The Superglue of Social Life

Posted on March 4, 2026 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Sébastien Tutenges and Philip Smith, editors of Collective Effervescence, write about human connection in today’s alienating, over-individualized world.

Something is happening to “collective effervescence.” The concept is no longer confined to dusty volumes of classical French sociology. Today podcast hosts, public intellectuals, and best-selling authors routinely invoke it when discussing belonging, ritual, awe, and the need for more human connection in today’s alienating, over-individualized world. The concept was formulated over one hundred years ago by the French founder of sociology, Émile Durkheim. His original understanding emphasized the positive impacts of high-energy gatherings involving physically co-present groups engaged in religious ritual activity. These events pivoted around dance, music, and chanting. There was a sense of buzz as isolated individuals became a “society” with purpose and meaning.

The truth of Durkheim’s analysis seems self-evident. We’ve all experienced collective effervescence in our everyday lives – at a concert, drinking with friends, during a wedding party, or in a sports stadium. But many questions remain. Can collective effervescence occur without physical co-presence, for instance, in live-streamed events or online gaming communities? Can it emerge in low-energy or silent group practices such as meditation or prayer? Can it be generated in the routine spaces of everyday life: courtrooms, workplaces, and bookshops? Can it be slow-burning and long-lasting rather than ecstatic and transitory? Most crucial of all, when does it generate positive solidarity and when does it fuel exclusion, deviance, or violent evil?

These questions motivated us to put together the edited volume Collective Effervescence. Although the title might be simple and unimaginative, the contents are anything but. They challenge expectations. We reached out to leading scholars to stress test the concept rather than make predictable applications. Drawing upon their latest research, the book identifies and examines for the first time the varied forms of effervescence: loud and quiet, sacred and secular, co-present and digitally mediated, euphoric and dark.

Taken together, the book shows that collective effervescence is neither a relic of ancient religion nor simply a fancy word for the excitement of crowds. It is a social superglue, adaptable and sticking to almost anything. Not only can it be squeezed out of the tube in ecstatic gatherings, it can also quietly bond  those engaged in shared contemplation, stick to the depths of the personality, catalyse crazy and criminal behaviors, bind colleagues in the workplace, and fuse with the social anxieties of our age. In a world marked by polarization, digital mediation, and armed conflict, collective effervescence is not only ubiquitous but also constantly taking new forms as it brings people together. The urgent task for our age is to understand how it is generated, when it binds, and when it burns like the droplet that got in your eye. This book takes up that challenge.

Filed under: american studies, Anthropology, cultural studies, Education, Mass Media and Communications, Music, Religion, sociology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

European Higher Education, Social Responsibility, and the Local Democratic Mission

Posted on March 12, 2025 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Sjur Bergan, author of European Higher Education, Social Responsibility, and the Local Democratic Mission, writes about how and why universities should promote democracy by working with local communities.

Both the U.S. and Europe are experiencing a surge of rightwing populism, which among others things questions the value of academically based knowledge and understanding. We saw this clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic, with severe consequences. One of the many implications of the surge of the populist right is therefore that it lends added urgency to the question of how higher education can demonstrate its importance to society.

Higher education can demonstrate its positive effect on people’s lives  by working with – and not just in – the local communities of which universities are a part. This has been done previously in the U.S., as exemplified by the Anchor Institutions Task Force. Recently, a white paper produced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships and supported by the Teagle Foundation spelled out a potential focus of the urban mission of universities.

In Europe, the local role of higher education has been less visible to the public, but as discussed in European Higher Education, Social Responsibility, and the Local Democratic Mission, many European universities do work closely with their communities.  Europe is a diverse continent, with some 50 countries and even more languages, and with countries ranging in size from Andorra and San Marino to Ukraine and France. There is no single model of community engagement.

Despite this diversity, common denominators can be identified.  The local role of universities must encompass all the major purposes of higher education: preparation for the labor market, preparation for life as active citizens in democratic societies, personal development, and the development and maintenance of a broad, advanced knowledge base. The local mission of higher education must not only be economic but also societal and democratic, and university leaders must see it as their issue. Faculty and students running day-to-day activities must be supported by their leaders. Institutions must make their local democratic mission part of their institutional strategy. 

Leaders, faculty, and students must relate to the local community. They must see the community as their own, and higher education must see community cooperation as beneficial not only to the community but also to the university. Pertinent topics for teaching and research can be found locally as well as nationally and on the global stage. Universities can be local, national, and global simultaneously. The relationship between “town and gown” must be one of mutual respect, where both universities and local communities recognize each other’s potential and competences.

Just as major higher education organizations and the Anchor Institutions Task Force coordinate programs and policies in the U.S., Europe needs stronger coordination of universities’ work with local communities.  This coordination must consider the greater role that public authorities (government, in U.S. terms) play in developing education policies in Europe than in the U.S. Civil society is important in both contexts and may become even more important as part of the citizen response to right wing populism. Europe needs a platform or a framework where higher education institutions as well as both local and national public authorities exchange experience and develop common policies. It also must take account the important role played by civil society. A European platform is necessary to put the local democratic mission of universities squarely on the political and policy agenda.  This is important for democracy. Such a framework is also needed to raise broad public awareness of the key role of higher education in making our communities the kind of societies in which we would like to live.

In the current political context, international cooperation is more challenging than it was even a few years ago. Russia is waging a full-scale war of aggression on Ukraine, and Azerbaijan has ethnically cleansed Nagorno/Karabakh (Artsakh) of its Armenian population. Relations across the Atlantic are more tense than they have been for a very long time.  Precisely in this situation, a platform for cooperation between local actors –higher education, public authorities, and civil society – can contribute to maintaining a dialogue and a sense of common purpose that seems endangered by the course that “high politics” is taking. Higher education leaders in the U.S. and Europe have been cooperating for almost three decades to further the international democratic mission of higher education. This cooperation could now extend locally. 

Filed under: economics/business, Education, Labor Studies, political science, sociology, transnational politics, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Announcing a new series: Theorizing from Within

Posted on November 27, 2024 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, we are proud to announce the new Temple University Press book series, Theorizing from Within, edited by Victoria Reyes and Ghassan Moussawi.

Victoria Reyes and Ghassan Moussawi

This series is rooted in Black, women of color, indigenous, and transnational feminisms that take seriously that the personal is political and that one’s embodied experiences within particular structural positions are key sources of knowledge to develop arguments, build theory, and extend existing research.

Thus, we seek authors whose book projects draw on and use their own social worlds, interactions, experiences, and knowledges to theorize broader structural processes. While topically open to substantive content, we are particularly interested in manuscripts that interrogate systems of oppression and domination, including but not limited to racial capitalism, coloniality, gendered racisms, carcerality, affect and temporality, health and disability studies, and empire. We welcome works that combine these reflexive data and methods with more traditional ones such as archives, interviews, ethnography, oral histories, and close reading of texts and material objects. In particular, we seek to highlight manuscripts that draw on and speak to multiple audiences and that truly embrace interdisciplinary thinking and theorizing.

The erasure of the personal is a political choice. Further, without careful attention to the self, research obscures how interior life is central to knowledge production. Although we are currently witnessing a Du Boisian turn in the social sciences, what remains absent from this recovery is his methodological
use of the self to theorize. As scholars, we stand witness to what we study.

Informed by James Baldwin, we see witnessing as an ethical principle that guides our work, especially when it comes to the study of power and marginalizations. However, if methodological practices are not transformed alongside theoretical insights, researchers will continue to reproduce in practice the very
kinds of knowledge production and gatekeeping they critique.

SERIES ADVISORY BOARD: Elizabeth Bernstein, Crystal Baik, Chris Barcelos, Jenny Davis, mimi khúc, Martin Manalansan, Aldon Morris, Mary Romero, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, and Assata Zerai

Submissions to the series are welcome to contact:

Victoria Reyes vreyes@ucr.edu

Ghassan Moussawi moussawi@illinois.edu

Ryan Mulligan, Editor, Temple University Press ryan.mulligan@temple.edu

Filed under: african american studies, american studies, asian american studies, cultural studies, Disability Studies, Education, ethics, gender studies, Latin American studies, philosophy, race and ethnicity, racism, sexuality, sociology, women's studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Exploring the influences and causes of mass shootings in the United States

Posted on June 28, 2023 by gkramer

This week in North Philly Notes, Eric Madfis and Adam Lankford, coeditors of All-American Massacre, attempt to diagnose America’s mass shooting problem.

“What kind of society is this?” These were the last words screamed by a 64-year-old man before he began a shooting rampage at the 1979 Battle of the Flowers parade in San Antonio, Texas. He killed two women and wounded more than 50 people, including six police officers. 

The mission of our book, All-American Massacre, is to answer precisely this question: What kind of society is the United States, and what elements of contemporary American life contribute to our having the greatest number and highest share of public mass shootings around the globe? We asked scholars across a range of disciplines to answer this question. They took on this challenge to explore how gender, racism, media, politics, education, gun culture, firearm access, and mental health influence the causes of mass shootings in the United States. With a specific focus upon exploring how American culture, institutions, and social structures influence the circumstances, frequency, and severity of mass shootings in the United States, this book helps to clarify the unique nature and salience of mass shootings in contemporary American life. 

Sometimes a problem is so obvious that people can see it for themselves, without consulting experts. For instance, most Alaskans are probably aware that their state gets more snow than California. Sophisticated methods are not required to recognize the difference. America’s mass shooting problem is similar. Many people have recognized that something terrible has been happening in the United States, and that this particular type of tragedy does not seem to occur in other countries nearly as often. More and more data in recent years have demonstrated that America has far more mass shootings than anywhere else on the planet—one recent study found that we have approximately three times as many mass shootings as all other developed countries, combined.

All-American Massacre uncovers what America’s mass shooting problem tells us about the American social body and our country’s underlying ailments. The experts gathered in this book trace this prominent symptom back to its insidious causes, both fringe and mainstream.

Mass shootings have become more frequent and more deadly since the turn of the 21st century.  Research on mass murder, and public mass shootings in particular, has also increased exponentially during this time. However, little research specifically investigates why it is that the United States experiences such a large proportion of these devastating events. Most prior books have examined mass shootings in the United States with only passing consideration of the American context—as if these incidents could have occurred anywhere on the globe. Very little research has studied why these violent phenomena are so much more common in the United States and examined American culture, institutions, and social structures as interlocking sources of explanation. This is lamentable, as the American causes of mass shootings are multi-faceted but vitally necessary to understand in order to prevent future attacks. 

In this volume, contributors advance a variety of social and cultural explanations for the prevalence and overrepresentation of mass shootings in the United States. To that end, chapters explore: 1) American masculinity and gender norms as a way to better understand why so very many mass killers are male, 2) America’s history and legacy of white supremacy and how this contributes to hate-motivated mass shootings, 3) the role of American mass and social media in motivating mass killers and copycats, 4) the influence of American politics around firearm policy and the resultant impact upon the prevalence of mass shootings, 5) the role of American education in school mass shootings, and 6) the manner in which mental health and firearms policy contribute to America’s disproportionate mass shooting problem. 

We named the book All-American Massacre to reflect that nowhere else in the world has a mass shooting problem quite like America’s, and that these massacres may be better understood through the lens of American culture, institutions, and social structures. Shortly after choosing this title, we discovered that this is also the title of an unreleased horror film meant as a spin-off of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. As scholars who frequently think, write, research, and talk publicly about mass shootings, watching the rising number of incidents and deaths in recent years has indeed felt, at times, like being in a horror film. It is both our sincere hope and empirically informed view that more can be done to combat this threat. The United States is not inherently or inevitably predisposed to having more than our share of mass shooters. There is still reason for hope about reversing these trends. As concerned citizens and scholars, we are passionate about saving our nation from experiencing more of these terrible tragedies. Our country needs far more clarity, shared understanding, and desire to make progress on the issues covered in this volume. Otherwise, it will be a long time before we end this traumatizing cycle of horror and death.

Filed under: american studies, cultural studies, economics/business, Education, ethics, gender studies, History, law & criminology, Mass Media and Communications, political science, race and ethnicity, racism, sociology, Urban Studies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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