Blog Posts

Continuing a Comparative Historical Analysis and Theory Discussion

7/16/2021

Performance and Populism:
In Conversation with Isaac Ariail Reed and Adam Slez

IOANA SENDRoIU
WEATHERHEAD CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

The following is a version of the comments I shared in response to Adam Slez and Isaac Ariail Reed’s presentations during the February 25th meeting of Comparative Historical Analysis and Theory (CHAT). Their presentations were based on their recent books, and a recording of the event can be found here: https://comparativehistorical.org/events/past-events/. I am grateful to both for the opportunity, and for their engagement with my comments. What I tried to do, through my comments, was to read each book through the prism of the other.

4 Comments

Public Sociology

7/15/2021

3 Comments

Public Sociology and Social Theory
An Interview with Demar Lewis
PhD Candidate, Yale University

Demar F. Lewis IV is a PhD Candidate in Sociology & African American Studies at Yale University. He recently received an Honorable Mention for the 2021 ASA Theory Section’s Best Graduate Student Paper Award for his paper “Troubling America’s Historical Waters: Towards the Transdisciplinary Study of U.S. Lynchings as an Active Present.” Currently, Demar is a member of Cohort 3 of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars Program and the Spencer Cohort of the Institute for Critical, Quantitative, Computational, & Mixed Methodologies.

3 Comments

The Making of Racial Hierarchies

7/14/2021

3 Comments

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.

3 Comments

Theory Spotlight: Sourabh Singh

7/13/2021

8 Comments

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.

8 Comments

Dissertation Spotlight: Emilio Lehoucq

7/13/2021

7 Comments

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.

7 Comments

Dissertation Spotlight: Santiago Molina

7/12/2021

1 Comment

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.

1 Comment

2021 ASA Theory Section Awards

7/11/2021

19 Comments

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

19 Comments

Junior Theorists Symposium

7/10/2021

3 Comments

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

3 Comments

Recent Publications

7/6/2021

1 Comment

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.

1 Comment

Fall 2020 - Letter from the Chair

12/16/2020

2 Comments

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.

2 Comments

Teaching Theory at UCLA

12/15/2020

1 Comment

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.

1 Comment

Teaching Theory at Washington University

12/15/2020

1 Comment

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.

1 Comment

Decolonizing Theory: An Interview

12/14/2020

1 Comment

Ricarda Hammer
Brown University
Website

Can you tell us a little about your current project?
My work tells a story of modern citizenship, but from the perspective of the edges of empire. We usually think about modern citizenship as beginning with the French Revolution, as bounded by the nation state. We see it as the result of struggles of working classes, of women, seeking inclusion in the polity—and all these struggles take place within the nation. But the two cases I study, England and France, were not nation states but empires at the time.

1 Comment

Research Spotlight: Alexander C. Sutton

12/13/2020

1 Comment

Alexander C. Sutton
University of Virginia

My current research theorizes aesthetics. This pursuit of an aesthetic sociology reconstitutes how we think about the relationship between judgment, self-curation, and everyday action. Examining the creative and professional lives of contemporary American “classical” music composers, I ask: What does it mean to be an American composer in the 21st century? And, how do composer’s creative practices shape the aesthetic and professional landscape of contemporary art music in the U.S.?

1 Comment

Research Spotlight: Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani

12/12/2020

2 Comments

Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani
National University of Singapore
University of Michigan
Website

I am working on my book project, Sacred States and Subjects: Law, Religion and State-Building in Colonial Malaya, which examines how the colonial administration harnessed law and religion to share political power with native elites so as to govern effectively in late empire. I compare this process across four Malay states so as to refine a sociological framework for how cultural and moral systems divide and distribute power and bind – or fail to bind – state servants and subjects to their sovereign.

2 Comments

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Perspectives
A NEWSLETTER OF THE ASA THEORY SECTION

Continuing a Comparative Historical Analysis and Theory Discussion

Performance and Populism:
In Conversation with Isaac Ariail Reed and Adam Slez

IOANA SENDRoIU
WEATHERHEAD CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Public Sociology

Public Sociology and Social Theory
An Interview with Demar Lewis
PhD Candidate, Yale University

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

Decolonizing Theory: An Interview

Ricarda Hammer
Brown University
Website

Research Spotlight: Alexander C. Sutton

Alexander C. Sutton
University of Virginia

Research Spotlight: Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani

Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani
National University of Singapore
University of Michigan
Website

FALL 2022 Content

EDITORS

Archives

Categories

PerspectivesA NEWSLETTER OF THE ASA THEORY SECTION﻿

Performance and Populism:In Conversation with Isaac Ariail Reed and Adam Slez

IOANA SENDRoIUWEATHERHEAD CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS​HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Public Sociology and Social Theory An Interview with Demar LewisPhD Candidate, Yale University

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

Ricarda HammerBrown UniversityWebsite

Alexander C. SuttonUniversity of Virginia

Hanisah Binte Abdullah SaniNational University of SingaporeUniversity of Michigan​Website

FALL 2022 Content

EDITORS

Archives

Categories

Perspectives
A NEWSLETTER OF THE ASA THEORY SECTION

Performance and Populism:
In Conversation with Isaac Ariail Reed and Adam Slez

IOANA SENDRoIU
WEATHERHEAD CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Public Sociology and Social Theory
An Interview with Demar Lewis
PhD Candidate, Yale University

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

Ricarda Hammer
Brown University
Website

Alexander C. Sutton
University of Virginia

Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani
National University of Singapore
University of Michigan
Website