Ann Swidler (born December 11, 1944) is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Swidler is most commonly known as a cultural sociologist and authored one of the most-cited articles in sociology, "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies".

Early life and career

Swidler was born on December 11, 1944. She graduated from Harvard University with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree in 1966 and received her

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. ...

degree in 1971 and

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree in 1975 from the

. Her dissertation was titled ''Organization Without Authority: A Study of Two Alternative Schools'', it was published as a book in 1979 as ''Organization Without Authority: Dilemmas of Social Control in Free Schools''. Her advisor was

Arlie Hochschild Arlie Russell Hochschild (; born January 15, 1940) is an American professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and writer. Hochschild has long focused on the human emotions that underlie moral beliefs, practices, and ...

, and was also mentored by

Robert N. Bellah Robert Neelly Bellah (February 23, 1927 – July 30, 2013) was an American sociologist and the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was internationally known for his work related to the sociology of reli ...

Reinhard Bendix Reinhard Bendix (February 25, 1916 – February 28, 1991) was a German-American sociologist. Life and career Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1916, he briefly belonged to Neu Beginnen and Hashomer Hatzair, groups that resisted the Nazis. In 1938 ...

, and

Neil Smelser Neil Joseph Smelser (1930–2017) was an American sociologist who served as professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an active researcher from 1958 to 1994. His research was on collective behavior, sociological theo ...

. In 1982 she was a recipient of the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...

. With sociologists

John W. Meyer John Wilfred Meyer (born 1935) is a sociologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present day, Meyer has contributed fundamental ideas to the field of sociology, especially in the areas ...

and

W. Richard Scott William Richard Scott (born December 18, 1932) is an American sociologist, and Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, specialised in institutional theory and organisation science. He is known for his research on the relation between organi ...

, Swidler received funding from the

Russell Sage Foundation The Russell Sage Foundation is an American non-profit organisation established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” It was named after her recently deceased husband, rai ...

for "Due Process in Organizations", and in 2009–10 she was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar. In 2013 she was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

Major works

Habits of the Heart ''Habits of the Heart'' is the only studio album by Idle Warship, a collaboration between hip-hop artist Talib Kweli and singer Res, released on November 1, 2011. Critical reception ''Habits of the Heart'' received general acclaim from mu ...

'' (1985), co-authored with

Robert Bellah Robert Neelly Bellah (February 23, 1927 – July 30, 2013) was an American sociologist and the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was internationally known for his work related to the sociology of reli ...

, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, and Steven M. Tipton, was finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, won the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Award in 1985 and received Highest Honors for a Book in Education from the American Educational Studies Association. ''Habits of the Heart'' sold over 500,000 copies which, according to sociologist Edward Tiryakian, places the work among "that rare breed of sociological works: a literary event, with sales figures beyond the total number of practicing sociologists in the world, past and present." "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies" (1986), argues that rather than just a form of internalized norms controlling behavior—argued by, for instance,

Talcott Parsons Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in socio ...

—culture is a collection or "tool-kit" that people draw on to accomplish particular strategies of action. This is one of the most widely cited articles in sociology and informs the contemporary view in

cultural sociology The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, ...

that culture is both constraining and enabling. '' Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth'' (1996), is a well-known reply to ''

The Bell Curve ''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced b ...

'' by

Charles Murray Charles Murray may refer to: Politicians *Charles Murray, 1st Earl of Dunmore (1661–1710), British peer *Charles Murray (author and diplomat) (1806–1895), British author and diplomat *Charles Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore (1841–1907), Scotti ...

and

Richard Hernstein Richard Julius Herrnstein (May 20, 1930 – September 13, 1994) was an American psychologist at Harvard University. He was an active researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. Herrnstein was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psycholo ...

and attempts to show that the arguments in ''The Bell Curve'' are flawed. ''Talk of Love: How Culture Matters'' (2001) attempts to describe the reality of love in relationships amid the idealized and romanticized "talk of love" within American culture. In a review in the ''

American Journal of Sociology The ''American Journal of Sociology'' is a Peer review, peer-reviewed bi-monthly academic journal that publishes original research and book reviews in the field of sociology and related social sciences. It was founded in 1895 as the first journal ...

'', sociologist

Michèle Lamont Michèle Lamont is a sociologist and is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and a professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is a contributor to the study of culture, inequality, racism and a ...

describes the book as "theoretically ambitious" as it "propose nothing less than the reconceptualization of the role that culture plays in organizing social action."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swidler, Ann 1944 births Living people American sociologists Harvard University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty Sociology of culture Place of birth missing (living people) American women sociologists 21st-century American women writers American women social scientists 20th-century American women writers 20th-century social scientists 21st-century social scientists

Early life and career

Major works

See also

References