Graduate Program
Chris Hausmann
Areas of Interest
Political Sociology, Globalization, Religion
Profile
Chris Hausmann is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology. Before coming to Notre Dame, Chris' undergraduate work at St. John's University (MN) focused on Peace Studies and experiential learning. His research interests at Notre Dame have been primarily in culture, microsociology, religion, and social movements. He completed area exams in Social Theory and in Stats and Methods.
Research
His Master's Thesis, "The Best Laid Plans: Thwarted Objectives, Stubborn Inequalities, and Unexpected Encounters" is based on ethnographic data collected at the US and 2007 World Social Forums. Whereas social movement scholars have largely ignored the importance of the body for shaping motivation and its implications for activism, the recent prominence of brief, intense transnational meetings brings bodily processes to center stage. “Best Laid Plans” examines how activists' physiological needs undermine the centrality of symbols in guiding social action, reshaping network formations at critical moments in political mobilization. This paper is currently under review.
Chris has participated in the Social Forum Research Collective, which recently published an article in Mobilization (December 2008).
A Brief Description of the Dissertation
Studying a single, temporally bounded ritual has often led ritual theorists to try to articulate the relationship between that ritual and broader social and cultural dynamics (Geertz 1973; Turner 1969, Douglas 1974). However, if we adopt a slightly more distant perspective and look to complex gatherings in which there are multiple centers of action unfolding across time (Collins 2004; Goffman 1967), the very thing we initially set out to study appears more problematic. The analytical metaphor shifts from a singular performance or text to something more like a cocktail party. Drawing upon a comparative ethnography at a religious college retreat and with a group of ghost hunters, this dissertation illustrates how the two groups create social settings that provide support for many different types of experiences, and how, within these arenas, actors engage in multiple centers of involvement which build upon and conflict with one another across time. Actors who can anticipate action as it unfolds can intentionally seek out or shut off experiential "routes" by reordering the sequence, speed, and duration of their involvement. But when actors have little sense of what is going to happen at any moment, participation feels less like a lock-step progression through a naturally bounded ritual process than a series of interactions that may, or may not hang together to constitute a coherent experience. A sense of temporal unity and boundedness are achievements of, not the precursors to, “having an experience.”
Teaching Experience
Chris will teach Understanding Societies at Notre Dame in the Spring of 2010. He has also been a teachers' assistant for:
Undergraduate Level:
Analysis of Collective Contention I
Analysis of Collective Contention II
Graduate Level:
Qualitative Methods
Qualitative Analysis
Research Methods
Social Theory