August 11 | August 12 | August 13 | August 14
Thematic Session. Backstage and Frontstage in Social Life: Goffman's Legacy
Fri, Aug 11 - 8:30am - 10:10am
Session Organizer: Randall Collins (University of Pennsylvania)
Goffman and Globalization: Strategic Interaction on a World Stage Jeffrey J. Sallaz (Univerisity of Arizona)
The Staging of Urban Nightlife David Grazian (University of Pennsylvania)
Meshing Front and Backstages In Prayer: The presentation of self in spiritual life Taryn Kudler (Healthcare Chaplaincy)
Goffman and the New Individualism Ann Branaman (Florida Atlantic University)
The aim of the panel is to commemorate Goffman's theoretical accomplishments of a half-century ago, and to display their continuing vitality in the forefront of sociology today.
Thematic Session. Sexualities, Borders, and Boundaries
Fri, Aug 11 - 8:30am - 10:10am
Session Organizer and Presider: Steven G. Epstein (University of California, San Diego)
A Global Historical Perspective on Immigrant Sexual Cultures Yen Le Espiritu (University of California-San Diego)
Boundaries at Work: Sexual Cultures, Risk Heuristics, and HIV among Mexican Gay Immigrants Jorge Fontdevila (University of California San Francisco)
Queering the State: Insights from India Jyoti Puri (Simmons College)
Becoming a Sexual Citizen: Circumscribed Belongings for Mexican Gay and Transgender Immigrants Steven G. Epstein (University of California, San Diego), Hector Carrillo (UCSF)
Discussant: Barry D. Adam (University of Windsor)
In recent years, sociologists have devoted increasing attention to understanding the globalization of sexualities. They have analyzed how sexual practices, meanings, and identities are transformed through processes such as diffusion, migration, tourism, and the global sex trade; and they have considered the impact of these transformations on health and human rights. The proposed thematic session would sharpen this analytical focus by bringing together diverse studies of sexual cultures in a global context. Specifically, the purpose of the panel would be to analyze the interplay among three sorts of boundaries: borders, understood as porous, physical boundaries both separating and joining nations; social boundaries, such as the enforced status divisions between “citizens” and “aliens”; and symbolic boundaries, such as those between juxtaposed categories of identity (e.g., “heterosexual”/“homosexual”) or between privileged and stigmatized domains of social life. By bringing together scholarly work done in a variety of international and transnational settings, we hope to demonstrate the crucial place of sexuality in studies of globalization, citizenship, migration, and boundary-work.
Thematic Session. Cultural Production and Collective Identities
Fri, Aug 11 - 8:30am - 10:10am
Session Organizer and Presider: Marcel Fournier (Université de Montréal)
Panelist: Gérard Bouchard (Université du Québec a Chicoutimi)
Panelist: Guy Rocher (Université de Montréal)
Thematic Session. Transgressing Boundaries: War and National Sovereignty
Fri, Aug 11 - 8:30am - 10:10am
Session Organizer and Presider: Christopher Chase-Dunn (University of California, Riverside)
Territory, Authority, Rights Saskia Sassen (University of Chicago)
Beyond the Theory of Imperialism: Global Capitalism and the Transnational State William I. Robinson (University of California-Santa Barbara)
American Imperialism since 1898 Michael Mann (UCLA)
New Imperialism or the Global Extension of Domestic Politics? Fred Block (University of California-Davis)
War, State-Corporate Globalization, and the New Sovereignty Thomas Ehrlich Reifer (University of San Diego)
Discussant: Albert J. Bergesen (University of Arizona)
This session presents comparative research and analysis of the current period of "new imperialism" in world historical and comparative perspective. Is U.S. unilateralism really a sign of the emergence of a transnational capitalist state, or is it only another case of imperial over-reach by a declining hegemon? Older conceptualizations of national sovereignty are being contested by new forms of transnational relations and by the slow emergence of a global state. Has warfare permanently moved from interstate conflict to global civil war, or has the hiatus of interstate war been a product of hegemonic stability that will pass as the hegemon declines? These issues of peace and security are germane for discussions of hegemony, globalization, transnational capitalism, global civil society, transnational social movements, and core/periphery relations.
Thematic Session. National Boundaries and Social Control
Fri, Aug 11 - 8:30am - 10:10am
Session Organizer and Presider: Miguel Centeno (Princeton University)
Global Flows and Social Transformations: the Growing Salience of the Judiciary David Jacobson (Arizona State University)
Controlling Insecure Borders George Gavrillis (University of Texas)
Imperial Embrace?: Identification and Constraints on Mobility in a Hegemonic Empire John C. Torpey (University of British Columbia)
The Decline of Citizenship and the Victory of the Market Miguel Centeno (Princeton University)
Session will analyze the extent to which contemporary states can claim the classic Weberian monopoly on the control over a territory. If this authority is being challenged, what are the implications for internal control? What kind of hierarchy of jurisdictions must be created? What does this mean for notions of a global state system?
Thematic Session. Social Divides: Inclusion, Institutions, and Successful Societies
Fri, Aug 11 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Michele Lamont (Harvard University)
An Unpredictable Journey: From Collective Imaginaries to Individuals' Narratives and Behaviors Gérard Bouchard (Université du Québec a Chicoutimi)
Culture, Institutions and Capabilities: Health and Development in Poor Countries Peter B. Evans (University of California, Berkeley)
Public Policy-Making as Social Resource Creation Peter A. Hall (Harvard University)
Healthy Citizens? Citizenship and Shifting Paradigms of Public Health Jane Jenson (University of Montréal)
Macro-history, Social Imaginaries, and the Social Determinants of Health Since World War II William Sewell (University of Chicago)
This session features results from a multi-year multidisciplinary research group that analyzes the role of collective narratives and resilient institutions in mediating the relationship between inequality, inclusion, and health outcomes broadly defined. Drawing on political science, history, cultural sociology, and macro sociology, comparativists aim to deepen our understanding of the conditions leading to the health gradient and to foster new dialogues with social epidemiologists. The focus is on the study of "Successful Societies" defined as societies with low infant mortality and high life expectancy, and societies where multiple conceptions of self-worth coexist.
Thematic Session. State and Society in the Middle East
Fri, Aug 11 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Session Organizer: Valentine M. Moghadam (Chief, Gender Equity and Development Section, UNESCO)
Presider: Mounira Maya Charrad (University of Texas, Austin)
Repression and Resistance in the Middle East Katherine Meyer (Ohio State University), J. Craig Jenkins (Ohio State University)
Constitutional and Political Reconstruction in Iran and Afghanistan Said Amir Arjomand (SUNY- Stony Brook)
States and Women’s Movements in the Middle East Valentine M. Moghadam (Chief, Gender Equity and Development Section, UNESCO)
Discussant: Mounira Maya Charrad (University of Texas, Austin)
This will address the changing configuration of the state in the Middle East and the emergence of new social forces in contention with each other as well as with the state. As the formerly populist states have shifted to neoliberal economic policies, the old social contract has collapsed, leading to socio-economic tensions and grievances. At the same time, some states have taken tentative steps toward democratization, although many remain authoritarian. These changes have favored but also disadvantaged new socio-political forces such as fundamentalists and feminists. Papers may analyze state-society changes and contention in single societies; or examine repression and resistance across the region; or focus on cases of coalition-building for legal reform.
Thematic Session. Great Divides: The Academy and the Economy
Fri, Aug 11 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Steven G. Brint (University of California-Riverside)
Libraries and the Ownership of Knowledge Andrew Abbott (University of Chicago)
Economic Relevance: A New University Mission? Roger L. Geiger (Pennsylvania State University)
The University in an Age of Neo-liberalism Daniel Lee Kleinman (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
The Uneasy Embrace of Public and Private Science Walter W. Powell (Stanford University)
For 25 years, federal and state governments have strongly encouraged the expansion of ties between universities and firms. These ties have led to increased patenting and licensing of new technologies, many more collaborations, expansions of research parks, faculty-led start-up companies, and other efforts to commercialize academic knowledge. Following incentives from government and private donors, universities have engaged in strategic planning and hiring attuned to new techology initiatives. The panel will assess the outcomes of this quarter century of change, both for the American economy and for universities.
Thematic Session. Policy Networks, Social Services, and Advocacy Coalitions among Immigrant-Servicing Organizations: A Comparison of Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York
Fri, Aug 11 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Session Organizer: Hector Cordero-Guzmán (Baruch College-City University of New York)
Presider: Nicole P. Marwell (Columbia University)
The Types and Intensity of Cross Border Activities among Immigrant Serving Community Based Organizations Hector Cordero-Guzmán (Baruch College-City University of New York), Victoria Quiroz-Becerra (New School University)
Representing and Connecting: Immigrant Organizations in Chicago Martha Zurita (Unviersity of Notre Dame), Magda Banda (Loyola University)
Framing Policy Choices: Advocacy Networks among Immigrant Organizations in Chicago Nik Theodore (University of Illinois, Chicago)
Settling in LA: Immigrant Serving Organizations in the Big City Abel Valenzuela (Univ. of California-Los Angeles)
Immigrant-serving community organizations and service providers in major U.S. cities have become key actors in cross-national migration and in processes of immigrant adaptation and incorporation. These organizations play four key riles in immigrant communities including: (1) Help in the migration process; (2) delivering social services related to the adaptation of immigrants into the receiving area; (3) serving as advocates for various immigrant groups by articulating the needs of their communities and representing these needs in state and local public policy arenas, and managing the flow of services and programs into the community; and (4) serving as a liaison between immigrants in the U.S. and their countries and regions of origin. In performing these functions, immigrant-serving organizations become important institutions at the neighborhood and metropolitan level, a leading voice that articulates the concerns of immigrant communities to the wider public, and an increasingly influential force in local and state politics.
The papers in this session examine the activities and inter-organization dynamics of immigrant-serving nonprofits in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Particular emphasis is placed on three areas of activity: social service delivery, grassroots community organizing, and public policy advocacy. The broad aim of these papers is to chart the development of immigrant groups, organizations, and service providers, document the factors involved in the formation and management of coalitions and partnerships between groups, and to understand how these non-profit organizations and coalitions influence processes of community development, the building of social movements, and the exercise of political power in metropolitan areas and in their countries and communities of origin.
Thematic Session. Gender Boundaries: How Far Have We Come?
Fri, Aug 11 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Session Organizer: Debra Renee Kaufman (Northeastern University)
Lifeprints:New Patterns of Love and Work for Today's Women Rosalind Chait Barnett (Brandeis University)
Achievement and Women: Challenging the Assumptions Debra Renee Kaufman (Northeastern University)
On Becoming a Social Scientist Shulamit Reinharz (Brandeis University)
Discussant: Judith Lorber (Graduate School and Brooklyn College, CUNY)
Each participant will present a 10-15 minute talk about their early work in the field of gender and look to the direction (s) we have come since then. What distinguishes this panels' work, among other things, is the way in which their early books transgressed disciplinary boundaries and the ways in which strands of those early transgressions have found their way into contemporary gender/feminist writings. These early books have in common the way in which the great divide between the sexes, and then the genders, disrupted the social order despite repeated findings that such distinctions were indeed deceptive, if not totally false. The format is that after their presentations, the participants, with the discussant, will have a twenty-minute conversation among themselves about the state of contemporary interdisciplinary work in gender and then open the discussion to the audience for the last half hour.
Thematic Session. Rethinking the Boundaries of the Body in Law
Fri, Aug 11 - 2:30pm - 4:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: David John Frank (University of California, Irvine) Session Organizer: Elizabeth Bernstein (Barnard College, Columbia Univ)
Abortion, Law, and the White Body Nicola K Beisel (Northwestern University)
The Boundaries of the Body in Sex-Work Laws Kamala Kempadoo (York University)
The Boundaries of the Body in Sexual Harassment Laws Abigail C. Saguy (UCLA)
Discussant: Elizabeth Bernstein (Barnard College, Columbia Univ)
Along many dimensions, laws in contemporary societies regulate what human bodies are and what they can do -- under what circumstances and with what other bodies. While such laws cover many topics (from assisted suicide to school sports), we restrict our attention here to sex-related matters, capturing much of the ferment and many of the issues common to the realm while maintaining focus. Drawing on insights from their own research, panelists disuss the current state of and historical changes in the body's legal boundaries, and suggest the implications of such matters for contemporary social life.
Thematic Session. Transgressing the Human and Non-human Boundary
Fri, Aug 11 - 2:30pm - 4:10pm
Session Organizer: Joan H. Fujimura (University of Wisconsin)
Session Organizer: Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University)
Presider: Sherry R. Turkle (MIT)
Dualism or Duality? Rethinking the Human-Animal Relationship in 'Modern' Society Colin Jerolmack (CUNY Graduate Center)
The Complexity of CyberCompanionship: When nurturance is the "killer app" Sherry R. Turkle (MIT)
Compulsive video gambling and the blurring of the human / machine boundary Natasha Schüll (Columbia University)
Human, all too non-Human: Imaginary Sociality in Synthetic Worlds Bart Simon (Concordia University)
Demystifications and Re-enchantments at the Human/Machine Interface
Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University)
Sociology has primarily concerned itself with humans, whether those concerns have centered on issues surrounding class, race,/ethnicity, gender/sex, age, nation, culture, etc. Relations that transgress the boundary between the human and nonhuman constitutes a set of concerns that carry both responsibilities and consequences for humans. Thus, even if we as sociologists want to remain human-centered, we cannot continue to ignore nonhumans in our humanist foci. This Thematic Session will address relationships at the human-nonhuman border to explore scenarios of human relationships with the technical, animal, plant, and environmental. While humanist concerns are still front and center (we are a narcissistic species), the speakers will discuss relations at the human/robot, human/other animals, human/natural environment borders.
Thematic Session. Bourdieu, Ethnography, and Theory
Fri, Aug 11 - 2:30pm - 4:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Michael Burawoy (University of California, Berkeley)
How Bourdieu's Ethnography Confronts the World: Colonialism, Nation State and Globalization Craig Calhoun (Social Science Research Council)
Colonialism and Revolution: Bourdieu Meets Fanon in the Algerian Field Michael Burawoy (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Bourdieu and the International Division of Theory Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia University)
The Primacy of Ethnography: The Field Roots of Bourdieu's Theories Loic J.D. Wacquant (University of California, Berkeley)
We too easily forget that Pierre Bourdieu was first and foremost an ethnographer and this deeply affected his practice of theory. Theory neither emerged deus ex machina from his ethnography nor was ethnography a mere illustration of preordained theory, but the practice of ethnography was always already theoretical practice, simultaneously generating the theory of the subject, the theory of the theorist, and the irreducibility of one to the other. The four papers seek to engage Bourdieu on this terrain, bringing his ethnographies conducted in Algeria and in France into a dynamic relation to his theory.
Thematic Session. Breaking Boundaries by Law: When It Works and When It Does Not
Fri, Aug 11 - 2:30pm - 4:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Carroll Seron (University of California, Irvine)
Off-White over Three Centuries: Mexican Americans and the Dynamics of White Legal Status Laura E Gómez (University of New Mexico)
Breaking Boundaries by Law: When it Works and When it Doesn’t Jack Greenberg (Columbia University)
The Declining Significance of Expertise: Race, Law and Social Science Evidence Rachel Moran (University of California Berkeley)
Motherhood: Fact and Norm in the Struggle Over Abortion Law Reva Siegel (Yale University)
Beginning in the early twentieth century, scholars in law and social science have engaged in a dialogue that moves from academic discourse to litigation strategy to public policy. In this thematic session, we explore the complexities, the subtleties, and the challenges of transgressing the boundaries of these modes of discourse.
Thematic Session. Cultural Movements and the Impact of Social Movements on Culture
Fri, Aug 11 - 2:30pm - 4:10pm
Session Organizer: Mayer N. Zald (University of Michigan) mayerz@umich.edu
The Cultural Politics of Everyday Discourse: The Case of "Male Chauvinist" Jane Mansbridge (Harvard University), katherine Flaster (Harvard University)
Movement Made Music Richard A. Peterson (Vanderbilt University), Jennifer C. Lena (Vanderbilt University)
Culture, Contestation and Collective Action Hayagreeva Rao, Calvin Morrill (University of California, Irvine), Mayer N. Zald (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Jennifer Earl (University of California) jearl@soc.ucsb.edu
Discussant: Scott Frickel (Tulane University) sfrickel@tulane.edu
Social categories, practices and forms are transformed by social and cultural movements. This thematic session brings together papers that examine cultural movements, an analytic type of movement that has not been well articulated, with the study of the impact of social movements on culture.
Thematic Session. Rethinking the Boundaries of the Body: Current Developments in Reproductive Rights -- Legal, Social, and Political Aspects
Fri, Aug 11 - 4:30pm - 6:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Carole E. Joffe (University of California-Davis)
Unborn Citizens and Forgotten Babies: Fetal Politics in Bush Country Monica J. Casper (Vanderbilt University)
The Status of Roe v Wade and the Prospects of Legal Abortion in the U.S. Louise Melling (American Civil Liberties Union)
Defending Abortion after the 2004 Election: The "Hillary Speech" and the Dilemma of the Abortion Rights Movement Carole E. Joffe (University of California-Davis)
This session will address several aspects of contemporary reproductive politics in the United States. A leading reproductive rights litigator will discuss the current status of Roe v Wade and the prospects of legal abortion in the U.S. in the foreseeable future. A sociologist who has extensively studied "fetal politics" will address the contradictions between developments in that field and the precarious status of children of the poor in the U.S. Finally, a sociologist of the abortion conflict will discuss the changed political terrain for the defenders of abortion rights in the aftermath of the 2004 election, and in particular, the provocative speech on abortion delivered by Senator Hillary Clinton shortly after the election.
Thematic Session. The State of Intersectionality in Feminist Research: Race, Class, Sexuality, and Nationality
Fri, Aug 11 - 4:30pm - 6:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: France Winddance Twine (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Intersectionality and the Microdynamics of Hate Violence Kathleen M. Blee (University of Pittsburgh)
"Sorry, I Don't Dance: White Male Bodies and the Dance Floor" Maxine Craig (California State University-East Bay)
Black, Woman, or Lesbian: Master Statuses, Cleavages and Constraints Mignon R. Moore (Columbia University), Elaine Harley (Columbia University)
Why Does Boys' Academic Achievement Lag Behind Girls?: A Quantitative Analysis of Intersectionality Irenee R. Beattie (Washington State University)
Crossing Borders for Sex: The State of Intersectionality within Late Capitalist Discourses on Trafficking and Prostitution Elizabeth Bernstein (Barnard College, Columbia University)
Discussant: Judith Stacey (New York University)
Feminist theorists developed intersectional theoretical frameworks in order to bring greater complexity to what had been exclusionary one-dimensional studies of gender or race or class. Race, class, gender and increasingly sexuality have gained recognition as the basic units of analysis in studies that include women of color. Yet too often studies of dominant groups such as heterosexuals and/or white men, remain one-dimensional studies of either gender or class. Moreover the national context is often not theorized. The papers in this session explore research projects in late capitalist consumer cultures. They attempt to provide a critical analysis that does not exclude members of dominant groups while also complicating studies that focus on ethnic minorities and sexual dissidents. The papers in this session respond to the question: "How does a synthetic analysis of race, class, gender, and sexuality enter into qualitative and quantitative research on racialized bodies, masculinity, families, educational achievement, and violence? This session examine the problematics and theoretical benefits of employing expanding an intersectional analysis in ethnographic and statistical research devoted to racial subjectivities, sexual hierarchies, and gendered lives.
Thematic Session. Time Boundaries: Conflicts, Inequalities, and Ambiguities in Dividing Work and the Rest of Life
Fri, Aug 11 - 4:30pm - 6:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Kathleen Gerson (New York University)
Time, Money, and Marriage: Gender Disparities Among Couples in the Same Occupation Jerry A. Jacobs (University of Pennsylvania), Sarah E. Winslow (University of Pennsylvania)
Converging Divergences: The Disappearing Clockworks of Work, Retirement, and the Life Course Phyllis Moen (University of Minnesota)
Flexible Structures: Time, Work, and Identity Eviatar Zerubavel (Rutgers University)
Discussant: Christena Nippert-Eng (Illinois Institute of Technology)
The construction of time boundaries represents an increasingly contested terrain in post-industrial societies, where shifting time norms and intensifying time pressures have created social and cultural conflicts over the meaning and proper use of time. This panel will consider how changes in the social organization of work, family, and the life course have created new ambiguities and inequalities in how time is divided.
Thematic Session. Enactment and Reproduction of Group Boundaries in Education
Fri, Aug 11 - 4:30pm - 6:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Prudence L. Carter (Harvard University)
"You're Not Supposed to be Smart and Black": Tracking and the Construction of the Black Student Identity Karolyn Tyson (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)
Racial and Multiracial Identification and Ascription in Institutional Contexts Jennifer Lee (University of California, Irvine), Frank D. Bean (Univ of California-Irvine)
Erasing Difference: Official Group Categories and Real-World Group Variations John Skrentny (University of California, San Diego)
Examining Effective Educational Environments for Racial Minority Students Using A Social Capital Framework of Analysis Ricardo D. Stanton-Salazar (University of Southern California)
The Paradox of Individualized Evaluation in Selective College Admissions Mitchell L. Stevens (New York University)
This invited session examines extant social boundaries and boundary making in education from a variety of institutional, group-based, and individual perspectives. Panelists ask: Who’s in and who’s out in the competition of educational achievement and attainment? What are some of the bases of differentiation in schooling and education? What social forces constitute and compel the (re)production of the lines of demarcation among different groups of actors? How are both social structures and individuals within schools and in the institution of education at-large implicated in the processes of boundary-making? Bringing together research from the fields of culture, race and ethnicity, social capital, and political sociology, a selective and dynamic group of scholars addresses these critical questions.
Thematic Session. Identifying Boundaries in Social Research
Fri, Aug 11 - 4:30pm - 6:10pm
Session Organizer and Presider: Paul J. DiMaggio (Princeton University)
Wild Type Religion Courtney J. Bender (Columbia University)
Networks and Fields: A Relational Pragmatics for Boundary Identification Ronald L. Breiger (University of Arizona)
Cultural Boundaries: Settled and Unsettled Thomas F. Gieryn (Indiana University)
Mapping Boundaries in Institutional Space John Mohr (University of California, Santa Barbara)
