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Dan Cornfield
Acting Director of the Center and Institute
Professor of Sociology, College of Arts and Science
The Center for State and Local Policy addresses a wide range of local
urban social, cultural, economic and political issues that are associated
with globalization. A rapidly globalizing city that is emblematic of the
U.S. interior, Nashville, Tennessee has been diversifying daily since
the 1990s. Ten percent of Nashvillians are foreign-born-the average for
all U.S. cities-including growing numbers of residents who migrated from
Africa, East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle
East. Nashville is an important case in point of a city for which immigration
is recent and inter-cultural group relations are complex. With its robust
service economy, progressive government, highly developed community of
non-profit social service providers and advocates, renowned place in the
history of the civil rights movement, and pioneering efforts in racial-ethnic
integration, Nashville affords researchers at Vanderbilt University and
policymakers abundant opportunities for studying and devising creative
community-building policies for tackling new forms of social inequality,
social conflict, and cultural complexity that accompany rapid globalization.
The Center for State and Local Policy pursues its research and policy design mission with colleagues in all Vanderbilt schools, at other Nashville-area universities, and in the community, and participates in national and international inter-university consortia in which Nashville serves as a research site in comparative-city studies.
The following are some of the initiatives currently being conducted by Dan Cornfield:
- "Immigrant Arts Participation in Nashville,"
with Professor Jennifer Lena (Arts & Science, Sociology). A pilot
study of the artistic expression of Nashville immigrant, visual and
performing artists, as part of the national project on "Engaging
Art: Cultural Participation in America" sponsored by the Curb Center
for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, Vanderbilt University, with
support from the Wallace Foundation
- "Sociology of Work," with Sergio Sánchez and Javier
Melgoza. A global survey of the field to be published in Spanish in
Tratado de Sociología, edited by Enrique de la Garza Toledo,
Universidad Autónoma de México-Itzapalapa
- 2002-03 Immigrant Community Assessment of Nashville, a study of the
social integration of Arabic, Kurdish, Lao, Latino, Somali and Vietnamese
immigrants in Nashville, funded by Metropolitan Government of Nashville
and a collaboration between Vanderbilt University, Meharry Medical College,
and Tennessee State University. Click on these links to view the final
report and press releases:
- "Immigrant Labor in Nashville": a field study
of work, employment and labor issues among immigrants and refugees in
Nashville. This project is partly associated with the "Urban Labor
Revitalization: Large, Mid-size and Global Cities" project of the
New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
- Faculty Seminar on Religion, Economy, and Poverty, co-directed
by Professors James Foster (Arts & Science, Economics) and Douglas
Meeks (Divinity School) and funded by the Vanderbilt Center for the
Study of Religion and Culture
- "Inter-Occupational Cooperation in Program Design,"
with Professor Ken Wong (Peabody College, Dept. of Leadership, Policy,
and Organizations), as part of the Math Science Partnership program,
funded by the National Science Foundation
- Affiliated Faculty Member of Doctoral Program in Community Research and Action at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
For more information about the Center for State and Local Policy, contact Dan Cornfield at daniel.b.cornfield@vanderbilt.edu and (615) 322-8512 and visit his website at http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/sociology/cornfield