How sociology is ‘going transnational’: from the study of religious to cultural

Peggy Levitt is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Wellesley College. She is also a Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, where she co-directs the Transnational Studies Initiative. Peggy’s latest book, God Needs No Passport, is about how immigrants are changing the American religious landscape and was published by The New Press in June 2007. Peggy is also co-editor with Sanjeev Khagram of The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations (Routledge, 2007). It lays the foundation for the new field of Transnational Studies and includes seminal readings from anthropology, sociology, political science, history, economics and cultural studies. Peggy is now working on a project which explores how global ideas about women’s rights are used locally in Peru, China, India and the United States. She is also beginning a study of how national artistic and cultural institutions change when nations ‘go transnational’.