The Europe Center is jointly housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Global Studies Division.
Laitin has made “culture,” often the junk drawer of political science studies, studiable and concrete by identifying various cultural components of a nation’s inner life; language is one aspect of culture, religion another, art and literature a third, how private family life is organized a fourth. Central to his thinking is that these cultural components do not have to easily reinforce each other or pull in the same direction. These “spheres” can co-exist without coinciding.