The American Sociological Association (ASA) invites you to submit your abstract for the session The Toolkit of Emerging Autocrats to present at the International Sociological Association’s XX World Congress of Sociology. The conference will take place in Melbourne, Australia from June 25th to July 1st, 2023.
Description
How are the emerging autocrats grabbing and maintaining power across the world? Many aspiring autocrats share strategies and tools to undermine democratic processes. These strategies include changing political institutions, rewriting constitutions, silencing opposition, spreading misinformation, and crafting divisions by instigating racism, nativism, and nationalism. Through a global and comparative lens, the session panelists will examine the tools, conditions, and mechanisms that allow strongmen to successfully undermine democratic traditions and constrain civil rights.
The Toolkit of Emerging Autocrats will be the ASA session at the International Sociological Association (ISA) conference. It is organized by Cecilia Menjívar (ASA president) and Deisy Del Real (ASA delegate to ISA). Please, direct your questions to (deisydel@usc.edu) and submit your 300-word abstracts by September 15, 2022.
Engaging History: Legacies, Omissions, and New Directions in Comparative Historical Sociology
2022 Mini-Conference, ASA CHS Section
Registration and COVID Guidelines:
Registration is now closed. If you would like to be placed on the waitlist please email us at chsminiconference2022@gmail.com and we will let you know as soon as we know if spots are available.
Due to the increased number of COVID cases and in line with LA city and county guidelines we will be requiring all guests to wear a mask during the event. While food will be served we encourage people to take their food outside so as to minimize mask removal indoors. Please also be prepared to show your COVID vaccination card upon request.
Livestream:
https://www.twitch.tv/asachs2022
Program:
USC Taper Hall – August 5th, 2022
8:30–8:45 AM Welcome/Introduction
8:50–10:20 AM Panel 1: Targeted Medicine: Race, Disease, and Death in the US and Brazil THH 202
Aja Antoine-Jones, “Germs and Jim Crow: The Effect of Residential Segregation on Tuberculosis Mortality in Atlanta, Georgia 1920-1927.” University of California, Berkeley.
Surbhi Shrivastava, “From home to the hospital: Medicalization of childbirth among black mothers in nineteenth-century Brazil.” Emory University.
Marzena Woinska, “Managing Micro-Interactions: The Cultural Meaning of Targeting.” CUNY, Hunter College.
Danielle McCarthy, “How Death Gave Birth to a Gendered Anti-Black Field: A case study of the OB/GYN Profession.” University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
DISCUSSANT: Alexandre White, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
10:30–12:00 PM Panel 2: After Decolonization: Colonial Legacies and Connected Sociologies of Indigenous Land Rights, Political Movements and Global Migration Flows THH 202
Rina Agarwala, “The Migration-Development Regime: Recasting Global Migration Studies to illuminate History and Class.” Johns Hopkins University.
Mabrouka M’Barek, “The Proletarianization of Kinship-Based Qabilas: France’s colonial strategy to accelerate the Tunisian hinterland integration into global capitalism in 1881-1940.” University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Mushahid Hussain, “Grounding Decolonization: Political Movements, Development Regimes, and the Prehistory of Bangladesh, 1947-71.” Cornell University.
Ricarda Hammer, “Decolonization beyond Political Independence: Departmentalization, the Politics of Recognition, and Anticolonial Imaginaries from Martinique.” University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
DISCUSSANT: Julian Go, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago
12–1:30 PM Lunch
CONCURRENT PANELS – ROOMS THH 202 & THH 208
1:30–3:00 PM Panel 3: Erasures and Eruptions: Processes of Denial and Persistence THH 202
Yannick Coenders, “Colonial Recursion: State Categories of Race and the Emergence of the non-Western Allochthone.” Northwestern University.
Veda Hyunjin Kim & Joshua Kaiser, “Colonial/Imperial Unknowing: Erasures of Empires’ Genocidal Violence from the 1948 Genocide Convention to Today.” University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Berenike Firestone, “Building the Big Tent: How Mainstream Conservative Politics in Post-WWII Germany Shaped Regional Trajectories in Far-Right Success.” Columbia University.
DISCUSSANT: Angel Adams Parham, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia
1:30–3:00 PM Panel 4: Categories in Motion: Contested Trajectories and Border Crossings THH 208
Sunmin Kim, Carolyn Choi, Amy Park, and Joseph Chong, “Category Traversing: Early Korean Immigrants Eluding the American State.” Dartmouth College.
Luisa Farah Schwartzman and Anne Pollock, “Drugs, race, colonialism and the making of the modern world.” University of Toronto & King’s College London.
Bryan Sargent, “Historical Sociology and the Latent Heat of White Supremacy.” University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
DISCUSSANT: Jordanna Matlon, Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University
3:00–3:30 PM Coffee Break
3:30–5:30 PM Plenary: Pathways to Knowledge in CHS THH 202
Heidi Nicholls, “Seeing Race Like a State: New Avenues for Studying Empires and Racism.” University of Virginia.
Anna Skarpelis, “Race in Parentheses: Historical Legacies in the Production of Racial Absence.” University of Basel, eikones & Social Science Center Berlin.
Laura Kirsten Nelson, “Situated Knowledges and Partial Perspectives: Toward a Radical Objectivity in Comparative Historical Sociology.” University of British Columbia.
Alannah Caisey, “‘Being Free’: A Critical Genealogy of Black Women’s Liberatory Pedagogies Through Scholar-Activism.” University of Pittsburgh.
DISCUSSANT: Elisabeth S. Clemens, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago 6:00 PM Drinks at Prank Bar (1100 S Hope Street)
Logistics:
We’re excited to host the 2022 ASA Comparative Historical Section’s Mini-Conference, to take place Friday August 5, 2022. Please find below additional logistical details on the day’s event.
Registration: Registration is now closed. If you would like to be placed on the waitlist please email us at chsminiconference2022@gmail.com and we will let you know as soon as we know if spots are available.
COVID Logistics: Due to the increased number of COVID cases and in line with LA city and county guidelines we will be requiring all guests to wear a mask during the event. While food will be served we encourage people to take their food outside so as to minimize mask removal indoors.
Please also be prepared to show proof of COVID vaccination upon request.
Location: All panel sessions will be in Taper Hall on the University of Southern California-Dornsife campus. We have two rooms reserved (THH 202 & 208) but most events will take place in the larger auditorium THH 202.
The USC Campus is a short train ride away from the LA Convention Center/JW Marriott where the main ASA Conference is being held.
Attendance: We encourage people to attend the entire day’s events if possible. The plenary session at the end of the day will open into a Town Hall meeting for collective reflection on the day’s conversations. This is an opportunity for us to think hard about new paths forward for the discipline.
Optional Drinks: We invite all participants–panelists and audience alike–to continue the conversation over drinks and food after the event. This informal gathering will take place after the mini-conference at 6PM and we will gather at:
Prank Bar
1100 S Hope St
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Catering: We are able to provide lunch for registered participants in addition to coffee and tea. Please note we will not be providing breakfast food.
University College Dublin, Ireland (UCD), School of Sociology is hiring an Assistant Professor (Above Bar – Prestigious Ad-Astra Fellow). Peace, conflict, memory, nationalism, war and human rights are among many topics and areas of interest.
The International Studies and International Business Program at Fairfield University invites applications for a position of Assistant Professor of the Practice or Instructor of the Practice in College of Arts & Sciences to begin fall 2022. This is a non-tenure track, full-time, fixed-term, renewable position. Candidates must have PhD in Sociology or Anthropology, international expertise, and be able to teach our foundational course, “People, Places, and Global Issues.” Candidates should show a commitment to excellence in teaching. Interest and experience in teaching to promote social justice is desirable.
Responsibilities include:
Teaching four courses each semester at the undergraduate level. Teaching assignments may require teaching day, evening, face-to-face, hybrid and online. Academic advising and extracurricular student engagement. Providing service to the program, the College of Arts & Sciences, the university, and the community at-large as necessary and appropriate.
Qualifications: Candidates must have masters or PhD in Sociology or Anthropology from an accredited institution.
Application Instructions:
Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Preference will be given to applications that arrive before March 1, 2022. Only complete files will be reviewed by the search committee and for full consideration, please upload the following materials:
(1) cover letter that includes teaching experience and/or teaching philosophy,
(2) curriculum vitae,
(3) samples of syllabi and teaching evaluations (if available)
(4) contact information for three or more professional references. Please contact David Crawford (dcrawford@fairfield.edu) with questions.
Note: If you have more than 5 documents to upload to your application, please combine them into 5 or less documents or submit additional documents to sociologysearch@fairfield.edu
About Fairfield University
Fairfield University was founded in 1942 as a Jesuit institution in Fairfield, CT, one hour from New York City along the Long Island Sound. The University’s 200-acre campus includes five College and Professional Schools that enroll approximately 3,500 undergraduate students and 1,200 graduate students.
The Department of Sociology at Stony Brook University seeks a Chair to serve as the intellectual leader of the department, facilitating a positive environment for teaching, scholarship, and service to the college and the university. This individual will continue the Department’s tradition of excellence in research and teaching. The Sociology Department possesses strengths in many areas, and is renowned for its focus on global phenomena and their connection to national dynamics. It also has a large undergraduate major, one of the most popular minors on campus (in Health and Society), and a robust and nationally-recognized doctoral program.
The search is open with regard to methodological specialization; we welcome scholars with qualitative (e.g., ethnographic, archival) and/or quantitative (e.g., statistical or big data) skills. We are, however, particularly interested in scholars whose research overlaps with one or more of the Department’s strengths, including computational social science, environment, global and public health, race and ethnicity, international development, inequality, politics, and culture. The candidate should have at least two years of administrative experience. We welcome applications from Advanced Associates (at least three years post-tenure or have extraordinary leadership accomplishments warranting consideration) and Full Professors. We especially invite applications from women and under-represented minority candidates.
The ideal candidate will:
● Possess a minimum of two years of administrative experience at the Departmental or College level
● Be ready to serve at least one three-year term as Chair
● Have a demonstrated track-record of publication in nationally or internationally-prominent venues within Sociology, as well as a clear pathway to continued excellence in the field
● Contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the Department and University
Requested Application Materials:
1) State employment application
2) Cover letter
3) Curriculum Vitae
4) Research Statement
5) Teaching Statement
6) Diversity Statement
We will begin review of applications on January 10, 2022, and continue until the position has been filled.
Doctoral students in departments of sociology who have not yet defended their dissertation proposals are invited to apply to a dissertation proposal development workshop on “problem solving sociology.” Northwestern University will pay for economy-class airfare and accommodation in Evanston, IL, plus meals and transportation expenses, for a one-day workshop to be held on May 26, 2022. If an in-person workshop cannot be held, the workshop will be held online over two days, May 25 and May 26. This workshop is made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Problem-solving sociology uses sociological insights to attempt to solve (not just describe) contemporary social problems, and uses investigation of social problems to further sociological theory. For more on problem-solving sociology see our website at https://problemsolvingsociology.com.
The workshop will include discussion of principles and techniques of problem-solving sociology and examples of sociological scholarship that applies the approach, plus extensive feedback on individual student projects.
To apply, please submit by January 31, 2022, to DevinWiggs2023@u.northwestern.edu (1) a short cover letter detailing your university, your department, your year in the program, whether or not you have defended your dissertation proposal, and any other information that might be relevant. If you know the date you expect to defend your proposal, please indicate it, but we also welcome students who are several years away from defending. Please also submit (2) a separate document, no more than 2 single spaced pages, responding to some or all of the following questions (not all questions will be relevant for all applicants):
1) What is the social problem that you seek to solve?
2) What is your research project for solving it?
a. What do scholars already know about solving this problem, and what do they not yet know?
b. What social theories or approaches might be useful in solving this problem? If none, can you use this research as a way to critique and reformulate existing theories?
c. What methods will you use in your research?
3) What are some potential solutions?
4) (more relevant for some topics than others) Have you been involved with non-academic groups that work on this problem? Describe if so, or if you have plans to be in future. Do you see a way to engage sociological theory with the work of these groups?
5) (if possible) How could short-term solutions feed into longer-term, structural change on this problem?
We welcome both creative and ambitious ideas, as well as focused and practical ideas, as well as ideas that are somewhere in between. If the problem is the basic structure of the economic system and the only solution that you see is revolution, then think about how to bring about revolution. If the problem is colleges closing over spring break and low-income students having nowhere to go, think about how to nudge institutions to respond to the needs of nontraditional members. If the problem is racism or sexism, think about how to solve (not just describe) racism or sexism. If you already know the solution to the problem, but the problem is convincing policymakers, then focus on how to convince (or change) policymakers.
In a world of vertiginous inequality, escalating ecological disaster, and extraordinary political and economic turbulence generated by a winner take all society seemingly designed to concentrate privilege and power in the hands of a very few, the central question that faces sociology is whether social protest will change anything or whether elites will continue to lead the planet and its population to disaster. All the important topics of contemporary sociology, including racial justice, environmental change, immigration, economic inequality, and education, to name a few, turn around this issue. The question of the power of elites, and the conditions under which that power might be tamed, happened to lie at the heart of the historical sociology of Richard Lachmann, who died tragically and suddenly this Fall. In his honor, we solicit papers that address the issues of elite and nonelite influences on political and social processes and outcomes. We welcome both theoretical and empirical papers. Submissions could be, for example, reprises of elite theory, critical summaries, critiques, discussions of class versus elite power, developments of alternatives (i.e., nonelite influences, people power), empirical evaluations of the relative power of elites and nonelites, or concrete investigations into the processes that maintain and undermine that power. Possible topics include the origins of capitalism, empires, elites and contemporary capitalism, social movements and elite conflict, and popular culture and influencers.
Abstracts are due to Rebecca Jean Emigh (emigh@soc.ucla.edu) and Dylan Riley on January 28th, 2022 and should be no longer than 500 words. We are collecting papers with an eye to publishing them as an edited volume for a major university press.
Held as a hybrid in-person/zoom event on August 4th (additional details TBD)*
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Friday, February 25, 2022 by 11:59PM PST
We invite submissions of précis for the 16th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS). The annual symposium will be held in person on August 4th (additional details TBD) prior to the 2022 ASA Annual Meeting. The JTS is a conference featuring the work of up-and-coming sociologists, sponsored in part by the Theory Section of the ASA. Since 2005, the conference has brought together early career sociologists who engage in theoretical work, broadly defined.
It is our honor to announce that Steven Epstein (Northwestern University), Saskia Sassen (Columbia University), and Mario Small (Harvard University) will serve as discussants for this year’s symposium. Paul Joosse (Hong Kong University) and Robin Willey (Concordia University of Edmonton), winners of the 2021 Junior Theorist Award, will deliver a keynote address. Finally, the symposium will include an after-panel titled “Theorizing Intersections,” with panelists Tey Meadow (Columbia University), Tianna Paschel (UC Berkeley), Vrushali Patil (Florida International University), Mary Romero (Arizona State), and Adia Harvey Wingfield (Washington University St. Louis).
We invite all ABD graduate students, recent PhDs, postdocs, and assistant professors who received their PhDs from 2018 onwards to submit up to a three-page précis (800-1000 words). The précis should include the key theoretical contribution of the paper and a general outline of the argument. Successful précis from last year’s symposium can be viewed here. Please note that the précis must be for a paper that is not under review or forthcoming at a journal.
As in previous years, there is no pre-specified theme for the conference. Papers will be grouped into sessions based on emergent themes and discussants’ areas of interest and expertise. We invite submissions from all substantive areas of sociology. and we especially encourage papers that are works-in-progress and would benefit from the discussions at JTS.
Please remove all identifying information from your précis and submit it via this Google form. Tara Gonsalves (University of California at Berkeley) and Davon Norris (The Ohio State University) will review the anonymized submissions. You can also contact them at juniortheorists@gmail.com with any questions. The deadline is Friday, February 25th. By mid-March, we will extend 9 invitations to present at JTS 2022. Please plan to share a full paper by July 5, 2022. Presenters will be asked to attend the symposium in its entirety in order to hear fellow scholars’ work. Please plan accordingly.
*Presenters should plan to attend in-person, though this may change based on the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College invites applications for a full-time tenure-track appointment at the assistant professor level beginning fall 2022. We seek scholars who have teaching and research expertise in race and racial justice. We are especially interested in scholars whose work intersects with one or more of the following areas: crime, law, or policing; environmental justice; and social movements and politics. Dartmouth is highly committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive population of students, faculty, and staff. We seek applicants who are able to work effectively with students, faculty, and staff from all backgrounds, including but not limited to: racial and ethnic minorities, women, individuals who identify with LGBTQ+ communities, individuals with disabilities, individuals from lower income backgrounds, and/or first generation college graduates. Applicants should state in their cover letter how their teaching, research, service, and/or life experiences prepare them to advance Dartmouth’s commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Applicants should have a Ph.D. in Sociology or a related field before the appointment begins. Review of applications will begin on September 15, 2021 and continue until the position is filled. Applicants should upload a curriculum vitae; a cover letter detailing (1) current and future research plans, (2) teaching experience and philosophy, and (3) contributions to diversity in the context of academic research, teaching, and/or service; a writing sample; and three letters of recommendation.
We invite submissions for an edited volume on the sociology of corruption. As we see it, a sociological approach treats corruption as embedded “in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations” (Granovetter 1985), with a particular focus on relations of power.
Embedding means understanding corruption with respect to the various contexts constituting it as a social object with moral and institutional force. These contexts may include various forms of social organization (e.g., state, agency, corporation, association), social groups, transactions, situations, and social processes (e.g., modernization and post-socialist transition). Our premise is that corruption only makes sense as part of a larger map for organizing and knowing the world, and thus our approach seeks to understand corruption with an eye to this map. This is different from approaches treating corruption as disembedded (i.e., the same everywhere independently of context) or so analytically and conceptually absorbed by social relations as to be reducible to prevailing norms and discourses. The first approach emphasizes behavior and the second culture. A focus on embeddedness allows us to bridge these approaches by highlighting the social processes and organizations in which corruption acquires identity or meaning within particular contexts.
The second distinctive feature of our approach is its focus on the production, contestation, and exercise of power through and in relation to corruption. The sociological study of corruption is fundamentally concerned with how different social actors and groups gain advantage relative to others through the definition of what is and what is not corruption, the making of claims about corruption, the actual transfer of resources via corruption, and the development and implementation of policies in the name of fighting corruption. In contrast to other scholarship, our approach rejects any assumptions about the (im)morality of corruption and anti-corruption, focusing instead on empirical inquiry into the meanings and implications of corruption-related processes for actors in specific contexts.
We invite submissions that align with this approach and treat corruption-related processes as (1) socially-embedded and (2) generative and reflective of power relations. Substantively, chapters may highlight processes of emergence and institutionalization (i.e., how corrupt practices take shape and become entrenched), articulation (i.e., how corruption relates to other social objects, such as the state and democracy), and mobilization (i.e., how the label of corruption is invoked or used).
We envision a volume consisting of ten chapters of 10,000 words each. Chapters should be new and not repackaged work and speak directly to our framework. Interested parties should submit a paper title and abstract to Marina Zaloznaya marina-zaloznaya@uiowa.edu, Nick Wilson nicholas.wilson@stonybrook.edu, and Marco Garrido garrido@uchicago.edu by July 30. We will then invite 10 scholars to present their papers at a symposium in the University of Chicago on September 23-25 (travel and accommodations will be covered). We will produce a book proposal shortly thereafter and expect full chapter drafts by December 10, 2021. Please email Nick, Marina, and Marco with any questions.