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The
A.E. Havens Center
For the Study of Social Structure and Social Change

Established in the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984, the A. E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change is dedicated to promoting critical intellectual reflection and exchange, both within the academy as well as between it and the broader society. The Center is named in honor of the late Professor of Rural Sociology, A. Eugene Havens, whose life and work embodied the combination of progressive political commitment and scholarly rigor that the Center encourages.

The traditional tasks of critical social thought have been to analyze the
sources of inequality and injustice in existing social arrangements, to suggest
both practical and utopian alternatives to those arrangements, and to identify
and learn from the many social movements seeking progressive social and political
change. These tasks are as relevant today as ever. Indeed, we face a variety
of challenges, both new and enduring, that demand creative critical reflection.
These include the increasingly integrated and global character of capitalist
economic development, the durability of racial and gender oppressions, the
threats of global environmental catastrophe, and the failure of many traditional
models of progressive reform.

Furthermore, we face these challenges at a moment of considerable
uncertainty and transition. Established orders have fractured,
and what will replace
them is far from clear. As in all such historical moments, answers will come
from the interaction between critical reflection and political activism.
By fostering such interaction, the Havens Center seeks to contribute to the
development of a society openly committed to reason, democracy, equality,
and freedom. In this respect, the Center stands in a long tradition at the
University of Wisconsin. The "Wisconsin Idea" holds that reason and decency
should inform issues of public policy, and that academics have an important
role to play in realizing that goal. Since the Progressive Era, UW faculty
have given life to this Idea. They have expanded the bounds of policy debates,
offered proposals for progressive reform, and worked with actors outside
the university to implement reform.

The sort of intellectual reflection and exchange the Havens Center
seeks to promote might therefore be characterized as "strategic." First,
the work at the Center will have a practical intent. As its title
suggests, the Center's
underlying mission is to engage in the study of social structure in order
to foster social change. This does not imply that every Havens Center discussion
and project will have immediate practical relevance; much of what needs to
be done involves clarifying the abstract concepts and frameworks necessary
for creative critical analysis. The guiding motivation behind such discussions,
however, will be their ultimate relevance for practical agendas of social
change.

Second, the work at the Havens Center will not be confined to investigating
alternatives realizable within existing institutional arrangements. Conventional
policy analysis generally takes the central institutions of society as given
and thus treats seriously only those options that are possible within existing
institutional structures. However, since the Center seeks to widen public
debate beyond its present narrow confines, it will look to the choices made
feasible by changes in the background institutional structures themselves.

The realization of this kind of strategic objective requires an intellectual
setting that is at once interdisciplinary, methodologically diverse, and
connected to the world outside the academy. For this reason, the Havens Center
has sought, and has greatly benefited from, the active participation of students
and faculty in a variety of academic disciplines (including sociology, history,
economics, law, political science, geography, comparative literature, education,
philosophy, and mass communications), as well as numerous community and social
movement organizations.