Social Science for Public Good Social Science for Public Good

In this special bonus episode, we seek to bring together the subjects of our first two arcs, trust and power, and look at how they might concretely manifest in the bid to create social change. We are guided through this discussion by Dr. Lawrence Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Susskind shares how both trust and power play out in his work to build collaborative problem-solving processes and how he approaches both concepts.

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Dr. Lawrence Susskind is the Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning and his research interests focus on the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution, the practice of public engagement in local decision-making, cybersecurity for critical urban infrastructure, entrepreneurial negotiation, global environmental treaty-making, the resolution of science-intensive policy disputes, renewable energy policy, water equity in older American cities, climate change adaptation, socially-responsible real estate development and the land claims of Indigenous Peoples. Professor Susskind is the author or co-author of twenty books including, most recently, Environmental Problem-Solving (Anthem), Managing Climate Risks in Coastal Communities: Strategies for Engagement, Readiness and Adaptation (Anthem), the second edition of Environmental Diplomacy (Oxford Press), Good for You, Great for Me (Public Affairs Press), Water Diplomacy (Resources for the Future), Built to Win (Harvard Business School Publishing), Multiparty Negotiation (Sage), Breaking Robert's Rules (Oxford), The Consensus Building Handbook (Sage), and Dealing with An Angry Public (Free Press).

Professor Susskind is Director of the MIT Science Impact Collaborative (scienceimpact.mit.edu). He is Founder of the Consensus Building Institute, a Cambridge-based not-for-profit company that provides mediation services in complex resource management disputes around the world. He also was one of the Co-founders of the interuniversity Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, where he now directs the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, serves as Vice Chair for Instruction, and leads PON’s Master Classes in Negotiation. He is the recipient of ACSP’s prestigious Educator of the Year Award and recipient of MIT’s Award for Digital Instruction. MIT Administration recently named Professor Susskind as MIT's representative to the New America Foundation's Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN).

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While Dr. Susskind's CV is beyond extensive, these pieces might help the reader understand how he grapples with trust and power:

Susskind, L., & Field, P. (1996). Dealing with an angry public: The mutual gains approach to resolving disputes. Simon and Schuster.

Susskind, L. E., McKearnen, S., & Thomas-Lamar, J. (1999). The consensus building handbook: A comprehensive guide to reaching agreement. Sage publications.

Susskind, L. E., & Ali, S. H. (2014). Environmental diplomacy: Negotiating more effective global agreements. Oxford University Press.

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The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and VT Publishing intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: Purple-planet.com

As we end our discussion of power, we look more practically at how power manifests in our everyday lives and how we might think about resistance to injustice within this understanding. We think through how social change practitioners engage with, mobilize, and build power in their efforts to build a better world. Having explored a number of theories of power, we look at how these theories might be part of a toolbox that advocates of a more just world can engage with to be more effective. Our guest scholar for this final conversation about power is Dr. Claire Cahen, Assistant Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy at Occidental College.

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Dr. Claire Cahen is an Assistant Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy at Occidental College. She received her B.A. from Pomona College and her Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her research centers on urban austerity, community development, labor, and racial justice and has been published in journals such as Race, Ethnicity and the City, Antipode, Labor Relations, and Housing Studies.

Here are a few pieces that might serve as an introduction to Dr. Cahen's research:

Cahen, C. (2023). After zombies: Notes on labor union and municipal renewal. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(4), 707-725.

Cahen, C., Schneider, J., & Saegert, S. (2019). Victories from Insurgency: Re‐Negotiating Housing, Community Control, and Citizenship at the Margins. Antipode, 51(5), 1416-1435.

Cahen, C. (2023). Anticolonial realism: The defensive governing strategy of a Black city in white space. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, 1-23.

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The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and VT Publishing intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

We continue to explore the concept of power by asking how neoliberalism might be both informing our understanding of power and changing how it manifests. Combining a number of insights from previous guests, we wade into the myriad ways power manifests in our neoliberal world and why we need to consider the many different kinds of power both distinctly and collectively. We were honored to be led in this conversation by Dr. Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study.

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Dr. Wendy Brown is a political theorist who works across the history of political thought, political economy, Continental philosophy, cultural theory, and critical legal theory. Brown investigates the subterranean powers shaping contemporary Euroatlantic polities, with particular attention to the political identities, subjectivities, and expressions they spawn. She is the author or co-author of a dozen books, including States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity; Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire; Walled States, Waning Sovereignty; Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution; and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. Across her work, Brown aims to illuminate powers unique to our era and the predicaments they generate for democratic thought and practice.

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While it would be impossible to cite all of her influential work on power here, the publications below provide a useful starting point for her scholarship:

Brown, W. (2020). States of injury: Power and freedom in late modernity. Princeton University Press.

Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution. Mit Press.

Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization. Political theory, 34(6), 690-714.

Brown, W. (2003). Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy. Theory & event, 7(1).

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The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and VT Publishing intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: purple-planet.com

This week, we delve into how the influential theorist Michel Foucault challenged and changed our conceptions of power. We also begin to plumb how a feminist understanding of power can help inform our efforts to perpetuate social change. Our guest scholar for this conversation is Dr. Amy Allen, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University, who helps us deepen our understanding of the inescapability and essential neutrality of power.

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Dr. Amy Allen is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Advancement and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Her work engages with 20th-century Continental Philosophy, Critical Theory, Feminist Theory, and Social and Political Theory. She completed her PhD in philosophy at Northwestern University. Before joining Penn State, she taught philosophy at Grinnell College, Dartmouth College, and the University of Edinburgh.

She has served in a number of prominent positions such as sitting on the executive committee of the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association. She has been an executive co-director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, a co-editor-in-chief of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, and editor of the series New Directions in Critical Theory published by Columbia University Press.

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While her full catalog of articles and books is far too long to list here, the publications below provide a useful introduction to his scholarship addressing the topic of power:

Allen, A. (2018). The power of feminist theory. Routledge.

Allen, A. (2007). The politics of our selves: Power, autonomy, and gender in contemporary critical theory. Columbia University Press.

Allen, A. (1998). Rethinking power. Hypatia, 13(1), 21-40.

Allen, A. (2002). Power, subjectivity, and agency: Between Arendt and Foucault. International journal of philosophical studies, 10(2), 131-149.

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The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and VT Publishing intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: Purple-planet.com

In this episode, we introduce two new conceptualizations of power. First, we look at the urban regime framework, which suggests that groups (regimes) come together to govern collaboratively around collective interests. Second, we discuss democratic understandings of power, which suggests that power should be shared and distributed. Dr. Max Stephens, Professor of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech, joins us for the conversation and walks us through these complex theories.

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Max Stephenson, Jr. currently serves as a Professor of Public and International Affairs and the Director of the Institute for Policy and Governance at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching interests include civil society and democratic theory, social change processes, international development, human rights and refugees and peacebuilding. He is the author or editor of thirteen books or monographs and more than 80 refereed articles and book chapters. He has also authored more than 400 commentaries addressing U.S. and international politics.

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Dr. Stephenson has written widely on how power and agency interact. You can read more of his thoughts here on Soundings.



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The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the ⁠Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance⁠ and ⁠VT Publishing⁠ intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: Purple-planet.com

In this episode, we start to add nuance to our understanding of power by investigating the three dimensions of power, as identified by Dr. Steven Lukes. Dr. Lukes, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at New York University, joins us for the conversation and walks us through his understanding of decision-making power, agenda-setting power, and ideological power. He encourages us to look more deeply into how pervasive and nuanced power can be.

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Dr. Steven Lukes is the author of numerous books and articles about political and social theory. Currently, he is a professor emeritus of sociology at New York University. He was formerly a fellow in politics and sociology at Balliol College, Oxford. He was then, in turn, a professor of political and social theory at the European University Institute, Florence, of  moral philosophy at the University of Siena and of sociology at the London School of Economics.

His interests include political sociology, focusing on the study of power; political theory and philosophy; Marxism and other socialist traditions; philosophy of the social sciences; the history of ideas, in particular the political thought of Condorcet; political humour and satire; and, most recently, the sociology of morals, his current preoccupation.

Lukes’s best-known, still controversial academic theory is his so-called ‘radical’ view of power. It can be simply stated. It claims there are three dimensions of power. The first is overt power, typically exhibited in the presence of conflict in decision-making situations, where power consists in winning, that is prevailing over another or others. The second is covert power, consisting in control over what gets decided, by ignoring or deflecting existing grievances. And the third is the power to shape desires and beliefs, thereby averting both conflict and grievances. It is the most hidden from view—the least accessible to observation by social actors and observers alike. It can be at work, despite apparent consensus between the powerful and the powerless.

He is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Sociology and a fellow of the British Academy.

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Dr. Lukes has written widely on power from a number of perspectives, but these publications provide a useful introduction to his scholarship addressing the topic:

Lukes, S. (2021). Power: A radical view. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Lukes, S. (Ed.). (1986). Power (Vol. 2). NYU Press.

Lukes, S. (2005). Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds. Millennium, 33(3), 477-493.

Lukes, S. (2006). Individualism. ECPr Press.

The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and VT Publishing intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change.

Music: Purple-planet.com