Mathias Bös
In residence Fall 2007
Professor of Applied Sociology
Phillips University of Marburg, Germany
Address: 104 Mt. Auburn Street, Floor 3R
Telephone: 617.384.8351
Email: : bos@fas.harvard.edu
Biography
Mathias Bös is Professor of Applied Sociology and member of the Center for Conflict Studies at the Philipps-University in Marburg. He studied Sociology, Political Science and Social Psychology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt where he received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1996. Until 2003 he was lecturer at the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg. His main interests are on group conflicts and social change in Europe and North America, the dynamics of migration processes and race and ethnic relations. His publications include “Migration as a Problem of modern Societies” (1997), “Borderlines in a Globalized World” (2002) and “Race and Ethnicity” (2005). He teaches at the Research Training Group “Group-Focused Enmity: Causes, Phenomenology, Consequences” of the Philipps-University Marburg and the University of Bielefeld. He is a member of the Academic Council of the German Foundation for Peace Research. Bös has been a recipient of grants and awards from the Thyssen Foundation (1993), the German American Academic Council (1995/96), the Center for European Studies at Harvard (1998/99), the International Society for the Quality of Life Studies (1999), the Humboldt Foundation and the National Science Foundation (2001). While a resident at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, he will be working on his book on Race and Ethnicity – the History of two Concepts in American Sociology.
Project
“Race and Ethnicity – The History of Two Concepts in American Sociology”
The structure of group membership in modern democratic societies is constantly changing. This can be exemplified in the changing group position of African Americans and European immigrants in the USA during the 20th century. The book I am working on during my stay at the Du Bois Institute tells two different but intertwined stories, one of American sociology and the other of American society, in order to show how both influenced each other. During the last century the main dimensions of membership, analyzed in studies on American race and ethnic relations, shifted from the naturalized-biological to economic, civil and social, and finally to the cultural dimension of membership. Increasingly the concepts of race and ethnicity were used as codes for the degree of group discrimination; “races” are groups which are highly discriminated, whereas “ethnic groups” are on the verge of assimilation. By doing so these concepts reflect and establish group relations that make American society unique, compared to continental European societies.