Professor Brian Gran
Ph.D. Northwestern University, 1997
Associate Professor of Sociology
Director, Graduate Program
Department of Sociology
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7124
brian.gran@case.edu
Mather Memorial 224
Phone: (216) 368-2694
Fax: (216) 368-2676
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 11:15-1:00
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Public or Private Management? A Comparative Analysis of Social Policies in Europe
Holding Private Prisons Accountable: The Socio-Legal Analysis of "Contracting Out" Prisons
Research
Public and private aspects
of social policies have fascinated me for some time. As
an undergrad, I interned for a corporate lawyer who
asked me to work on establishing a corporation's private
pension plan. Two aspects of private pension plans
intrigued me: who pays for and who owns the pension
benefit. I was surprised to learn that government
indirectly pays (via tax breaks) for private pensions,
which means tax payers contribute to private pensions.
Another surprise was that, despite making contributions,
an employee did not own the pension until it vested.
Later, as an attorney, I represented Social Security
Disability and Retirement pension claimants. I learned
that employers and employees contribute to Social
Security programs, but taxpayers do not. Similar to
private pensions, even if an employee makes
contributions, an employee does not qualify for the
pension until she or he has contributed ten years.
These experiences led me to
studies of public and private characteristics of social
policies, asking who benefits and loses, and who is
overlooked in public-private collaborations. I am a
comparative sociologist whose work concentrates on law
and social policy to make three important contributions
to academic and policy research. First, taking a
multi-method approach, my work demonstrates that it is
hard to draw a line between public and private efforts
to provide social security and welfare. My research
demonstrates that separating public and private efforts
to provide social policy services and programs is
misleading. Instead, a more useful approach is to study
overall systems of social policy provision in which
public, private, and public-private efforts are
considered. Second, because explanations of social
policy development have concentrated on public efforts,
new accounts are needed and extant explanations deserve
rethinking. Third, going beyond public and private
labels raises important concerns, especially whether
public-private social policies are democratically
accountable and, related, who wins and loses in policy
battles.
This website presents three
components of my research agenda: children’s
ombudspersons (children’s commissioners), children’s
rights and the Children’s Rights Index (CRI), and my
other work on the public-private dichotomy.
Teaching
Since joining the Case
faculty, I have prepared five courses: An Introduction
to Sociology (Soci 112), Research Methods (Soci 303),
Sociology of Law (Soci 360), Law and the Public-Private
Dichotomy (Soci 355/455), and Sociology of Health Policy
(Soci 365/465). One important objective I have
established for my teaching is to present “real, live
sociology” to the students. For example, the course on
research methods (Soci 303) takes a hands-on approach;
students undertake a research project for which they
decide on a research question, a methodological approach
to answer the question, and data sources, then collect
data, undertake analyses, and report results.
I have had the pleasure of
teaching two courses on sociology of law. One course (Soci
360) focuses on how rights have enabled or discouraged
social change. The ultimate question is whether “law”
can produce social change, or whether social change
produces transformations in law. Because many students
plan to pursue legal careers, class participants are
required to visit different kinds of courts and to
re-argue famous (or infamous) legal cases, including
Plessy v. Ferguson, while attempting to answer the
course’s overarching questions about the relationship
between law and social change. A second course (Soci
355/455) focuses on law and the public-private dichotomy
and is perhaps unique in the United States. Taught to
undergraduate and graduate students, each week class
participants evaluate a different legal case that hinges
on conceptions of what is public and private, employing
important social theories and sociological research to
evaluate courts’ conclusions and parties’ arguments.
Another course I have had
the pleasure to teach is entitled the Sociology of
Health Policy (Soci 365/465). The overall objective of
this course is to introduce students to sociological
approaches to analyses of health policies and
health-care outcomes. While pursuing this objective,
students and I study different configurations of
health-care systems and how those systems work. To
explain these configurations, we turn to important
research undertaken on health policy in comparative
research on welfare states. After examining common
health outcomes in the United States, class participants
evaluate reforms of and directions the U.S. health-care
system is taking. While the United States health-policy
system is the center piece, students and I often compare
it to systems found in other OECD countries.
At the conclusion of each
course, I establish new goals for my teaching. For
future courses, I want to incorporate other teaching
approaches, such as service learning and other ways for
students to have hands-on experiences. I also want to
emphasize literatures, especially theoretical
perspectives, prominent in other countries’ sociologies.
Service
To the Sociology
Department, my primary service is as associate director
to Graduate Studies, which is directed by Professor Gary
Deimling. As associate graduate director, I am
responsible for recruitment of potential graduate
students. In this role, I participate in a meeting to
determine progress of individual graduate students, then
help make decisions on tuition and stipend support of
graduate students for the subsequent academic year.
Over the 2004-2005 academic
year, Dr. Eva Kahana and I co-organized seven colloquia
for the department, which we expect to organize for this
academic year. This spring, with the support of a W.P.
Jones grant and an American Sociological Association
Teaching Enhancement Fund grant, Tanetta Andersson and I
organized and hosted a three-day, intense workshop on
visual sociology.
My service to the
university is tied to research centers and the Law
School. I am a Faculty Associate of the Mandel Center
for Nonprofit Organizations and the University Center on
Aging and Health. I am a member of the Center for Policy
Studies’ Advisory Board. I hold a secondary appointment
in the Law School. On occasion, I have met with a group
of potential undergraduate students and their parents.
To the College of Arts and Sciences, I have served as a
member of the Graduate Committee as well as the By Laws
Committee.
I have served in different
leadership positions for academic organizations. I am
the Treasurer and Secretary of the International Visual
Sociology Association (IVSA). For the American
Sociological Association’s (ASA), I have organized
roundtables and paper sessions of different annual
meetings and served as chair and member of the ASA
Sociology of Law section’s Membership Committee. I
served on the Program Committee for the 2003 annual
meeting of the Law and Society Association (LSA) and am
the organizer of the LSA’s Collaborative Research
Network on Law and the Public-Private Dichotomy.
Outside of Case Western
Reserve University, I serve as referee for a variety of
academic journals as well as grant-making agencies. I
serve as local coordinator of the European Masters
Program in Social Security, Catholic University of
Leuven. I have participated in a research seminar
sponsored by the Council of Europe and the European
Commission.
I am active in the school
my children attend and in organizations in which they
participate. I served as Secretary to the Executive
Committee of the Parents’ Association of Ruffing
Montessori School for the 2003-2004 academic year. I
have coached a t-ball team and assistant coached a
soccer team in Solon.
I continue to revise my
service objectives. In the future, I hope to take on
more responsibilities as assistant director of Graduate
Studies, participate in work of other college and
university committees, and serve in leadership positions
in the American Sociological Association and the Law and
Society Association.
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