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Constructing Cosmopolitans? Museums, the Nation, and the World. Reinventing God and Creating Citizens: The Religious Lives of the Children of Immigrants Religion on the Edge: The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: London, Kuala Lumpur, and Johannesburg. The Transnational Studies Initiative: Conversations Across Borders
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CURRENT PROJECTSConstructing Cosmopolitans? Museums, the Nation, and the World.
I hypothesize that whether museums view themselves as constructing cosmopolitans and how they represent the nation’s connections to the world is likely to be shaped by internal and external institutional factors. Within museums, institutional history, administrative structures, the nature of the collections, and the socioeconomic characteristics of the visitor and donor base will strongly influence what museums exhibit and how they do what they do. Outside, the organizational fields in which the museum is embedded and the urban scale and cultural armature—the geography, ethos, political economy, and municipal resources particular cities bring to bear—shape and are shaped by the museum sector. This project grows out of research I have done on global cultural production and consumption over the last twenty years. My earlier work examined these processes by looking at migration and religion. Rather than focusing on how migrants become integrated into the countries where they settle, I found that many people stay connected to their homelands at the same time they become integrated into the societies where they move, and that they often use religion to do so. Yet, while people live transnational lives, the institutions that serve them remain stubbornly nationally-bounded. In this increasingly global world, theorists like Beck, Calhoun and Appiah argue that cosmopolitanism is no longer an option but a necessity. Moreover, we need to go beyond ideology to create viable transnational institutions and political arenas where global problems can be effectively addressed. While museums may seem like unlikely contributors to these debates, they have a long history of creating national citizens. They are part of the cultural arsenal that introduces and disseminates elements that shape the national imaginary. This project asks whether museums today also see themselves as providing visitors with tools to imagine a social contract fulfilled across the boundaries of the nation-state. . . . . . . . Reform Through Return? The Impact of Return Migration and Social Remittances on Health and Education in India and China. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Co-Principal Investigator: Jennifer Holdaway (The Social Science Research Council)
Back to Top. . . . . . . Reinventing God and Creating Citizens: The Religious Lives of the Children of Immigrants
To do so, this study explores the multiple reference groups and cultural packages used by second generation Gujarati-origin Muslims and Hindus in Boston, Massachusetts; Leicester, England, and their counterparts in Baroda, India, to create religious selves and how and where they put their faith into action. This study starts with place. Rather than assuming that respondents identify ethnically or religiously, it looks at how young people, in particular context of receptions, with particular political economies, culture, histories, and approaches to ethnic and religious diversity, identify and mobilize. How do they see themselves in relation to the native-born and their co-ethnics and co-believers? How are they seen by others? To what extent do religious and ethnic identities result from multi-sited, multi-layered conversations between co-religionists and religious and ethnic “others” around the world? How do these identity choices shape how and where the children of immigrants put their rights and responsibilities into practice? Back to Top. . . . . . . Religion on the Edge: De-centering and Re-centering the Sociology of Religion With Courtney Bender, Wendy Cadge, and David Smilde This book project stakes claim to an intellectual space that we are individually and collectively shaping within and on the edge of the sociology of religion. On the one hand, we seek to broaden the debates within this sub-discipline. On the other, we seek to bring in new voices from without by looking at non-Christian, non-Western, and non-congregational religious forms. We are impressed by the numerous scholars doing interesting, innovative work on religion who do not identify as sociologists of religion. Their research clearly demonstrates how using religion as a window through which to enter core sociological debates can provide powerful insights about religion in the contemporary world and social life more broadly. We hope that the proposed volume will expand our disciplinary conversation, bring the sociology of religion more centrally back into it, and help train future generations of students in more adventurous, creative ways. Back to Top. . . . . . . The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: London, Kuala Lumpur, and Johannesburg. With Jose Casanova (Georgetown University, Manuel Vásquez (University of Florida) and Josh Dewind (SSRC) and project teams in England, Malaysia, and South Africa
Back to Top. . . . . . . The Transnational Studies Initiative: Conversations Across Borders This year’s Transnational Studies Initiative workshop theme is global politics and culture. A preliminary schedule of our events is as follows:
Back to TopOTHER ACTIVITIESMember, Committee on Committees, American Sociological Association, 2009-2011. Member, Transnational and Global Sociology Section Council, American Sociological Association, 2009-present. Member, Selection Committee, ACLS Doctoral Fellowship Program, 2010. Co-Convener, Working Group on Globalization and Religion, Social Science Research Council, 2001-present. Member, Institute for Policy Dialogue, Migration Working Group, Columbia University, 2007-present. Member, Advisory Committee, Zeit-Stiftung Fellowship, Hamburg Germany, 2007- present. Associate, International Migration, Integration, and Social Cohesion in Europe Network (IMISCOE), 2005-present Back to Top
© 2009 Peggy J. Levitt |
To what extent do national artistic and cultural institutions—in part established to create national citizens—now see themselves as creating cosmopolitans as well? As countries become more diverse and their geopolitical fortunes rise and fall, how do different kinds of museums change how they represent the nation in the world? What can we learn about regional variations in cultural globalization and cosmopolitanism by looking at the museum sector? This study explores these questions by comparing art and ethnographic museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia. 
Much of the debate on migration and development focuses on economic processes and impacts. But migration is also shaped by, and has profound effects upon, social and cultural practices and on how institutions develop and operate. This project explores these aspects of the migration-development nexus by looking comparatively at how high-skilled migrants from Gujarat, India and Yunnan, China, who have spent time in the United Kingdom and in the United States, affect the health and education sectors. In particular, we examine how returnees and social remittances influence policy formation and institution building, including ideas about health and education, appropriate institutional arrangements, and service delivery and management. We also look at how those ideas are transferred and received. 
This project challenges three common assumptions in research on immigration and religion: (1) that while the first generation may actively participate in the economic, political, and religious life of its homelands, the second generation will not, (2) that religious identities are constructed nationally, rather than in conversation with co-religionists around the world, and that they are of secondary importance to ethnic and national affinities, and (3) that contexts of reception are primarily shaped by national factors rather than local, regional, and global influences. 
Immigrant minority groups frequently face discrimination from their host societies on the basis of national origin, race, culture, and religion. But religion also provides identities, connections, resources and practices that facilitate immigrants’ adaptations and integration into new contexts. To improve understandings of religion in the day-to-day lives of international migrants, this Social Science Research (SSRC) Project on the Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities investigated the roles of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism for immigrants settled in Malaysia, South Africa, and Great Britain. We examined how national and urban context, the unique characteristics of particular religious traditions, and migration and diversity management regimes influence majority-minority relations.