Cultural Sociology
Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research / AISSR
Within the programme group Cultural Sociology, a wide variety of social phenomena is explored using diverse research methods, often in collaboration with interdisciplinary research centers.
How do people create status differences based on cultural distinctions? What is digitalization doing to our economic lives? How do new genres emerge in music? What makes people trust institutions? How do we value nature? Clearly, a wide range of social phenomena is studied within the Cultural Sociology programme group.
Accordingly, a broad array of data, research methods, and techniques is employed, including ethnographic observation, various forms of interviewing, network analysis, computer-simulated modelling, survey research, big data analysis, and experiments.
The programme group studies culture in two interconnected senses: the meaningful dimension of human life, as well as the cultural elements that human beings reproduce. These include not only tastes, values, and knowledge, but also devices, technologies, organizations, or entire institutions. These two senses of culture are inevitably interconnected and are to be studied as such.
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Onderwijsinterventies voor kansarme leerlingen
SEPP (the Scalable Education Programs Partnership) brengt de expertise van academische onderzoekers, onderwijsbeleidsmakers en mensen uit de onderwijspraktijk bij elkaar met als doel om een ‘gereedschapskist’ van bewezen effectieve, schaalbare en potentieel complementaire onderwijsinterventies voor kansarme leerlingen (en hun verzorgers) te onderzoeken, verder te ontwikkelen en onder de aandacht te brengen. SEPP is in het leven geroepen door de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
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Group Violence
The Group Violence research programme aims to understand how group behaviour affects the likelihood and severity of violence in public space. While the prevailing social scientific focus remains on individual perpetrators and background factors, the empirical reality of public violence is one of multiple attackers, multiple victims and multiple bystanders.
The research proposed here furthers the study of violence with a novel theory that identifies how group behaviour affects the outcome of antagonistic situations – and with comparative empirical studies to test the theory.
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Designing Rhythms for Social Resilience (DRSR)
This research contributes to the humanities by an analysis of how people process their life experiences within cities, and also by examining how these experiences are increasingly being documented within urban data centers. The DRSR team will develop a methodology that integrates digital data and visual and physical rhythm analysis for enabling new design interventions in neighborhoods.
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Markets, morals, and mass intimacy: How platformization transforms the global sex industry
This project is the first systematic study of the digitization and platformization of sex work. With their low entry barriers, their live and interactive character, webcam platforms are among the sex industry’s fastest growing segments. According to critics platforms exploit and monopolize sex work, creating a global proletariat of performers.
Proponents claim however that webcamming provides safety, autonomy and potentially high earnings for sex workers. But despite its multi-billion-dollar turnover and disputed social and economic impact, empirical knowledge of the industry is limited. Consequently, it operates largely under the radar of scholars, policy makers and the media.
The main aim of this project is to analyze competition, working conditions and regulation within the industry.
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The Return of the Medici? The Global Rise of Private Museums for Contemporary Art
Since 2000, over 200 private art museums have been established worldwide. This development is highly controversial: according to some they are neo-aristocratic institutions which translate economic into cultural inequality, while others argue that they democratize and support art, especially when government support is absent or declining.
This project is the first to study the rise of private museums systematically. The aim is to understand how the formation of new global elites and their entry into cultural fields results in the formation of new institutions and the reconfiguration of these fields.