This 5×5 convenes a group of scholars broadly interested in interrogating the historical origins of the public/private distinction in economic and political life. They are interested in understanding how the divide between private and public life is understood, how that divide has changed historically and fed into evolving conceptions of the common good, and how institutions that are organized around the pursuit of that common good such as state and nation intersect with the public/private distinction.
This team will take advantage of the range of historical, disciplinary, and geographic perspectives represented by the group’s scholars to allow them to approach these questions in new light. The majority of this group uses historical, archival methods in their research, with subject area expertise ranging from seventeenth century diplomacy in the North Atlantic through the neoliberal policy-making of the recent (and ongoing) past. Team members all broadly work on questions of state power, economic development, and the role of ideas in shaping both. Uniting this historical and comparative work its its ability to illuminate how categories of public and private that have become naturalized in contemporary life are actually relatively historically new, and do not map cleanly onto non-Western, non-North Atlantic contexts.
Mary Shi LSA Collegiate Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology
Martin Williams Associate Professor in Organizational Studies
Naomi Lamoureaux Stanley B. Resor Professor Emeritus of Economics, Senior Research scholar School of Law
Jonah Stuart Brundage Assistant Professor of Sociology
Elizabeth Popp Berman Richard H. Price Professor and Director of Organizational Studies; Professor of Sociology (by courtesy)