Spe cial Iss ue on H uman C apital Volume 52 / Numbers 2-3 / June-September 1998 810 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019 Council Announces Leadership Change Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Council since 1995 The Council’s executive committee called him “a (as well as from 1979-1985), will resign the presi- first-rate social scientist and a proven, mature science dency effective October 1. He has been nominated by administrator.” President Clinton to direct the U.S. Census Bureau, and Senate confirmation hearings are expected in Search process September. Census 2000 has become controversial Paul B. Baltes of the Max Planck Institute for because of disagreements over the Bureau's proposal Human Development (Berlin), chair of the board of to use statistical sampling to remedy its usual under- directors, has announced the formation of a Pres- count of urban minorities; Mr. Prewitt hopes to work idential Search Committee. Cora Marrett, provost of with Congress and the professional community both the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will be within and outside the bureau to ensure a Census free chair. Members include: Lisa Anderson, dean of the of politics. School of International Affairs, Columbia University; Jean Comaroff, professor of anthropology, University Interim president appointed of Chicago; Anne Petersen, senior vice-president for Albert Fishlow of the Council on Foreign Relations, programs, W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Burton Singer, chair of the executive committee of the Council's professor of demography and public affairs, Office of board of directors, has announced the appointment of Population Research, Princeton University; Marta Orville Gilbert Brim as interim president. Mr. Brim Tienda, director, Office of Population Research, received a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University Princeton University; Kenneth Wachter, professor of and taught at the University of Wisconsin before demography, University of California, Berkeley and joining the Russell Sage Foundation as a staff officer David Weiman, SSRC program director; as well as in 1955. He was Russell Sage president from 1964 to Mr. Baltes and Mr. Fishlow (ex officio). Mary Byrne 1972 and then served for ten years as president of the McDonnell, executive program director of the Council, Foundation for Child Development. Since 1989, he will serve as staff to the committee. has directed one of the most intellectually ambitious A description of the position of Council president of the MacArthur Foundation research networks, on will be widely circulated. Persons wishing to apply Successful Midlife Development. Mr. Brim knows or to propose candidates are urged to contact Chair, the SSRC well, having served on research planning Presidential Search Committee, SSRC, 810 Seventh committees and as a funder of Council programs. Avenue, New York, NY 10019. 29 international trends and impacts. We need a short- Introducing the Human hand to refer to this long and complicated thought Capital Initiative and many of the useful terms––human resources, capacity building, human capital––already have spe- by Mary Byrne McDonnell cific meanings. We are talking specifically about human analytic research capacity at the tertiary level The Social Science Research Council, in cooperation and beyond. This refers to training––but not only to with the American Council of Learned Societies, has training––to using and sustaining intellectual research embarked on an initiative concerned with the devel- capacity internationally, particularly around the set of opment of intellectual capital on a global scale. A big issues facing humanity over the coming decades. series of planning meetings began in January 1997 We are using the term “human research capital” to and engaged some 60 individuals from around the refer to a process that engages the question of form- world in three separate sessions held in New York; ing an intellectual community. We work from an Bellagio, Italy; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The assumption that this research capacity may be devel- meetings assisted in identifying individuals who oped in many types of institutions, may be employed might sit on an international steering committee and in various ways through our societies. Its subject working groups convened around the human capital matter and its participants will be fully international. agenda. In fall 1997 a nine-member, fully interna- For an SSRC presentation on this subject in April tional steering committee was appointed, and it held 1997, committee chair Lisa Anderson prepared a set its first meeting in January 1998. of remarks on “Human Capital in the Social Sciences” This initiative begins from the premise that there is from the perspective of her discipline, area specialty a global need for new kinds of research professionals and institutional background. A revised version fol- who are capable and comfortable understanding local lows. We have asked members of the newly appointed situations in relationship to global, transnational and Human Capital Committee, or their nominees, to respond to this article from their own national, disci- plinary and institutional perspectives, and several of these pieces also appear. This issue of Items also Human Capital Committee includes excerpts from talks presented at “Social Lisa Anderson, dean of the School of International and Sciences Around the World,” a symposium in honor Public Affairs at Columbia University, agreed to chair of the SSRC's 75th anniversary which took place in the committee. She is joined on the committee by: New York City on June 11, 1998. These presentations Paul Evans, director, Center for Asia Pacific Studies, contribute to the attempt to create a global map of the University of York; C.T. Kurien, professor emeritus, social sciences described later in this issue. Madras Institute of Development Studies; Wilfredo Lozano, director, Facultad Latinoamericana de ciencias; Kurt Juergen Maass, secretary general, Institut fuer ■ ■ Auslandsbeziehungen, Elzbieta Matynia, East and CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE Central Europe Program, New School for Social Council Announces Leadership Social Sciences Around the Change 29 World 43 Research; Joyce Moock, associate senior vice president, Introducing the Human Capital Latin America, Elizabeth Rockefeller Foundation; Thandika Mkandawire, direc- Initiative, Mary Byrne Jelin 43 tor, United Nations Research Institute for Social McDonnell 30 Eastern Europe, Michael D. Human Capital in the Social Kennedy 44 Development; Salim Nasr, program officer, Ford Sciences, Lisa Anderson 31 Middle East, Rashid Khalidi 47 Foundation (Cairo) and Wang Gung Wu, director, East Social Science and Social South Asia, Veena Das 48 Asian Institute, University of Singapore. Together the Reality, C. T. Kurien 36 Africa, Michael Chege 50 expertise of this group spans the globe. Social Science and a Rapidly Second Round: The International Globalizing World, Dissertation Field Research Staff: Mary Byrne McDonnell, executive program Helga Nowotny 38 Fellowship Program, Kenton director, SSRC; Steven Wheatley, executive director, The Human Capital Program: W. Worcester 53 ACLS. The Next Steps, Current Activities at the Council 58 Mary Byrne McDonnell 40 Recent Council Publications 65 30\ITEMS VOLUME 52, NUMBERS 2/3 construed––the SSRC among them––the production Human Capital in the and maintenance of humanists and social scientists Social Sciences and the institutions in which they learn skills and con- duct research must be central. Those scholars are our by Lisa Anderson* “human capital”; identifying their needs, purposes and audiences, and constructing the necessary sup- Although there is much debate about the significance port—the training, research collaborations, vehicles of “globalization,” there is little doubt that time-hon- for dissemination of findings—should be a principal ored provincialisms—intellectual as well as geo- aim of those of us involved in postgraduate social sci- graphical—are being challenged by new perspectives, ence and public policy education. identities and commitments. Our growing awareness Three perspectives from which to approach this of our world citizenship also reminds us of the depth project present themselves. We need to ask about the of our immediate attachments. How will our experi- producers and consumers of social science research— ences of simultaneous global participation and local who they are and where they work. We need to know affiliation shape and reshape each other? How will to what kinds of issues social scientists will be devot- scholars in the social sciences and humanities reflect ing their attention. Finally, we need to consider what and mold those same shifting relationships? Indeed, kind of training and institutional support the answers what will be the contours, the role, the purpose of to the first two questions suggest. social science research in the future? What kinds of social science and what kinds of social scientists will The practitioners, parameters and purchasers of we need? With whom, how, and where will they social science research work? What will they need to know? In what skills One of the most dramatic changes in social science shall they be trained? in the last fifty years has been the internationalization In addressing these questions, we adopt two of its practitioners. Social science research, as exem- premises about the nature of scholarly research in the plified and supported by the SSRC, initially developed future. First, we stipulate that pressing public policy as a quintessentially