About the Authors

Peter Achterberg is an Associate Professor of Sociology and a member of the Centre for Rotterdam Cultural Sociology (CROCUS) at Erasmus University, the Netherlands. With a background in political sociology, Peter developed interest in studying cultural, political, and religious change in the West. Much of his work deals with the question of how people attribute meaning to the changing world surrounding them, whether these meanings have consequences for their behavior, and how these meanings can be explained. His research agenda is focused on three interrelated questions: Do cultural processes such as individualization and globalization erode the legitimacy of social institutions (such as the welfare state, political parties, scientific and judicial institutions, and so on)? How do these processes lead to the formation of new cultures, traditions, and institutions (rising populism, changing welfare cultures, religious revival among the young, etc.)? And, what are the consequences of these cultural changes for social behavior and interaction (political and science communication, social conformity, etc.)? He has a strong focus on combining theory with empirical facts but does not have a strong preference for either qualitative or quantitative research. Recently, Peter has used survey experiments on nationally representative samples. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Achterberg2/publications/.

Chad D. Anderson is a Guest Professor of Public Administration at Incheon National University, South Korea. He researches urban administration, cultural administration, and human and labor relations.

Miree Byun (Ph.D. in Sociology) is a Director of the Department of Future and Social Policy Research at Seoul Institute. Seoul Institute is the think tank for the Seoul Metropolitan Government. A graduate of Seoul National University, her research area lies in social changes, Information Technology policy, and urban monitoring for enhancing the quality of citizens’ lives. Her work focuses on international comparative study of government policy for urban competitiveness. She has also researched the e-governance and organizational changes on the ubiquitous city. She spent a year at the National Center for Digital Government at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a visiting scholar and is a member of the Committee on Administrative Service of Seoul.

Filipe Carreira da Silva is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and a Visiting Fellow at Selwyn College of the University of Cambridge. A graduate of Lisbon University Institute, the University of Lisbon, and the University of Cambridge, da Silva is a social theorist specializing in American philosophical pragmatism, twentieth century cultural and critical theory, and historical comparative sociology. He has been a Junior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a Fulbright postdoctoral scholar at Harvard University. In 2010, da Silva earned the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Association with his first book, Mead and Modernity: Science, Selfhood and Democratic Politics. He worked with Donald N. Levine and Terry Nichols Clark from 2003 to 2009 at the University of Chicago.

Terry Nichols Clark is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, University of Florence, and UCLA. He has published some 30 books. He coordinates the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, surveying 1,200 cities in the United States and more in 38 other countries. www.faui.org. He works on analyzing neighborhood cultural scenes as drivers of urban development. http://www.tnc-newsletter.blogspot.com/.

Daniel J. DellaPosta is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University, prior to which he received a B.A. in Sociology at the University of Chicago. His previous work has introduced and tested a multilevel model of intergroup contact and competitive threat that explains anti-immigrant voting in France at both the municipal and regional levels.

Arkaida Dini worked as a school teacher in France, then pursued doctoral study at the University of Paris and the University of Chicago.

Susana L. Farinha Cabaço is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK. Her doctoral project concentrates on multilateral political party assistance in emerging democracies, supervised by Dr. Robert Johns. She was awarded a doctoral scholarship from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. Previously, she completed a degree in Sociology and a Master’s in Comparative Politics (with a thesis on the use of conditionality in the promotion of democracy), at the Institute for Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, and collaborated on research projects on Urban and Cultural Sociology and social attitudes (European Social Survey). Currently, her research interests concern the study of democratizations, democracy promotion, political party institutionalization, and international political party assistance.

Wonho Jang is a Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Seoul, where his research focuses on urban and political sociology. His academic interests include the evolution of Japanese political culture, urban policy, and social statistics. Jang received his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago, and is the Director of Academic Affairs for the World Association for Hallyu Studies.

Seokho Kim is an Assistant Professor at Sungkyunkwan University. He received his Master’s Degree in Sociology from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea and his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago, where he was also a research assistant at the National Opinion Research Center. Kim is on the Editorial Board of the Korean Journal of Sociology, and has written on demographic shifts in religion and nationalism. His doctoral thesis examined voluntary associations, social inequality, and participatory democracy.

Yoshiaki Kobayashi is a Professor of Law and Political Science at Keio University. He has been President of the Japan Political Science Association and Japan Electoral Studies Association. His publications include Malfunctioning Democracy in Japan: Quantitative Analysis in a Civil Society (2012), 28 other books, and 300 papers in English, Spanish, French, and Japanese.

Jong Youl Lee is a Professor of Public Administration, Chair of the Department of Public Administration, and Director of the Institute of Social Sciences at Incheon National University, South Korea. He researches urban administration, policy studies, cultural administration, and risk management.

Cristina Mateos Mora is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, a researcher at the Centre for Local Political Sociology and Policies, and a member of the Local Government Observatory (Andalusian Studies Centre). Her research interests include gender, civic involvement, and political participation. She has had recent publications in Ciudad y Territorio, Revista Internacional de Organizaciones, European Urban and Regional Research, Reforma y Democracia. She is a member of the Cultural Scenes Project and the International Metropolitan Observatory, Seville. Her Ph.D. analyses the contextual effects of cultural scenes on civic involvement at the neighborhood level in Spain.

Clemente J. Navarro Yáñez is a Professor of Political Sociology at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, the Head of the Centre for Local Political Sociology and Policies, and the Local Government Observatory (Andalusian Studies Centre). He has been a visiting professor at various universities, such as Florence, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Autónoma de Chile, Consiglio Nazionalle della Ricerca, and University of Chicago. He has had recent publications in European Societies, European Urban and Regional Research, Public Administration Review, and Cities. His research interests include multilevel governance, local policies and politics, and, especially, public participation policy. Navarro coordinates the Cultural Scenes and Urban Development International Network together with Terry Clark and Daniel Silver. As head of the Cultural Scenes Project in Spain (http://www.upo.es/cspl/scenes/), his main results have been published in “La dinámica cultural de las ciudades” (Catarata). http://www.upo.es/cspl/scenes.

María Jesús Rodríguez-García is a Lecturer in Sociology at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain, and a researcher at the Centre for Local Political Sociology and Policies. She has been a visiting scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (CNRS, France), San Luis (Argentina), Chicago (USA), and the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique (CNRS, France). Her research interests include local welfare systems, gender and family policies, and, especially, coproduction and social innovation processes regarding these issues. Rodríguez-García is a main researcher of the “Gender, Participation, and Local Welfare Systems” Project, member of the Cultural Scenes Project, and the International Metropolitan Observatory. She has had recent publications in Revista Internacional de Sociología, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, Reforma y Democracia, European Urban and Regional Studies, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, as well as the book Género, políticas de igualdad y bienestar (Miño y Dávila).

Stephen Sawyer is the Chair of the History department and Founder of the Urban Studies program at the American University of Paris. He also teaches at the University of Paris and École Libre des Sciences Politiques. He taught previously at the University of Chicago Center in Paris and École Normale Supérieure. A specialist in urban studies and political history with an emphasis on the role of cities in territorial and state construction in the Atlantic world, Sawyer earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2008. He has published over 45 articles and book reviews in such journals as Les Annales, The Journal of Modern History, The European History Quarterly, and The Tocqueville Review. In 2009, he was awarded a grant for a project from the city of Paris on mapping cultural scenes in metropolitan Paris, which he completed with a research team in 2011: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Paris.May%2019.2011.Rapport%20Final%20CARTOGRAPHIE%20CULTURELLE%20FINALE%202011.pdf.zip.

Daniel Silver is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His research spans social theory, urban and community sociology, and the sociology of culture.

Di Wu is a Lecturer at the Management School of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. He has published The Research on Urban Residential Choice and Housing Price's Spatial Difference in China: Based on the Theory of Scenes [M]. Beijing: Economy & Management Publishing House. 2013. 07. ISBN: 7509625149. (in Chinese) He received the Award for National Outstanding Post-doctoral Academic Achievement in China.

Joseph E. Yi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Hanyang University (Seoul, Korea). His publications include God and Karate on the Southside (Lexington Books, 2009), “Tiger Moms and Liberal Elephants of Southern California” (SOCIETY, April 2013), “Atomized Terror and Democratic Citizenship” (Political Quarterly, September 2013), and “Same-Sex Marriage, Majority-World Christians, and the Challenge of Democratic Engagement” (SOCIETY, forthcoming). Yi received his doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago and studies liberal democracy, civil society, and multiculturalism in the USA and South Korea. He welcomes correspondence (josephyi@uchicago.edu).