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Research Centers

The Sociology Department supports three research centers dedicated to scholarship in the areas of Comparative and Historical Sociology, Cultural Sociology and Social Theory, and Social Stratification and Life Course Research.

Center for Comparative Research (CCR)

The Yale Center for Comparative Research (CCR) promotes theory-driven, empirically rigorous comparative and historical research into social life. We understand the terms “comparative” and “historical” quite broadly. By design there is no specific temporal, geographical or methodological focus. Some of our participants' research projects compare countries in different historical periods; other projects take emergent groups, organizations or public policies as their units of analysis. We use a variety of methods and our collective scientific agenda is open and evolving. Current areas of interest include state formation; empire; social networks; religion and politics; comparative political economy; cultures of nationalism; post-communist transitions; the constitution of racial and gender identities; patrimonialism; democracy, law and citizenship; social movements and class formations. The CCR's primary tasks are to train graduate students and to build scholarly dialogue and community. We also sponsor and support relevant thematic intellectual enterprises, including interdisciplinary conferences and collaborations. These activities range from informal ongoing conversations to articulated research programs and joint publications, in which the faculty and graduate students from various disciplines participate. The CCR holds a weekly Workshop and occasionally sponsors post-doctoral research fellowships.

Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS)

The Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS) provides a focus for meaning-centered analysis in the social science tradition, with openings to normative themes such as democracy, justice, tolerance and civility. Drawing on classical and contemporary social and cultural theory, CCS students and researchers develop concepts and methods that illuminate the cultural texture of social life at both individual and collective levels. They apply these to understanding the full range of activities and processes from local to global levels. Because culture is always closely intertwined with the patterning of social organization, the CCS is centrally concerned with institutional life and the intersection of culture with social structure. The Center’s own institutional life is carried on through the ongoing Workshop, seminars and courses offered by CCS faculty and students, guest lectures from distinguished visiting scholars, and an annual conference. Through activities such as these, CCS also provides a meeting point for the humanities and social sciences, both at Yale and beyond.

Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course (CIQLE)

The mission of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course (CIQLE) is to support empirical research on inequalities of social class, generation and gender and how they are brought about through processes across the life course. Substantively, our work focuses on human development and family formation, educational trajectories, vocational training, labor market entry, occupational careers and income trajectories, retirement and aging as well as corresponding social policies. Methodologically, CIQLE concentrates on models and techniques for the analysis of longitudinal data. Theoretically, a main interest is to explain individual level life course processes through macro level contexts of societal institutions and socio-economic conditions changing across time and varying across societies. The center is the home of the data archive of the German Life History Study (GLHS) comprising more than 12,500 life histories of West Germans and East Germans born between 1890 and 1971. Current projects cover the following areas: (1) Gender Inequalities in the Life Course: U.S. and West German Men and Women Born in the Fifties; (2) Social Networks and Adolescent Risk Behavior; (3) Life Courses in the Transition from Communism in Poland and East Germany; (4) Inequalities in Access to Higher Education and Institutional Differentiation in a Cross-National Perspective; (5) Education and Labor Market Entry of German Women and Men born 1964 and 1971; and (6) Life Courses in Advanced Political Economies (POLIS).