Blog Posts

The Making of Racial Hierarchies

7/14/2021

An Interview with Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory

Perspectives Editors interviewed Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory to discuss their recently published article “Racist Encounters: A Pragmatist Semiotic Analysis of Interaction” in Sociological Theory. Timmermans and Tavory develop a pragmatist semiotic approach to analyzing racial interactions, and specifically focus on how racial hierarchies are constituted or resisted in interactions.

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Theory Spotlight: Sourabh Singh

7/13/2021

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Sourabh Singh
Assisant Professor
Florida State University

Sourabh Singh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Florida State University, Tallahassee. He specializes in the areas of Political Sociology, Sociological Theory, Comparative and Historical Sociology, and Culture. His work has been published in Sociological Theory, Theory and Society, Philosophy of Social Sciences, Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior, and Journal of Critical Realism. He teaches courses on Sociological Theory and Political Sociology.

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Dissertation Spotlight: Emilio Lehoucq

7/13/2021

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Emilio Lehoucq
Northwestern University
Website Twitter

I study a major transformation that occurred over last three decades. Now, every day, as we open our computers and phones we interact with and through machine learning. I ask why machine learning has spread since the mid 1990s across retail, finance, love, security, music, healthcare, manufacturing, and other institutions. Machine learning is a category of algorithms that “learn by themselves.” Programmers need relatively little a priori knowledge about the substantive domain. Instead, programmers decide over which model to use and how to adjust the model to the data based on the model’s predictive accuracy.

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Dissertation Spotlight: Santiago Molina

7/12/2021

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Santiago Molina
PhD Student
Uc Berkeley
Website

My dissertation, How Science Produces Institutions: The Practice and Politics of Genome Editing, examines the social, scientific, and political struggles being waged over the revolutionary genome-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9. With over 20 clinical trials for treating genetic diseases with CRISPR underway, stakeholders continue to debate issues of equity, racial justice, ethics, and ableism surrounding the modification of human DNA. I reframe these struggles theoretically as a problem of institutionalization: How is the idea and discourse of genome editing rendered into a durable set of practices that become legitimated and taken for granted? To answer this question, I draw from participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research to trace the trajectory of scientific practices as they move from the laboratory to the clinic and interrogate the sites at which decisions are made about the ethics, safety, and priorities of genome editing.

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2021 ASA Theory Section Awards

7/11/2021

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Junior Theorist Award

Winner
Paul Joosse and Robin Willey. 2020. “Gender and Charismatic Power,” Theory and Society, 49(4):533-561.

Honorable Mention
Christina Simko. 2020. “Marking Time in Memorials and Museums of Terror: Temporality and Cultural Trauma,” Sociological Theory 38(1):51-77.

Committee
Besnik Pula (chair)
Neil Gong
Katrina Quisumbing King
Poulami Roychowdhury

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Junior Theorists Symposium

7/10/2021

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15th Annual Junior Theorists Symposium
August 5th and 6th, 2021
Schedule of Events

Panels held via Zoom, open to all, closed captioning available
Please register via the link provided for each day you plan to attend
Donate to next year’s JTS! Venmo: @JTS-2021

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Recent Publications

7/6/2021

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To have your recent (2021) publications advertised in the Fall 2021 issue of Perspectives, please email us at theory.newsletter@gmail.com by Nov. 1.

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Fall 2020 - Letter from the Chair

12/16/2020

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Simone Pollilo
University of Virginia

Crisis and the Medium Term

I can’t imagine I have been alone in thinking about crisis over the past few, but seemingly interminable, months—and as I write, neither can I imagine that I am alone in my inability to shake off the feeling that, whatever crisis has been averted (there will be a peaceful transition of power in the United States; a vaccine is coming…), it is not only that long-standing crises are still festering—racial justice, social equality, expansive citizenship rights, environmental protection hardly seem within reach; it is also that new crises are likely developing under our very eyes, but, to paraphrase Roux-Doufort (in Schwarz, Seeger, and Auer 2016:28), the “signals” are too weak for us to properly understand what they entail for future developments.

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Teaching Theory at UCLA

12/15/2020

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Should We Cancel The Core?
Rebecca Jean Emigh
Johanna Hernández
Corey O'Malley

Graduate students in our department (UCLA, Sociology) are only required to take one theory class, and the course is not required to focus on classical or contemporary theory per se. Rather, the topic is open, which allows us a great amount of freedom, clearly not open to others in which departments’ curricula demand particular content. As such, we wanted to experiment with the so-called “core” texts, trying to explore what is essential, useful, irrelevant, or biased.

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Teaching Theory at Washington University

12/15/2020

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On Teaching Theory in a New Department
ADIA HARVEY WINGFIELD

In July 2020, Harvard Business Review published an article by Adia Harvey Wingfield reflecting on building the Washington University Sociology department from the ground up, resulting in one of the most diverse academic departments in the country only five years after its conception. We followed up with Professor Wingfield, who teaches the primary theory courses in the department, to ask how WashU Sociology's approach to a new, diverse, department affects the way they teach theory.

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Perspectives
A NEWSLETTER OF THE ASA THEORY SECTION

The Making of Racial Hierarchies

An Interview with Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory

Theory Spotlight: Sourabh Singh

Sourabh Singh
Assisant Professor
Florida State University

Dissertation Spotlight: Emilio Lehoucq

Emilio Lehoucq
Northwestern University
Website Twitter

Dissertation Spotlight: Santiago Molina

Santiago Molina
PhD Student
Uc Berkeley
Website

2021 ASA Theory Section Awards

Junior Theorist Award

Junior Theorists Symposium

15th Annual Junior Theorists Symposium
August 5th and 6th, 2021
Schedule of Events

Recent Publications

Fall 2020 - Letter from the Chair

Simone Pollilo
University of Virginia

Crisis and the Medium Term

Teaching Theory at UCLA

Should We Cancel The Core?
Rebecca Jean Emigh
Johanna Hernández
Corey O'Malley

Teaching Theory at Washington University

On Teaching Theory in a New Department
ADIA HARVEY WINGFIELD

Fall 2021 Content

EDITORS

Archives

Categories

PerspectivesA NEWSLETTER OF THE ASA THEORY SECTION﻿

An Interview with Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory

Sourabh SinghAssisant ProfessorFlorida State University

Emilio LehoucqNorthwestern UniversityWebsite Twitter

Santiago MolinaPhD StudentUc BerkeleyWebsite

Junior Theorist Award

15th Annual Junior Theorists SymposiumAugust 5th and 6th, 2021Schedule of Events

Simone PolliloUniversity of Virginia

Crisis and the Medium Term

Should We Cancel The Core? Rebecca Jean EmighJohanna HernándezCorey O'Malley

On Teaching Theory in a New DepartmentADIA HARVEY WINGFIELD

Fall 2021 Content

EDITORS

Archives

Categories

Perspectives
A NEWSLETTER OF THE ASA THEORY SECTION

Sourabh Singh
Assisant Professor
Florida State University

Emilio Lehoucq
Northwestern University
Website Twitter

Santiago Molina
PhD Student
Uc Berkeley
Website

15th Annual Junior Theorists Symposium
August 5th and 6th, 2021
Schedule of Events

Simone Pollilo
University of Virginia

Should We Cancel The Core?
Rebecca Jean Emigh
Johanna Hernández
Corey O'Malley

On Teaching Theory in a New Department
ADIA HARVEY WINGFIELD