ASA Congressional Briefing Examines Policy Implications Regarding Disasters

By defining events as natural disasters or acts of God, we emphasize the inevitability of catastrophe and fail to recognize both the man-made sources of our vulnerability and the social fault lines that determine who is at risk.
—Eric Klinenberg, commenting on the deaths of 20,000 people in the summer of 2003 heat wave in Europe. International Herald Tribune, August 22, 2003.

What do the World Trade Center, the Challenger Space Shuttle, Hurricane Hugo, and the Loma Prieta Earthquake have in common?

The second in a series of articles highlighting the sociological context of ASA’s next Annual Meeting location . . . San Francisco, California

When you arrive at the 2004 ASA Annual Meeting’s San Francisco hotel, you will be approximately 18 miles from California’s oldest penitentiary, San Quentin State Prison. Constructed with convict labor between 1852 and 1856 as “an answer to the rampant lawlessness in California” (according to the California Department of Corrections, or CDC), the facility occupies 432 acres of prime real estate in Marin County, an affluent area north of the San Francisco Bay.

The American Sociological Association is pleased to announce the slate of candidates for ASA Offices, Council, and the Committee on Publications. Ballots for the 2004 ASA election will be mailed in early May 2004.