Ann Swidler

Biographic Data

ID110027
NAMEAnn Swidler
GIVEN NAMESAnn
FAMILY NAMESwidler
SIGNATURESWIDLER A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of California, Berkeley
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS61
TOTAL CITATIONS4158
AUTHOR COUNT59
EDITOR COUNT2
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1973
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX11

  • Challenging Modernity

    Robert N Bellah, Robert Ν Bellah et al.BOOKChallenging Modernity2024

    "For the sociologist Robert Bellah, questions about the meaning and responsibility of human beings in the present emerge out of our self-awareness of our responsibilities to one another and the planet. He places religion as the central social institution through which this is understood. At the time of his passing in 2013, Bellah had begun formulating what would have been his next book, a narrative that demonstrated how the axial age (500 - 300 B…

  • Challenging Modernity

    Ann Swidler, Richard Madsen et al.BOOKChallenging Modernity2024

  • Challenging Modernity

    Ann Swidler, Richard Madsen et al.BOOKChallenging Modernity2024

  • Life's Work: History, Biography, and Ideas

    Open AccessAnn SwidlerARTICLEAnnual Review of Sociology2023Cited by: 5References: 57

    Part personal autobiography, part intellectual history, this article offers lessons from a long career, reflections on my sociological contributions, and an account of how major social changes shaped my trajectory and made me the sociologist I am. I also offer an assessment of some of my central ideas and some new suggestions about how to understand culture

  • Transplanting institutional innovation: Comparing the success of NGOs and missionary Protestantism in sub-Saharan Africa

    Open AccessM Burchardt, Ann SwidlerARTICLETheory and Society2020Cited by: 3References: 74

    Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create coll…

  • A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of Aids Altruism in Africa

    Open AccessAnn Swidler, Susan Watkins et al.BOOKFraught Embrace2017

    In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives. This book shows how the dreams of these altruists became entangled with complex institutional and human relationships. The book describes the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of those who seek to help, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom b…

  • A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of Aids Altruism in Africa

    Ann Swidler, Susan Watkins et al.BOOKA Fraught Embrace2017

  • Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of Aids Altruism in Africa

    Ann Swidler, Susan Cotts WatkinsBOOKFraught Embrace2017

  • Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of Aids Altruism in Africa

    Ann Swidler, Susan Cotts WatkinsBOOKFraught Embrace2017

  • Brokers’ Careers: Merit, Miracles, and Malice

    Ann Swidler, Susan Watkins et al.CHAPTERFraught Embrace2017

    This chapter considers how brokers perceive that merit, miracles, and malice structure their opportunities and thus their outcomes. It analyzes the ways that the career aspirations of brokers at all levels can suddenly be derailed by the death of a parent, salvaged with the help of a benefactor, or altered by any number of others who have the power to help or harm. Malawian brokers, particularly, tell their career histories by drawing on three na…

  • Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing

    Open AccessM Lamont, Ann SwidlerARTICLEQualitative Sociology2014Cited by: 347References: 83

  • Social Resilience in the Neo-Liberal Era

    Alan Bernstein, Jonathan Arac et al.BOOKSocial Resilience in the…2013

    What is the impact of three decades of neoliberal narratives and policies on communities and individual lives? What are the sources of social resilience? This book offers a sweeping assessment of the effects of neoliberalism, the dominant feature of our times. It analyzes the ideology in unusually wide-ranging terms as a movement that not only opened markets but also introduced new logics into social life, integrating macro-level analyses of the …

  • Cultural Sources of Institutional Resilience

    Ann Swidler, Peter A Hall et al.CHAPTERSocial Resilience in the…2013

    One of the great challenges of the neoliberal era is that of institutional capacity: the capacity of collectivities – from communities, to states, to transnational bodies – to create or sustain resilient social forms that embody collective purposes, enforce rights and obligations, and have the capacity to organize collective action. Neoliberalism, both as ideology and as policy, has a love–hate relationship with institutions. On the one hand, as …

  • Working Misunderstandings: Donors, Brokers, and Villagers in Africa's Aids Industry

    Open AccessSusan Watkins, Susan Cotts Watkins et al.ARTICLEPopulation and Development Review2013Cited by: 41References: 37

  • African affirmations: The religion of modernity and the modernity of religion

    Open AccessAnn SwidlerARTICLEInternational Sociology2013Cited by: 7References: 48

    This article contrasts three broad traditions that organize competing patterns of authority, community, and cooperation in contemporary Africa: the Axial religions (Christianity and Islam); indigenous chieftaincy systems based around chief, lineage, and clan; and globalized modernity, represented primarily by NGOs and the global human rights agenda. The article argues that in many respects it is the Axial religions that are the most modernizing, …

  • Where Do Axial Commitments Reside?: Problems in Thinking about the African Case

    Open AccessAnn SwidlerCHAPTERAxial Age and Its Consequences2012

  • Where Do Axial Commitments Reside?: Problems in Thinking about the African Case

    Open AccessAnn SwidlerCHAPTERAxial Age and Its Consequences2012

  • Outsourcing Social Transformation: Development NGOs as Organizations

    Susan Watkins, Susan Cotts Watkins et al.ARTICLEAnnual Review of Sociology2012Cited by: 102References: 147

    The literature on development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) envisions an alternative form of social organization, one that is more altruistic, more cooperative, and less hierarchical than governments and for-profit organizations. We engage with the literature on quite different terms: NGOs and their donors are organizations, and much of what is distinctive about them as organizations derives from the special uncertainties they face due to …

  • Teach a Man to Fish”: The Sustainability Doctrine and Its Social Consequences

    Open AccessAnn Swidler, Susan Watkins et al.ARTICLEWorld Development2009Cited by: 101References: 32

  • Condom Semiotics: Meaning and Condom Use in Rural Malawi

    Open AccessIddo Tavory, Ann SwidlerARTICLEAmerican Sociological Review2009Cited by: 108References: 47

    This article examines the widespread resistance to condom use in sub-Saharan Africa by describing the major semiotic axes that organize how people talk about condoms and condom use. These axes include the "sweetness" of sex, trust and love between sexual partners, and assessments of risk and danger. Using data from rural Malawi, we show that framing the meaning of condoms as a simple choice between risky behavior and rational attempts to protect …

  • Hearsay ethnography: Conversational journals as a method for studying culture in action

    Open AccessSusan Watkins, Susan Cotts Watkins et al.ARTICLEPoetics2009Cited by: 38References: 58

  • Reassessing HIV Prevention

    Open AccessMalcolm Potts, Daniel T Halperin et al.ARTICLEScience2008

    The largest investments in AIDS prevention targeted to the general population are being made in interventions where the evidence for large-scale impact is uncertain.

  • Comment on Stephen Vaisey’s “Socrates, Skinner, and Aristotle: Three Ways of Thinking About Culture in Action”

    Open AccessAnn SwidlerARTICLESociological Forum2008

    In this essay, I respond to Vaisey’s arguments on culture and cognition, noting our points of agreement and disagreement and posing new ideas for future research.

  • Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life : with a new preface

    Ann Swidler, Richard Madsen et al.BOOKHabits of the heart2007Cited by: 156

    Examines how individualism and civic responsibility contribute to and detract from America's common good. In the Preface to this edition, the authors relate the arguments of the book both to the current realities of American society and the growing debate about the country's future.

  • Ties of Dependence: Aids and Transactional Sex in Rural Malawi

    Open AccessAnn Swidler, Susan Watkins et al.ARTICLEStudies in Family Planning2007Cited by: 98References: 19

    In sub-Saharan Africa, the exchange of sex for material support-labeled "transactional sex" by Western observers-is claimed by some to be a major driver of the AIDS pandemic. Transactional sex is described as akin to prostitution, a degraded form of sexual expression forced on vulnerable women by economic desperation. Using evidence from rural Malawi, we demonstrate that patron-client ties and a moral obligation to support the needy, which are fu…