Sub Topic
- Name:Susan Ossman
-
Topic:
- Public Policy: The Presidential Race
- Title:Charisma - Professor of anthropology
- Degree:Ph.D. Anthropology, UC Berkeley
- E-mail: susan.ossman@ucr.edu
- Phone: (951) 827-2264
- Prefered Media: Print, Radio, Video
Media Contact:
- Bettye Miller
- bettye.miller@ucr.edu
- (951) 827-7847
Background:
"The role of charisma in politics is widely recognized, but exactly how it works remains something of a mystery," Ossman says. "At the same time as we point to the power of the media or the strength of a campaign's strategy for impression management to account for candidates' success, we tend to think that in an ideal world leaders should be selected because of their positions or capabilities. We have seen the contrast of charisma to experience, excitement to claims of rational measures of accomplishment in the Obama-Clinton contest in the current campaign."
Based on research she has carried out on the media and social interactions, Ossman says that we should not see reason and charisma in opposition, but in terms of an ongoing balancing act of coexisting ways of making sense of the world. "From our relationships to our neighbors, how we determine competence on the job, to wanting to be invited to the parties of the popular kids at school, we juggle diverse ways of judging others and ourselves," she says. "If the media influence us, it is because we have already developed ways of thinking about the world that are in tune to how they put out messages."
Ossman also studies globalization, migration and world citizenship. She has worked for many years in Europe and the Arab world, and has written about gender, the veil in France, and questions of youth culture in the Arab world and Europe.
Recognitions:
Ossman is director of UCR's Global Studies program. She previously taught at Goldsmith's College, University of London, Georgetown University, Rice University, The American University of Paris and the CELSA-Sorbonne. In 1992 she founded the Rabat center of the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC- now Centre Jacques Berque), where she was research fellow and director until 1996.
Outside Activities:
Publications: "The Places We Share, Migration, Subjectivity and Global Mobility," (Lexington Books 2007); "Three Faces of Beauty, Casablanca, Paris, Cairo," (Duke 2002); and "Picturing Casablanca, Portraits of Power in a Modern City," (California 1994).
Languages Spoken:
English, French
