Charles Hirschman

Charles Hirschman, professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Washington, will write a book on shifting ethnic divisions over long periods of history and across societies, particularly in North America and Southeast Asia. Although the ebb and flow of ethnic conflict has varied considerably across the globe, Hirschman observes the significance of such large-scale historical forces as the expansion of empires in premodern societies, the spread of nations and nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and long distance migration. Hirschman's work will offer new understandings of the origins and complex patterns of ethnic antagonism and adaptation that persist today.