Balancing scholarly work with public debate is desirable but not always easy. How does one make a strong impact on the major issues of our time without losing weight and credibility as a researcher? One of Sweden's internationally most well-known researchers, and for many years the country's most frequent political scientist on DN Debatt, shares his experiences.Recorded at the Institute for Futures Studies in November 2024.
--------
32:52
--------
32:52
The Global Study of Everyday Norms, with Kimmo Eriksson
Society’s everyday norms specify which behaviors are socially acceptable in which situations. How similar or different are everyday norms in societies around the world—and why? To answer these questions, we conducted the Global Study of Everyday Norms: a preregistered survey experiment with 25,000 participants in 90 countries.The study was designed to test the theory that everyday norms are determined by the concerns that a behavior elicits in a specific situation in interaction with society's sensitivity to that type of concern. Thus, it is a theory about how norms vary across societies and situated behaviors simultaneously. In this talk I will motivate the theory and present some of the rich results obtained in the Global Study of Everyday Norms.Global Social Norms website: https://www.globalsocialnorms.org/Kimmo Eriksson is a professor of mathematics/applied mathematics at Mälardalen University, and has a PhD in social psychology. He leads the global research network Global Social Norms (globalsocialnorms.org).
--------
37:36
--------
37:36
Do Harsher Punishments Deter Crime? With Chesa Boudin
During Chesa Boudin's 2,5 years in office as San Francisco's elected district attorney, incarceration plummeted - the number of people in the county jail fell by approximately 40 percent. Meanwhile both violent and non violent crime rates fell by double digits. Some of these changes may have been accelerated by COVID and police behavior. Did San Francisco create a virtuous cycle where decreasing incarceration feeds into decreasing crime? More broadly, California has safely cut its prison population nearly in half as crime rates near modern lows. What lessons can we learn from San Francisco and California's successful decarceration?Welcome to a seminar with Chesa Boudin, the founding executive director of Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, a policy and advocacy hub. He served as San Francisco’s elected district attorney from 2020 until 2022. During that time, Boudin implemented reforms to ensure that the criminal legal system delivered safety and justice for all. He significantly expanded the office’s victim services’ division; eliminated prosecutors’ use of moneybail; prosecuted police for excessive force; sued the manufacturers of ghostguns; expanded diversion to address root causes of crime, and reduced incarceration significantly. During his time in office both violent and non-violent crime fell by double digits. Prior to his election Boudin clerked for two federal judges and worked for years as a deputy public defender. He is a graduate of Yale college and Yale law school and attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. His biological parents spent a combined 62 years in prison starting when he was a baby.Discussants Camila Salazar Atías, Senior specialist, destructive environments, FryshusetAmina Azhar, Federal Public Defender - Eastern District of CaliforniaCraig Haney, social psychologist, professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a researcher on The Stanford Prison Experiment.Moderator: Jerzy Sarnecki, professor emeritus of general criminology at Stockholm University. His research area is mainly life cycle criminology and criminal networks.
--------
1:06:36
--------
1:06:36
Richer and More Equal - A New History of Wealth in the West, with Daniel Waldenström
Daniel Waldenström, professor of Economics, presents his book "Richer and More Equal: A New History of Wealth in the West". The book analyzes wealth accumulation and inequality in the modern west. Using cutting-edge research and new data, it shows that what stands out since the late 1800s is a massive rise in the size of the middle class and its share of society’s total wealth. Unfettered capitalism, it seems, doesn’t have to lead to boundless inequality. The key to progress was political and institutional change that enabled citizens to become educated, better paid, and to amass wealth through housing and pension savings. Among the lessons for the future is to pursue tax and social policies that raise the wealth of people in the bottom and middle rather than cutting wealth of entrepreneurs at the top.Daniel Waldenström is Professor of Economics and Director of the Taxes and Society research program at IFN, Sweden. His research focuses on economic inequality, taxes, fiscal policy and economic history.This recording is from a research seminar held at the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, February 2025.Moderator: Gustaf Arrhenius, professor of practical philosophy.Research seminars are held at the institute most Wednesdays and are open to the public. Online participation possible. Sign up here to get invitations.
--------
1:27:36
--------
1:27:36
Futures by Proxy - Anticipatory Governance amongst Policy Professionals, with Christina Garsten
Anticipatory action is a key means through which organizational life is experienced, conducted, disciplined and normalized. In this seminar, the various ways in which policy professionals in think tanks, and in similar kinds of organizations, engage in future foresight as a means of imagining and governing futures will be explored. Special focus will be placed on how they make use of resources and tools at hand in the creation of future scenarios, and how anticipatory action, or ‘futures literacy’ is taught as a central component in organizational governance.Research seminar with Christina Garsten, Principal of SCAS and Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm and Uppsala University. Since 2022 she is President of the European network of institutes for advanced study, NetIAS.Recorded at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, March 2025.
Sverige