Ewa morawska biography of barack

Ewa Morawska is a professor of sociology at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.

For further information click here. Professor Morawska, thank you very much for taking the time today to hold this interview with me. Could you explain what diversity means to you by way of your work and field of expertise? Diversity is absolutely central to my work for two reasons: the nature of my research and the theoretical framework that informs it.

My research practice can be called a comparative-historical ethnography, and each of its three components is premised on the assumption of the inherent multiplicity or polyvocality of the social world.

Emeritus Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology, Email emorawsk@, Location Colchester Campus, Academic support hours Wednesday

Come to think of it, there may actually exist yet another reason for my emphasis on diversity, namely, the intellectual counter-reaction of a historian and an ethnographer to a proclivity for simplifying overgeneralizations in American immigration studies and in American social sciences in general which, after odd years of residence in the United States, still serve as my primary reference framework.

It is not that I preclude the existence of such commonalities; like Robert Merton, I do believe it is possible to formulate sound historical, that is, time- and place-bound generalizations. So for the several reasons that you have just delineated, diversity is a concept that is essential in your research. Perhaps you could let us know how you define the notion.

I can tell you what kinds of diversity I look for in my investigations of the interplay between immigrants and their social surroundings. I also look for diversity in macro- and micro-level societal structures—economic, political, sociocultural—which immigrants negotiate as they pursue their goals. Some of them are harder or less permeable than others and this hardness varies for different groups and different times and different places.

Since the predominant interest of researchers in our field of study has been on how immigrants themselves change as they integrate into the host society, the latter, undoubtedly interesting, issue is still an under-investigated area. As you well know, the term diversity is being used in contemporary times, well pretty much all over the place.

It's being used in the business world, in the political world.