Mario Small (Harvard) will discuss America’s controversies about the nature of poverty, inequality, and economic opportunity. He argues that the public discourse about these problems is undermined by an inability to communicate evidence about their causes and potential solutions. Some of this evidence is statistical, but much of it stems from qualitative studies about the lives and communities of the disadvantaged. He argues that an enhancement of qualitative reasoning would allow more serious consideration of the evidence, enhance public discourse, and lead to a more effective politics.
Panelists:
Robert Krulwich, co-host, Radiolab; science correspondent, NPR
Nick Lemann, Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism; Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; Staff writer, the New Yorker
Moderated by Thomas DiPrete, Giddings Professor of Sociology.
Speaker Bio
Mario L. Small, Ph.D., Grafstein Family Professor at Harvard University, is the author of award-winning books and articles on social networks, urban poverty, social inequality, and social science methods. The only two-time recipient of the C. Wright Mills Best Book Award, Small is the author of Villa Victoria: The transformation of social capital in a Boston barrio and Unanticipated Gains: Origins of network inequality in everyday life. His latest book, Someone To Talk To, was recently released by Oxford University Press. A study of how people decide whom to approach when seeking support, the book is an inquiry into human nature, a critique of network analysis, and a discourse on the role of qualitative research in the big-data era.
A former Dean of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, current board member of the Spencer and Russell Sage Foundations, and long-term associate editor of several sociology journals, Small has long reflected on and written about the importance of social science to a democratic society. In recent years, this interest has centered on how social science tools to assess empirical evidence may improve the tenor and quality of public discourse.
