In this CSES Lecture Series Paul Ingram, Columbia Business School, considers the influences on entering into ‘dirty business’ or economic activity that violates cultural values. He considers individual disposition to violate norms as a function of status, social contagion in a network, where status determines influence, and the role of a social movement to ignite attention to the norms and their violation. Paul analyzes who entered the Liverpool slave trade. He finds that high status Gentlemen were more likely to do so, and that they were highly influential on the behavior of their network partners. The abolition movement affected an increase in the magnitude of social influence, and shifted the balance of influence in favor of non-slavers.

Please join us for the final lecture in the 2012-2013 CSES Lecture Series where Paul Ingram will present his research on “The Gentlemen Slave.”

Abstract

We consider the influences on entering into ‘dirty business’ by which we mean economic activity that violates cultural values. We consider individual disposition to violate norms as a function of status, social contagion in a network, where status determines influence, and the role of a social movement to ignite attention to the norms and their violation. We analyze who entered the Liverpool slave trade. We find that high status Gentlemen were more likely to do so, and that they were highly influential on the behavior of their network partners. The abolition movement affected an increase in the magnitude of social influence, and shifted the balance of influence in favor of non-slavers.

About

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School, and Faculty Director of the Columbia Senior Executive Program. His PhD is from Cornell University, and he was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University before coming to Columbia. He has held visiting professorships at Tel Aviv University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Toronto. The courses he teaches on management and strategy benefit from his research on organizations in the United States, Canada, Israel, Scotland, China and Australia. His research has been published in more than forty articles, book chapters and books. Ingram’s current research projects examine the influence of intergovernmental organizations on foreign direct investment and democratization; the structure and efficacy of managers’ professional networks in China and the United States; and the effects of networks and institutions on the evolution of the Glasgow shipbuilding industry. He has served as a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology, a senior editor for Organization Science, an Associate Editor for Management Science and on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and Strategic Organization.

Jack Goldstone presented his research on “Cultural and Technical Innovation: The Twin Foundations of Economic Growth” on February 28th, 2013 as part of the CSES Lecture Series.

Please join us for our next CSES Lecture Series on February 28th, 2013 at Cornell University from 4:30 to 6PM in Malott Hall 251. Jack Goldstone will present his research on “Cultural and Technical Innovation: The Twin Foundations of Economic Growth.”

Abstract

Modern economic growth rests on innovation; that is widely accepted. But innovation is usually seen as proportional to effort, investment, and levels of accumulated knowledge technological prowess. These are positive forces; but innovation also requires overcoming the negative forces of established authority, intellectual ‘sunk costs,’ and the vested interests who benefit from maintaining status quo beliefs. Only Western civilization was successful in overcoming these negative forces. This was not due to any exceptional flexibility or vibrancy in Western culture. Quite the reverse, it was due to the exceptional rigidity and closure of Western intellectual culture prior to 1500, and the impact of discoveries on that rigid system which broke it open and led to new world views.

About

Professor Jack A. Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University, and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, Dr. Goldstone was on the faculty of Northwestern University and the University of California, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, awarded the 1993 Distinguished Scholarly Research Award of the American Sociological Association; Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History; and nine other books as well as over one hundred research articles on topics in politics, social movements, democratization, and long-term social change. He has appeared on NPR, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Fox News, and written for Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Al-Hayat and the International Herald Tribune. His latest book is Political Demography: How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Please join us for our next CSES Lecture Series with guest lecturer Siegwart Lindenberg. Lindenberg (PhD Harvard 1971) is professor of Cognitive Sociology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is one of the founders of the Inter-University Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) and member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

His main interests lie in the areas of microfoundations for theories on collective phenomena, especially theory of model building, theory of social rationality, goal-framing theory, theory of human goals and wellbeing (SPF theory), and theory of norms; self-regulation and pro- and antisocial behavior; and groups and relationships (including various forms of solidarity and contracting), especially theory of interdependencies (functional, cognitive, and structural) and theory of sharing and joint production and theory of solidarity.

James Robinson, Harvard University, discussed his recent book Why Nations Fail on September 28, 2012 as part of the 2012-13 CSES Lecture Series. In this lecture, Prof. Robinson answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest-growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it).

Please join us for the 2012-2013 CSES Lecture Series. Our Lecture Series brings to the Cornell campus leading scholars in the social sciences. Recent visitors include James Baron, Robert Barro, Mary Brinton, Paul DiMaggio, Frank Dobbin, Ronald Dore, Peter Evans, Neil Fligstein, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Gibbons, Mark Granovetter, Avner Greif, Gary Hamilton, Russell Hardin, Justin Yifu Lin, Barnaby Marsh, John Meyer, Douglass North, Michael Novak, Charles Sabel, AnnaLee Saxenian, Neil Smelser, Duncan Watts and Harrison White. The Center’s breadth of activities contributes greatly to the rich array of opportunities — both intellectual and personal — in economic sociology at Cornell.