HxA Event: The Perennial Controversy Over Culture & Social Problems

Event Title:
“The Perennial Controversy Over Culture and Social Problems" with Michael Jindra

How to Watch:
This online event is FREE, but you need to be a member of Heterodox Academy to register to get the Zoom link:
https://heterodoxacademy.org/events/the-perennial-controversy-over-culture-and-social-problems/

Event Topic:
Join us for Heterodox Academy’s Colloquium Series, a virtual seminar series designed to highlight the scholarship and thought leadership emerging from our community.

This colloquium will feature Michael Jindra, Visiting Research Scholar at Boston University, presenting his research on cultural causes of disparities.

The Perennial Controversy Over Culture and Social Problems
While “structural” causes of social problems like poverty, inequality and poor health get lots of play among academics, cultural causes still get short shrift. Yet they may be the most important. Digging into often-ignored literature from anthropology and sociology, I give a summary of cultural causes of disparities, focusing on subcultural groups and increased lifestyle diversity within Western societies. I also relate this to diverse human motivations, found variously in different groups.

This colloquium, offered exclusively to HxA members on October 13 from 4:00-5:00 PM ET, will include time for audience discussion and Q&A. You'll hear Michael Jindra shed light on the often-ignored cultural causes of poverty, inequality, and poor health, and get the chance to bring your own questions to the conversation.

About the Speaker:
* Michael Jindra is a cultural anthropologist at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University. Starting out as an Africanist, his more recent writing centers on cultural and lifestyle diversity, and their relationship with social issues and problems. He has also led a recent effort to formulate a proposal for higher ed reforms, which has been discussed in the Chronicle of Higher Education. For more, see https://michaeljindra.com/biography/

About the Event Host:
The Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a nonpartisan collaborative of thousands of professors, administrators, and students committed to enhancing the quality of research and education by promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning. It was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, a Georgetown University law professor, and Chris Martin, an Emory University sociologist.

To learn more about their mission, go to https://heterodoxacademy.org/our-mission/