Fostering diversity: Graduate study in sociology at Northwestern University

Among major graduate sociology programs, Northwestern University halances quantitative and qualitative approaches in its diverse offerings. The program is student-centered and emphasizes the participation of the student in the definition of intellectual and career objectives. The core program is compact and concentrated in the first year so that students can develop their own research interests in subsequent years, with close faculty supervision and involvement. Students who are self-motivated and have well-developed intellectual interests generally thrive at Northwestern University. He currently is working in historical and comparative sociology, and recently has published a book entitledThe Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Quantitative and Qualitative Strategies. His recent publication, “On the Politics of Speaking in the Name of Society,” was his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems.     

Comments on “Social Origins of Civil Society”

Lester Salamon and Helmut Anheier's Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the Nonprofit Sector Cross-Nationally offers a thorough cross-national quantitative analysis of the correlates of nonprofit-sector size, composition, and sources of funding. The first study of its kind, it is remarkable in both its theoretical ambition and empirical scope. Still, this research is plagued by problems that affect almost all research of this type: small numbers, poor measures, vague theories, a preponderance of cross-sectional data, and so on. Suggestions for improving the research include: (1) disaggregating the definition of the nonprofit sector to address criticisms from both the right and the left; (2) adopting a multidimensional approach to assessment of the nonprofit sector, to deal with its great heterogeneity; (3) devoting more attention to possible nonlinear relationships; and (4) casting a wider theoretical net in the effort to build a convincing social origins perspective. In the end, Salamon and Anheier may be forced to devote more effort to qualitative analysis of specific sectors to demonstrate the explanatory power of the social origins perspective.