Call for Proposals: Comparative Sociology of Public Administration Book Volume Conference

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Organizers Erin Metz McDonnell (University of Notre Dame) and Josh Pacewicz (Brown University) invite chapter proposals for an edited volume on the Comparative Sociology of Public Administration.

The project will bring together scholars through two in-person mini-conferences:

  • Late Fall 2026: University of Notre Dame
  • Late Spring 2027: Brown University

Across the globe, states are under pressure to expand social protection, confront democratic backsliding, and adapt to rapid technological change—all while maintaining legitimacy and inclusion in service delivery. Their ability to deliver varies, and politicians in many states have challenged aspects of public administration whose legitimacy mainstream political parties once took as a matter of course. For these reasons, accounts of everything from contemporary welfare regimes to political economies are incomplete without consideration of public bureaucracies. Yet scholarship on public administration remains fragmented along disciplinary, regional, and methodological lines—with particular bifurcation between scholarship on the United States, which tends to employ quantitative and formal models, and scholarship on public administration in other nations, which often employs historical and qualitative techniques to analyze how bureaucracies work in practice. Bringing together a comparative group of scholars is essential to advance a new generation of theory on how states actually work, generating insights across both geographic and methodological differences.

We aim to convene scholars across global contexts to produce an edited volume on the Comparative Sociology of Public Administration via a series of two mini-conferences. We welcome proposals on any aspect of everyday governance, with particular interest in proposed chapters on the following themes: making rights real, state (il)legibility projects, AI and technology in governance, administrative professionals and careers, democratic backsliding and bureaucratic resistance, administrative burdens and improving service delivery, coproduction of public services, and inequalities in public service provision.

Confirmed volume contributors include leading scholars of public administration (Elisabeth Clemens, Pamela Herd, Armando Lara-Millan, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Michael Woolcock, and Nicholas Wilson), and we are soliciting additional chapter proposals via an open call. Participants will meet in person for two working groups, with travel costs borne by host institutions—Notre Dame’s Kellogg Center in Fall 2026 and Brown University’s Sociology Department in Spring 2027.

If you are interested in applying and would like to meet with us around ASA or over Zoom to chat, please contact us by email.

Organizers:

Email proposals to sociologypublicadmin@gmail.com

Please include in your proposal:

  • Title of Proposed Chapter
  • Name, affiliation, and contact information of author(s)
  • 500-word extended abstract

Deadline for Proposals: Monday, August 17, 2026

Anticipated Timeline:

  • September 1, 2026: Acceptances Announced
  • Early December 2026: Rough Drafts for Notre Dame Conference
  • Early June 2027: Revised Drafts for Brown Conference

New Publication: “The Moralization of Gender (In)Equality: Contested Hybrid Repertoires Among Men in High-Tech Organizations” by Dr. Tair Karazi-Presler

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Karazi-Presler, Tair. 2026. “The Moralization of Gender (In)Equality: Contested Hybrid Repertoires Among Men in High-Tech Organizations.” Men and Masculinities. doi:10.1177/1097184X261465812 

Abstract: This article examines how men negotiate the moral meanings of gender (in)equality in high-tech organizations that publicly promote gender equality while reproducing persistent inequality regimes. Based on 35 in-depth interviews, the analysis conceptualizes their accounts as contested hybrid moral repertoires: morally charged and contested ways of making sense of gender (in)equality in ostensibly egalitarian organizations. Three intertwined dynamics emerged. First, men challenge gender hierarchy by supporting gender equality and recognizing women’s exclusion. Second, they reinforce hierarchy through tensions between political correctness and authenticity, framing restraint as a burden and spontaneity as sincerity. Third, they preserve privilege through discourses of unfairness, reverse discrimination, and lost power. Drawing on the cultural sociology of morality, the article extends scholarship on hybrid masculinities by foregrounding moral sense-making and contributes to the sociology of gender and organizations by showing how moral evaluations and claims to legitimacy become mechanisms through which gender inequality is reproduced.

Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Sloan — AI in Healthcare

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The MIT Sloan School of Management, in collaboration with the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) program in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, invites applications for a Postdoctoral Associate to join a participatory action research project on worker-centered AI implementation in healthcare. The project — a partnership between MIT researchers, a large healthcare system, and the union representing its frontline workers — develops and evaluates concrete strategies for engaging frontline workers in decisions about how AI technologies are adopted and implemented in their workplaces.

The appointment is for one year beginning September 1, 2026 (or an earlier mutually agreed date), with the possibility of renewal contingent on funding. The Postdoctoral Associate should expect to work from Cambridge, MA, with regular travel to the field site in Central Massachusetts. The position is eligible for MIT benefits.

The Postdoctoral Associate will be mentored by Professors Erin Kelly, Kate Kellogg, and Zana Buçinca, and will collaborate with the broader project team, the SERC postdoctoral fellow cohort, and the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER) community. Requirements include strong qualitative research skills and demonstrated experience working with multiple stakeholders. See full description at https://apply.interfolio.com/188620.

New Publication: “Participant Observation in the 21st Century: How the Digital Dimension Matters for All Ethnographers.” 

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Crooke, Catherine L. 2026. “Participant Observation in the 21st Century: How the Digital Dimension Matters for All Ethnographers.” Qualitative Research 26(2): 457–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941261420113

Abstract: Scholarship on participant observation in the digital era has produced a proliferation of labels—virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, and netnography, among others—that often position digitally attuned methods as specialized departures from ethnography’s core. This framing risks obscuring the relevance of digital practices for ethnographers whose research questions do not centrally concern technology. The present article proposes that attention to the multifaceted digital dimensions of social life enhances participant observation even for those who study social processes whose center of gravity is offline. Drawing on a multiyear ethnographic study initiated shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasize that much ostensibly ‘in-person’ work unfolds through screens and digital infrastructures. Consciously engaging these environments expands ethnographic insight in three key ways: increasing the surface area of observable interaction, foregrounding participants’ extended social networks, and illuminating collaborative interpretive work among research participants.

Catherine L. Crooke is a lawyer and PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. She uses qualitative methods to study law, migration, work, organizations, and professions. Her dissertation draws on over four years of participant observation and nearly 100 interviews with Los Angeles-based legal service providers to examine the U.S. immigration system as a site of both legal promise and institutional erosion. Foregrounding the everyday experiences of immigration lawyers, she shows how institutional instability reshapes professional practice and transforms the meaning of legality itself. More broadly, her project offers a framework for understanding how professionals sustain moral commitments within institutions marked by constraint.

Catherine’s scholarship appears in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Qualitative Research, and has received support from numerous funding agencies including the Ford Foundation, the American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, the Center for Engaged Scholarship, and the Center for Institutional Courage. She holds a JD from Yale Law School, an MSc from the University of Oxford, and a BA from Columbia University.

New Publication: “The Inauthenticity of Organizational Diversity Initiatives: Perspectives from the Tech Industry”

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Wilcox, Annika and Neeraj Rajasekar. 2026. “The Inauthenticity of Organizational Diversity Initiatives: Perspectives from the Tech Industry.” The Sociological Quarterly.  https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2026.2644528

Abstract: Organizations often use diversity initiatives to craft an image of moral goodness while doing little to address workplace inequalities. This disconnect is intensified in the U.S. technology industry, where companies attempt to claim identities as progressive diversity supporters despite obvious patterns of inequality and discrimination. How do tech employees make sense of this contradiction? This study combines the sociology of diversity, sociology of organizations, and organizational authenticity literatures to analyze, via 31 in-depth interviews, how employees of a large U.S. tech company evaluate diversity initiatives in the U.S. tech industry. Results show that tech workers question the authenticity of high-tech diversity programs: they frame technology companies as lacking commitment to diversity, overemphasizing conformity to diversity-related norms, and demonstrating dubious inconsistency in their approach to diversity. Nonetheless, they moderate their criticisms by noting that tech companies do “try” to take responsibility for diversity. Interviewees voiced these impressions similarly across race and gender. We therefore argue that the (in)authenticity of diversity initiatives can be a unifying concern amongst individuals with differing social identities. As diversity initiatives exist largely due to social pressures, they will need to overcome issues of inauthenticity in order to survive widespread sociopolitical critiques.

Annika Wilcox is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice at East Stroudsburg University. Her research examines how organizational inequalities are reproduced and challenged, primarily focusing on diversity/DEI discourse and initiatives. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Social Science Research, Sociological Forum, and Research in the Sociology of Work.  

Neeraj Rajasekar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Sociology/Anthropology department at University of Illinois, Springfield. He completed his PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 2021. He has written scholarly articles and book chapters about diversity discourse, diversity attitudes, racial attitudes, racial inequality, and the history of multiculturalism in the United States. His publications have appeared in Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Social Currents, Sociological Forum, and other journals.

New Publication: “Jurisdictional Gerrymandering: The Authority of Problems without Solutions” by Shira Zilberstein

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Zilberstein, Shira. 2026. “Jurisdictional Gerrymandering: The Authority of Problems without Solutions.” Social Problems. doi:10.1093/socpro/spag024

Abstract: This paper develops the concept of jurisdictional gerrymandering to explain how professionals selectively invoke boundaries around their expertise to frame their role and maintain authority in solving problems that extend beyond their jurisdiction. Drawing on a study of artificial intelligence (AI) model development for healthcare, I analyze how AI practitioners position their work in relation to health equity, an issue they acknowledge cannot be solved through technology. Rather than claiming full authority over equity solutions or deferring to other domains, AI practitioners engage in jurisdictional gerrymandering by critiquing, projecting, and dissolving jurisdiction for different aspects of defining and solving health equity. This process enables them to retain authority to participate in health equity problem solving through moral alignment without accountability for solutions. In contrast to jurisdictional models of professional authority or networked expertise, jurisdictional gerrymandering unbundles defining and solving problems. It reveals a key mechanism through which authority is maintained without asserting control or claiming to be able to achieve solutions. Jurisdictional gerrymandering enables problem frames to continually serve as justifications for technological projects and expert interventions regardless of solutions, shedding light on tensions between innovation, expertise, and responsibility for social problems.

Shira Zilberstein is a PhD candidate in sociology at Harvard University and a fellow in the Science and Technology Studies program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on cultural sociology, science and technology studies and organizations, as well as theory and methods. She is interested in the production, interpretation and evaluation of ideas and the dynamics between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forms of knowledge in institutional and technical settings. To this end, she has conducted research on grassroots artists, international non-governmental organizations, American college students, academics and journalists. Her dissertation focuses on applied interdisciplinary research collaborations in the field of artificial intelligence. The project studies the ways in which social impact is understood and structured by organizational incentives and decision-making processes that define and seek to address social needs.

New Publication: “The (State–Private) Ties That Bind: Status, Interactions, and Economic Development in India” by Aruna Ranganathan & Laura Doering

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Ranganathan, Aruna, and Laura Doering. 2026. “The (State–Private) Ties That Bind: Status, Interactions, and Economic Development in India.” Sociology of Development 1–31. doi:10.1525/sod.2026.2893447.

Abstract: Governments often collaborate with the private sector to design and implement major economic initiatives. In studying such state–society collaborations, sociologists tend to focus on how institutional contexts shape outcomes. Although this institutional approach has been highly generative, it can overlook important micro-level interaction patterns between state and private-sector actors that also affect economic outcomes. In this study, we examine how bureaucrats in the Indian government interacted with private-sector representatives to design and implement an industrial crafts park. Drawing on ethnographic observations, interviews, and supplemental survey data, we show how bureaucrats’ status biases in favor of certain private-sector actors produced interaction patterns that blinded them to fatal flaws in the project’s design and ultimately contributed to its dramatic failure. By bringing an interactionist lens to state–society economic engagements, this study reveals how interaction patterns can aggregate to shape large-scale development outcomes. More broadly, it highlights an important but undertheorized pathway through which bureaucrats may inadvertently reinforce social stratification through the very projects intended to reduce economic inequality. We suggest that an interactionist approach to state–private collaborations and policy design can contribute to efforts to address global poverty.

Aruna Ranganathan holds the Dong Koo Kim Chancellor’s Chair in Social Entrepreneurship and is an Associate Professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Prof. Ranganathan is also affiliated with the Sociology department and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley. She was formerly an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University. Ranganathan spent her childhood in the Middle East, India, and Singapore before graduating with honors from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business with a BCom in organizational behavior and human resources. She also received an MS in international and comparative labor from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and an MS/PhD in management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Laura Doering is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and is cross-appointed in the Department of Sociology. As an economic sociologist, she examines how interactions and social psychological processes shape outcomes for households, organizations, and markets. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Sociological Science, Sociology of Development, and Journal of Business Venturing. Professor Doering’s research and writing have appeared in The New York Times, BBC News, The Globe and Mail, Salon, and other outlets.

New Publication: “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates”

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Movahed, Masoud, and Emilio A. Parrado. 2026. “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates.” Demography 63 (2): 511–536. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-12563895.

Abstract: The institutional approach to explaining cross-national variation in demographic outcomes has gained increasing visibility in both academic research and public policy discourse. In this vein, much of the literature has focused on the effects of welfare programs on risk management and the associated costs of fertility. However, an alternative, more comprehensive perspective, namely, the “varieties of capitalism,” emphasizes the role of broader social-structural and institutional characteristics of national economies in generating socioeconomic outcomes. This perspective has not been extended to debates around cross-national differences in demographic outcomes. We fill this void by elaborating on a varieties of capitalism account of cross-national and longitudinal variation in fertility rates. Drawing on panel data spanning more than three decades (1985‒2019) across 21 countries in the Global North, we investigate how institutional factors, through the lens of the varieties of capitalism perspective, correlate with differences in total fertility rates between countries and over time. Our results demonstrate that crucial institutional dimensions, such as centralization of wage bargaining, the employment protection index, and active labor market policies, are associated with variation in total fertility rates across countries and over time.

Authors:

  • Masoud Movahed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
  • Emilio A. Parrado is Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology and Director of Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Call for Abstracts: Research Symposium on Young People’s Access to Social Rights

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The EU–Council of Europe Youth Partnership invites submissions for its upcoming Research Symposium: Young People’s Access to Social Rights, which will take place in Strasbourg, France, from September 15–17, 2026.

The symposium seeks research contributions examining young people’s access to social rights, with particular interest in work adopting a European, cross-national, or comparative perspective.

Possible themes include:

  • Access to social protection and quality public services
  • Access to education and training
  • Access to health services
  • Access to housing
  • Access to employment
  • Access to participation
  • Access to social rights for minority social groups
  • Access to sport, leisure, and culture

The deadline for abstract submissions is May 31, 2026.

For additional information and submission details, please see the links below:

For questions about the symposium, please contact Maria-Carmen Pantea, Chair of the Scientific Committee, at maria.pantea@ubbcluj.ro.

New Publication: “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes”

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Protasiuk, Ewa. 2026. “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes.” Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spag014

Abstract: Job loss is a common, stratifying experience in the contemporary labor market, but scholars have undertheorized its relationship to a major axis of inequality: legal status. To bridge this gap, this paper uses qualitative data from interviews and participant observation to compare outcomes after job loss among 76 restaurant workers in three different legal status categories (U.S.-born citizens, immigrants who are legally authorized to work, and immigrants without this authorization). Situated amidst a discussion of unemployment regulations and legal status categories as sites of governance and stratification, my findings point to two mechanisms of legal status-based stratification among unemployed workers. First, legal status directly determines eligibility for unemployment relief. Second, legal status divergently shapes interactions with the unemployment relief system due to differing risks of legal violence associated with distinct statuses. I show that, through these mechanisms, legal status stratifies workers’ agency over the timing and conditions of their return to work after job loss. I also discuss gendered patterns within legal status categories. These findings extend the framework of unemployment as a socially stratifying institution, integrate legal status into theories of gender in unemployment stratification, and contribute to literatures on immigrant job loss as well as immigration and stratification.

Author: Ewa Protasiuk is an incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.