to: navigation, search Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... In an educational setting, a dean is a person with significant authority . ... Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (also known as GSAS) is the academic unit responsible for all post-baccalaureate degree programs offered through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. ... Comparative Sociology Comparative sociology generally refers to sociological analysis that involves comparison of social processes between nation-states, or across different types of society (for example capitalist and socialist). ...

Skocpol's undergraduate education was at Michigan State University (B.A., 1969). She went on to Harvard (Ph.D., 1976), where she studied with Barrington Moore Jr. In 1979, she published States and Social Revolutions, a comparative analysis of political revolutions in Russia, France, and China. Some of her subsequent work focused on methodology and theory, including the co-edited volume Bringing the State Back In, which heralded a new focus by social scientists on the state as an agent of social and political change. Jump to: navigation, search Michigan State University Michigan State University is a university in East Lansing, Michigan near the state capital of Lansing. ... A Bachelor of Arts (B.A. or A.B.) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or program in the arts and/or sciences. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1976 (MCMLXXVI) is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Barrington Moore Jr. ... Jump to: navigation, search This page refers to the year 1979. ... States and Social Revolutions is a 1979 book by political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol explaining the causes of revolutions. ... Jump to: navigation, search A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. ...

In the early 1980s, she publicly alleged that Harvard had denied her tenure because she was a woman, a charge which was found to be justified by an internal review committee in 1981, by which point she was teaching at the University of Chicago. In 1985, Harvard offered her a tenured position (its first ever for a female sociologist), which she accepted. Jump to: navigation, search 1981 (MCMLXXXI)is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search The University of Chicago is a private co-educational university located in Chicago, Illinois. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the year. ...

In more recent years, her work has focused specifically on the United States, including the award-winning Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, a historical analysis of the American welfare state. She has also focused on civic engagement, spearheading research charting the history of voluntary associations over the last two centuries. Her 2003 work, Diminished Democracy, seeks to explain the decline of American civic participation in recent decades. In this area, she has differed strongly with her Harvard colleague Robert Putnam and other social capital theorists, in highlighting the role of institutional changes (include state policies) in shaping civic life. Jump to: navigation, search There are three main interpretations of the idea of a welfare state: the provision of welfare services by the state. ... Jump to: navigation, search Civic engagement is the notion of belonging, the experience of investment, and the position of ownership a citizen feels throughout the local, regional, national, and international political communities to which they belong. ... Jump to: navigation, search 2003 (MMIII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Robert David Putnam (born January 9, 1941 in Rochester, New York) is a political scientist and professor at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government, well-known for his writings on civic engagement, civil society, and social capital, a concept of which he is probably the leading exponent. ... Social capital is a socio-economic concept with a variety of inter-related definitions, based on the value of social networks. ...

Her works and opinions have been associated with the structuralist school. As one example, she argues that social revolutions can best be explained given their relation with specific structures of agricultural societies and their respective states. She gives equal importance to the role of international forces, specially their influence on state and social structures of a given society. Such an approach, differs greatly from more "behaviorist" ones, which tend to emphasize on the role of "revolutionary populations" "revolutionary psychology" and/or "revolutionary consciousness" as determinant factors of revolutionary processes.

She has been married to Bill Skocpol, an experimental physicist at Boston University, since 1967, with whom she has a son, Michael Allen. Since antiquity, people have tried to understand the behavior of matter: why unsupported objects drop to the ground, why different materials have different properties, and so forth. ... Jump to: navigation, search Boston University is a non-sectarian private university located in Boston, Massachusetts. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1967 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Published works

• States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China, Cambridge University Press (New York), 1979.
• Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (Cambridge), 1992.
• Social Revolutions in the Modern World, Cambridge University Press (New York), 1994.
• State and Party in America's New Deal (with Kenneth Finegold), University of Wisconsin Press (Madison), 1995.
• Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective, Princeton University Press (Princeton), 1995.
• Boomerang: Clinton's Health Security Effort and the Turn Against Government in U.S. Politics, Norton (New York), 1996, new edition with new afterword published as Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn against Government, 1997.
• The Missing Middle: Working Families and the Future of American Social Policy, Norton, 2000.
• Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Edited

• Marxist Inquiries: Studies of Labor, Class, and States (with Michael Burawoy), University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1982.
• Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
• Bringing the State Back In (with Peter B. Evans and Dietrich Rueschemeyer), Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (with Margaret Weir and Ann Shola Orloff), Princeton University Press, 1988.
• American Society and Politics: Institutional, Historical, and Theoretical Perspectives (with John L. Campbell), McGraw-Hill (New York), 1995.
• States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (with Dietrich Rueschemeyer), Princeton University Press, 1996.
• The New Majority: Toward a Popular Progressive Politics (with Stan Greenberg), Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1997.
• Democracy, Revolution, and History (with George Ross, Tony Smith, and Judith Eisenberg Vichniac), Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1998.
• Civic Engagement in American Democracy (with Morris P. Fiorina), Brookings Institute Press (Washington, DC)/Russell Sage Foundation (New York City), 1999.

Stanley Bernard Greenberg (born May 10, 1945) is a leading Democratic pollster and political strategist who has advised the campaigns of the Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, as well as hundreds of other candidates and organizations in the United States and around the world. ...

References

• Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2005. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

External links

• Harvard Sociology Department Home Page
• Harvard Government Department Home Page