Sociology Is Well Represented Among NSF’s Human and Social Dynamics Grantees
by Roberta Spalter-Roth and
Nicole Van Vooren, ASA Research
and Development Department
The National Science Foundation’s
(NSF) innovative three-year-old interdisciplinary
Human and Social Dynamics
(HSD) initiative brought together a
number of sociologists this fall at a twoday
seminar of Principal Investigators
(PI) in Washington, DC. The nearly 200
participants, including 25 sociologists,
presented their findings, learned about
other PIs’ findings, participated in discussion
sessions, and asked questions at
this NSF-sponsored event. The attendees
also heard presentations by NSF
staff and from John Marburger, III, the
President’s Science Adviser and Director
of the White House Office of Science,
Technology, and Policy.
The HSD program funds potential
breakthrough research that fosters the
understanding of human, organizational,
cultural, and social dynamics. The
four-fold aim of funding these projects
is to: (1) understand the complexities of
change; (2) understand the dynamics of
human and social behavior at all levels;
(3) understand the cognitive and social
structures that create and result from
change; and (4) manage profound or
rapid change. These goals also necessitate
a comprehensive, interdisciplinary
effort that includes the development
of associated research infrastructure.
Sociologist Richard O. Lempert was
instrumental in developing the HSD
program at the NSF in 2003. (See July/
August 2003 Footnotes, "Public Affairs Update", and February
2004 Footnotes, "Cross-cutting 'Human and Social Dynamics' Is First NSF Priority Area Led by Behavioral & Social Sciences", for historical background
on the HSD initiative.)
Collaboration, Tools, and U.S. Competitiveness
In their plenary presentations, NSF
staff members emphasized that the HSD
projects funded in the 2006 round of
HSD grants reflected a movement away
from curiosity-driven research toward
more purpose-driven research that
engaged with real-world problems.
According to NSF’s Anne
Carlson, Senior Staff Associate
for Policy and Planning,
NSF wanted these projects
to bring about new scientific
collaborations across fields,
greater knowledge and technology
transfer, stronger focus on real-world
problems, and increased American
competitiveness in creating a globally
engaged science workforce. Mark Weiss,
Senior Advisor of the Division of Social,
Behavioral, and Economic Sciences,
assured the audience of NSF’s commitment
to social, behavioral, and economic
research in order to understand major
social issues such as “natural” disasters,
homeland security, technology growth,
and health. Marburger pointed out the
need for greater use of the social sciences
but also the need for sociology and
the other social sciences to “grab new
tools and to gain prestige by answering
important questions.” In so doing, he
stated, American competitiveness (in
the sense of the gross domestic product)
would increase.
According to sociologist Edward
Hackett, NSF’s new Division Director
of Social and Economic Sciences (see
September/October 2005 Footnotes,
"Public Affairs Update"), research policy can be an
agent for change. To this end,
hybridization is important as
is engagement with real-world
ideas in order to stimulate
creativity. He encouraged
researchers to study scientific/
intellectual social movements,
their motives, opportunities, group
processes, and framing of issues in
order to develop usable knowledge for
innovative policy. The goal of this policy
is increased social well-being, not just
increased gross domestic product.
Among the issues raised in discussion
groups were the advantages and
disadvantages of interdisciplinary work.
Participants debated whether there is a
need for a common language or perspective,
what investigators get out of
these projects, the reward structures that
encourage interdisciplinary work, the
roles that organizations play, the funding processes, the building of infrastructure,
and social spaces needed for ongoing
work.
Sociology Projects and PIs
The HSD PIs presented posters describing
their projects. Sociologists’ posters
reflected not only the scope and depth
of the discipline but the usefulness of its
concepts, methods, and frameworks for
other disciplines. Below is a list of the
sociologist PIs (names in bold type) and a
brief description of their interdisciplinary
HSD projects.
Ronald Angel (University of Texas-
Austin), Laura Lein, Katrina Evacuees:
The Transformation from Disaster Victims
to Welfare Recipients: An Interdisciplinary
Approach. The PIs interviewed Hurricane
Katrina refugees and service providers in
Austin, TX, to test theories of civil society.
They found that the combination of
changing federal guidelines and the large
number of NGOs led to confusion, and
refugees received ineffective service in the
year following the disaster.
Carter Butts (University of California-
Irvine), Mapping and Analysis of Emergent
Multi-organizational Networks in the
Hurricane Katrina Response.
Christopher Chase-Dunn (University
of California-Riverside), Peter Turchin,
E. N. Anderson, Global State Formation:
Modeling the Rise, Fall, and Upward Sweeps
of Large Polities in World History and the
Global Future. The PIs will develop three
models of probable future paths for world
integration based on the historical patterns
of networks between international
governmental and nongovernmental
organizations.
Elizabeth Frankenberg (University of
California-Los Angeles), Jed Friedman,
Thomas Gillespie, Nicholas Ingwersen,
Bondan Sikoki, Cecep Sumantri, Wayan
Suriastini, Duncan Thomas, Social and
Economic Effects of a National Disaster. The
PIs seek to research the costs of the 2004
tsunami in Indonesia and how people
cope with a disaster of this magnitude.
Initial results suggest that the majority of
survivors still express optimism for the
future.
Patrick Heller and Daniel Schensul (Brown University), Remaking the Apartheid
City: Housing and Residential Change in
Durban after the Transition. The PIs of this
study map the main residential racial clusters
from census data. They find that the
city of Durban shows little change in the
post-apartheid era even though important
adjustments have taken place.
J. Craig Jenkins and Katherine
Meyer (Ohio State University), Mary
Ann Tetreault, Philip Schrodt, Jillian
Schwendler, Christian Davenport, Dissent
and Repression in the Middle East. The
PIs examine the types of relationships
between political dissent and repression
to overcome the inconsistent results
provided by previous studies that neglect
context, time, and space, conflicting perspectives,
and the status of women.
Yoshinori Kamo (Louisiana State
University), Tammy L. Henderson, Karen
A. Roberto, Aging Families in the Aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina. The PIs interview
aging families living in Baton Rouge who
are recovering from Hurricane Katrina
to advance the literature concerning the
functioning of aging families in the aftermath
of a natural disaster.
Verna Keith (Florida State University),
C. Airriess, A.C. Chen, W. Li, K. Leong,
S. Russaini, The Aftermath of Katrina:
Differential Responses to Trauma among
African and Vietnamese Americans in One
New Orleans Community. The PIs studied
the spatial, socioeconomic, and psychological
effects on two resource-poor
groups of evacuees. They found that lack
of resources, emotional and financial
support, and linguistic isolation increase
the incidence of post-traumatic stress
disorder.
James Kitts and Martina Morris (University of Washington), Michael W.
Macy (Cornell University), Disseminating
Computational Modeling in Social Sciences.
The PIs make a case that computational
modeling captures the intricate relationships
between macro-institutions and
micro-interactions. A main goal of this
project is to improve training in computational
modeling within the social
sciences.
John Logan (Brown University),
Disaster, Resilience, and the Built
Environment on the Gulf Coast. The PI
focuses on the resilience of coastal
communities frequently affected by
hurricanes, especially in terms of which
communities are rebuilt and which are
temporarily or permanently displaced.
Data on storms are combined with 1950-
2000 U.S. Census data.
Stephen Perz (University of Florida),
Grenville Barnes, Graeme Cumming,
Jane Southworth, Infrastructure Change,
Human Agency, and Resilience in Social
Ecological Systems. The PIs studied the
impact of new infrastructure on the
social-ecological resilience of complex
systems and on human resource and
livelihood decisions in Brazil, Bolivia,
and Peru in order to develop more complete
frameworks of human agency and
environmental change.
Jennifer Reich (University of
Denver), Susan Sterett, Martha
Wadsworth, Government and Voluntary
Association Coordination and Evacuees’ Experiences of Assistance in Colorado. The
PIs examined the response of Denver,
CO, government officials and service
providers to evacuees from Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita. Preliminary findings
suggest that the service providers were
constrained by federal government
policies and that there was a high-rate
of suffering from post-traumatic stress
disorder.
Hal Salzman (Urban Institute), Beatiz
Clewell, Leonard Lynn, Carlos Acosta,
Robert Lerman, B. Lindsay Lowell,
Pamela Meil, Globalization of Innovation,
Migration, and Systems of Human Capital
Development. The PIs examined the new
“third generation” stage of globalization
in which multinational corporations
move high-level knowledge employment
to emerging economies. They focus
on the effects of this change on specific
countries, especially for migration flows,
changes in education capacity, and shifts
in science and engineering work.
Lynn Smith-Lovin (Duke University),
Miller McPherson (University of
Arizona), Alex Rosenberg, Stephen
Teitsworth, Social Isolation in America:
Results from the First Phase of the Networks
and Niches Project. The PIs answer key
questions of association theory by comparing
responses to questions regarding
social networks, voluntary groups,
and social isolation in America, using
data from the 1985 and 2004 General
Social Survey. They found that reports
of close confidants in voluntary groups
decreased, while reports of close con-
fidant networks among spouses and
parents increased.
Roberta Spalter-Roth (American
Sociological Association), Norman
Fortenberry, Social Dynamics of
Engineering Instructional and Curricular Change: Creating an Interdisciplinary
Research Agenda. In order to understand
the dynamics facilitating acceptance and
diffusion of new curricula and pedagogy,
the PIs organized a workshop for
sociologists to work with engineers. The
workshop’s purpose was to develop
hypotheses and study designs based on
sociological concepts and theories to better
understand the relations among rates
of acceptance, prestige of educational
institutions, distribution of rewards, and
types of networks.
Edward Tiryakian and Kenneth Land (Duke University), A.Bejan, G. Merkx,
Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics.
The PIs focused on expanding the field
around the constructal theory of physics
by bringing together physicists along
with social scientists and engineers.
Some issues discussed in a workshop
were globalization, global migration, and
development.
Tricia Wachtendorf (University of
Delaware), José Holguín-Veras, Noel
Pérez, Satish Ukkusuri, Bethany Brown,
Characterization of the Supply Chains in
the Aftermath of Katrina: Logistical Issues
and Lessons from an Integrated Social
Sciences-Engineering Perspective. The PIs
identified three broad issues that led to
the logistical challenges resulting from
Hurricane Katrina: Initial impact on the system, institutional impact, and
logistical impact. The PIs are developing
models to make recommendations
concerning national response to future
extreme events.
Mary Waters (Harvard University),
Jean Rhodes, Christina Paxson, Adversity
and Resilience: Effects of Hurricane Katrina
on Vulnerable Populations. The PIs investigate
how varying levels of resources and
capacities of low-income, minority parents
before Hurricane Katrina affected
their ability to adjust to the trauma
caused by the hurricane. Both quantitative
and qualitative research was used.
FY 2007 Solicitation
Final remarks at the seminar were
given by Keith Crank, the outgoing
Director of the HSD program.
He reminded the audience that the
FY 2007 competition includes three
areas of emphasis: agents of change;
dynamics of human behavior; and
decision making, risk, and uncertainty.
The deadlines for HSD funding
range from January 23, 2007, through
February 21, 2007. More information
can be obtained on the NSF website at
www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=11678&org=NSF&
sel_org=NSF&from=fund.
