Wolfgang Schluchter is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institut Für Soziologie at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the sociology of Max Weber and has written on a wide range of topics from a Weberian perspective, including the rise of rationalism in modern society, religious commitment in the modern world, and the intersection of interpretative sociology and systems theory. His publications in English include, The Rise of Western Rationalism: Max Weber's Developmental History (University of California, 1985); Rationalism, Religion, and Domination: A Weberian Perspective (University of California, 1989); Paradoxes of Modernity: Culture and Conduct in the Theory of Max Weber (Stanford University, 1996); Max Weber & Islam (Stanford University 1999), co-edited with Toby Huff; and Public Spheres and Collective Identities (Transaction 2001), co-edited with S. N. Eisenstadt.

    Richard Biernacki is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Univeristy of California, San Diego. His empirical research has focused on the divergent paths of class formation in Nineteenth Century England and Germany and the consequences of these divergences for the culture and theory of work in both countries. Biernacki has written on questions of theory and method in historical sociology, and especially on how culture should be conceived and deployed in historical research. He is currently completing a book on social action in historical inquiry, which uses practice theory and linguistics to critique the teleological theories of action employed by most sociologists and economists. Publications include The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), “Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Inquiry,” History and Theory 39, 3 (2000) pp. 289-310 and Time, Place, Action:Ventures Beyond the Cultural Turn.

Julia Adams is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. Empirically, her work focuses on the intersection between gender and politics in early modern Europe and, more specifically, on the relationship between the patriarchal family and the patrimonial state in the Netherlands, France and England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Theoretically, it draws on a variety of theoretical perspectives, ranging from post-structuralism to rational-choice.Her publications include The Familial State (Cornell University Press, forthcoming), “Culture in Rational-Choice Theories of State-Formation,” State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 98-122 and Remaking Modernity: Politics, Processes and History in Sociology (Duke University Press, forthcoming) co-edited with A. Orloff and E. Clemens.

David Laitin has taught at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Chicago, and is currently Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He has written extensively on Africa and Eastern Europe, as well as on theory and method in the social sciences. He is best known for analyses of language politics in Somalia and the Baltic states, for his use of rational-choice theory to analyze cultural and linguistic identity and conflict, and for his spirited defense of formal modeling and methodological pluralism in the social sciences. Recent publications include Identity in Formation: the Russian-speaking Populations of the Near Abroad (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), (w. James Fearon) “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review (2003), and “The Perestroikan Challenge to Social Science,” Politics and Society (2003).

Margaret Levi is the Jere L. Bacharach Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. She has written extensively on the bases for and effects of trustworthy governance. Her publications include Bureaucratic Insurgency: The Case of Police Unions (Lexington:1977); Of Rule and Revenue (University of California Press, 1988); Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (Cambridge University Press, 1997); The Limits of Rationality (University of Chicago, 1990), co-edited with Karen S. Cook; Governance and Trust (Russell Sage, 1998), co-edited with Valerie Braithwaite. In progress is a co-authored volume with Karen Cook and Russell Hardin, building on a multi-year Russell Sage Foundation project on trust. Concurrently, she is working on a range of issues having to do with labor unions and with global justice campaigns. Professor Levi is currently the president-elect of the American Political Science Association.