Author: Dilan Eren

I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Boston University. I work at the intersection of work, occupations, and organizations by adopting a cultural sociology lens to examine topics of social inequality. My dissertation, “The Self-Taught Economy: Open-Access and Inclusion in the Tech Industry,” studies how aspiring developers without a computer science degree make sense and use open-access to coding skills initiatives to get jobs in tech. I adopt a longitudinal perspective and use multiple methods (including surveys, in-depth interviews, and digital ethnography and observations) to understand how open access to coding initiatives may alter or not the existing regimes of inequalities and make tech more or less diverse.

New Book: “Behind the Startup-How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality” by Benjamin Shestakofsky

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This systematic analysis of everyday life inside a tech startup dissects the logic of venture capital and its consequences for entrepreneurs, workers, and societies.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520395039/behind-the-startup

In recent years, dreams about our technological future have soured as digital platforms have undermined privacy, eroded labor rights, and weakened democratic discourse. In light of the negative consequences of innovation, some blame harmful algorithms or greedy CEOs. Behind the Startup focuses instead on the role of capital and the influence of financiers. Drawing on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, this book examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it.

Investors push startups to scale as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. Benjamin Shestakofsky shows how these demands create organizational problems that managers solve by combining high-tech systems with low-wage human labor. With its focus on the financialization of innovation, Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by these companies are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs. To promote innovation that benefits the many rather than the few, Shestakofsky compellingly argues that we must focus less on fixing the technology and more on changing the financial infrastructure that supports it.

New Book: “The Interloper: Lessons from Resistance in the Field” by Michel Anteby

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Michel Anteby. 2024. The Interloper: Lessons from Resistance in the Field, Princeton University Press.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691255378/the-interloper

Resistance is the bane of all field researchers, who are often viewed as interlopers when they enter a community and start asking questions. People obstruct investigations and hide evidence. They shelve complaints, silence dissent, and even forget their own past and deny having done so. How can we learn about a community when its members resist so strongly? The answer is that the resistance itself is sometimes the key. In The Interloper, Michel Anteby explains how community members often disclose more than intended when they close ranks and create obstacles. He draws insights from diverse stories of resistance by uncooperative participants—from Nazi rocket scientists and Harvard professors to Disney union busters and people who secure cadavers for medical school dissection—to reveal how field resistance manifests itself and how researchers can learn from it. He argues that many forms of resistance are retrospectively telling, and that these forms are the routine products, not by-products, of the field. That means that resistance mechanisms are not only indicative of something else happening; instead, they often are the very data points that can shed light on how participants make sense of their worlds.

OOW Book Discussion (Apr 15): “Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment”

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All OOW members are invited to participate in an informal, online discussion of Erin Hatton’s Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment on April 15nd, 12-1pm EST. The conversation will be “book club style”, with everyone welcome to share ideas. (If you’d like to participate but time is short, focus on the introduction & chapter 2.) The book may be available as an e-book from your library, or you can purchase it here.

We hope students and faculty alike come to discuss and meet with fellow OOW members. To register and receive a zoom link, click here.

Questions? Contact Laura Doering (laura.doering@utoronto.ca).

Announcement: Contemporary Capitalism through the Lens of Institutions, SER Cafe, March 14th, 2024

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Featuring a conversation with SER authors Carly R. Knight (New York University), and Ann-Christine Schulz (Institute for Digital Transformation and Strategy) and Alexander Himme (Kuehne Logistics University)

Join us for a discussion of contemporary capitalism through institutional studies. Knight, in “Classifying the corporation: the role of naturalizing analogies in American corporate development, 1870–1930,” traces the history of the classification of the corporation and finds that the symbolic privatization of the corporation was the joint product of both liberal and progressive legal theorizing. The “naturalizing analogies” employed by theorists, Knight argues, are critical to understanding the symbolic structure of corporate capitalism. Schulz and Himme, in “Stock market reactions to downsizing announcements: an analysis through an institutional lens”, examine stock market reactions to corporate downsizing using a neo-institutional perspective and demonstrate the performance effects of corporate downsizing and investors’ role in legitimizing this prevalent business practice.

Come and join us to discuss how to understand the current state of capitalism and inequalities from the angle of institutions. The event will take place on Thursday, March 14th, at 8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM CET. Register at this link!

As with all SER Cafe events, we will facilitate a dynamic conversation with the authors. No lengthy talks. Our authors look forward to your questions and comments.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: 11h edition of the Ethnography Workshop, ESADE Business School, May 6-7, Barcelona

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We are pleased to announce that the 11th edition of the Ethnography Workshop will be hosted by ESADE Business School, on May 6 and 7, 2024, in Barcelona, Spain.

This workshop, created in 2013, is designed as a convivial space where you can share the peripeties of your ethnographic journey and think both through and beyond your observation with an interdisciplinary group of scholars (e.g., Management, Sociology, Anthropology, Entrepreneurship).

The workshop aims to foster a space for experimentation, play, and critique to engage ethnographically on a wide variety of topics. Discussing empirics, reflexive matters, issues of engagement and relationships with the field, are central to our conversations.

Participation is free of charge, and refreshments and meals are provided but participants are expected to cover their travel and accommodation expenses. Three emlyon Ethnography Institute grants of 500 euros are available to support participants with limited funding.

  • Abstract (500 words) are due by March 1st, 2024, to blum@em-lyon.com.
  • Notification of acceptance on March 18th and full paper due by April 28th.

More info here: https://oce.em-lyon.com/2023/06/19/ethnoworkshop/

Job Posting: The Climate Jobs Institute is seeking to hire up to 4 Research Specialists

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The Climate Jobs Institute, housed in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, is seeking to hire up to 4 Research Specialists. We are looking for a Senior Research Specialist and up to three Research Specialists. Research specialists will conduct research at the intersection of climate change, job creation, and economic development.

CJI was established by the Illinois General Assembly in 2022 to support Illinois with its clean energy transition through applied research related to workforce needs and economic development. We plan to work closely with state agencies and other partners to build our research agenda. Our goal is to conduct research that influences policy, evaluates what is and isn’t working, and recommends strategies to improve the implementation of state policy and workforce development programs (among other things).

 Here are the links to the postings:

 Senior Research Specialist: https://illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/9469?c=illinois

3 Research Specialists: https://illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/9546?c=illinois

 For more information about the Climate Jobs Institute, check out our website:

https://ler.illinois.edu/climate-jobs-institute

ASA job banks postings:

Senior Research Specialist: https://my.asanet.org/Job-Bank-Information/Job-Bank/JBctl/ViewJob/JobID/19958

Three Research Specialists: https://my.asanet.org/Job-Bank-Information/Job-Bank/JBctl/ViewJob/JobID/19957

New Book—”The Manufacturing of Job Displacement: How Racial Capitalism Drives Immigrant and Gender Inequality in the Labor Market” by Laura López-Sanders

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López-Sanders, Laura. 2024. The Manufacturing of Job Displacement: How Racial Capitalism Drives Immigrant and Gender Inequality in the Labor Market. New York University Press.

The employer-driven push to systematically replace Black workers with unauthorized immigrants.

In The Manufacturing of Job Displacement, Laura López-Sanders argues that the walls of American businesses hide a system of illegal practices and behaviors that lead to racial inequality in the labor market. Drawing on extensive research in South Carolina manufacturing facilities, nearly 300 interviews, and her own experience working at both the “bottom” of the labor market (e.g., cleaning toilets and on assembly-line jobs) and in mid-level supervisory positions, López-Sanders provides a behind-the-scenes accounting of daily factory life.

She uncovers preferential hiring practices that fly in the face of civil rights legislation barring employment discrimination, including orchestrated actions of employers to systematically replace Black workers with Hispanic unauthorized immigrants. López-Sanders argues against the predominant view that worker displacement occurs primarily because of hiring biases or social networks. Instead, she shows that employers intervene strategically, relying on subcontractors, agencies, and intermediaries to shift the race and gender in an organization. They also use vulnerable and tractable immigrant labor to impose and justify untenable standards that drive native-born workers out of their jobs and create vacancies to be filled by additional immigrant workers. The Manufacturing of Job Displacement sheds new light on a classic question about ethnic succession and segmentation in the labor market and reorients the ongoing debates about the economic impact of immigration.

New Book—”Saving Societies From Within: Innovation and Equity Through Inter-Organizational Networks” by Jerald Hage, Joseph J. Valadez, and Wilbur C. Hadden

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Saving Societies From Within: Innovation and Equity Through Inter-Organizational Networks that provides a new paradigm for sociology built on the idea of societal coordination via systemic coordinated inter-organizational networks or SCIONs These offer the possibility of creating much more organizational change and especially organizational adaptiveness than either coordination by markets or states (elections and regulations).  They build cooperation and provide a platform for learning including the tacit knowledge associated with different approaches to achieving the overall goals.

The book contains a detailed case study that provides lessons for managers interested in innovation and development.  The specific case is how NicaSalud, a SCION formed by USAID, rebuilt the health care system in Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch, a major disaster.  It demonstrates not only how an inter-organizational network created an atmosphere of learning but also organizational adaptiveness. The study then examines how the amount of adaptiveness improved the effectiveness of the network. This research is also unusual in considering several other ways to measure inter-organizational network effectiveness, thus making a contribution to the inter-organizational network literature.

Qualitative Interviewer/Temporary and Remote

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Duties and Essential Job Functions

The successful candidate will assist the Comparative Disinformation Project team, led by Dr. Jen Schradie, at CRIS (Center for Research on Social Inequalities) at Sciences Po Paris. This position is based in the United States. Tasks include (though not limited to) the following: 

  • Conduct in-depth qualitative online interviews with pre-selected respondents
  • Write fieldnotes based on the interviews
  • Coordinate, organize, and send interview files, respecting anonymity and confidentiality
  • Participate in trainings, meetings, and other types of communication

Required Qualifications

  • Demonstrated past experience and formal training in conducting sociological interviews
  • Can implement semi-structured interviewing techniques, like trust-building and probing
  • Ability to work independently and is a self-starter
  • Experience with collaborations and working in teams
  • Communication skills on all levels (in-person, phone, online)
  • Good time management skills
  • Attention to detail
  • Fluent in English

Additional Requirements

  • Have at the minimum a masters degree in sociology, communication, or related field. PhD students (and beyond) are also welcome to apply
  • Must be generally available and flexible for training and interviews during the times outlined below
  • Must be available for some morning meeting times if based in the U.S. (given time zone difference with France)
  • Must have a quiet, private, and digitally connected space available for interviews

Start date and length of contract

  • During a 10-week period in the spring (tentatively starting mid-April)
  • Total of 120-170 hours, depending on the final number of respondents/interview lengths 
  • 20 hours per week at the minimum, but we will negotiate based on the candidate’s circumstances

Position and Compensation

Sciences Po will pay between 25 and 35 dollars per hour, depending on the candidate’s previous experience. A service agreement will be signed between the parties.

Additional information

To apply, please submit a cover letter and CV, as well as three references (name, title, email, and phone number) by filling this online form. Deadline is March 12, 2024 by 9am. Contact: Alexia Vallenas Wiesse: alexia.vallenaswiesse@sciencespo.fr  

ASA Political Sociology Section 2024 Election Series

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The ASA Political Sociology Section is excited to launch its 2024 virtual talk series, focused on the U.S. election. During this year, we will gather panels featuring sociologists in and outside of academia working on issues vital to U.S. and global politics. 

Our first event on Wednesday March 6, 3:30pm Eastern Time will be a panel discussion on white Christian nationalism and how class, race, religion, and region intersect in Americans’ ideas about hierarchy and their political beliefs. We will feature research and perspectives from Victoria Asbury (Harvard), Luisa Godinez-Puig (The Urban Institute) and Samuel Perry (University of Oklahoma). 

Additional panels on war & conflict, elite politics, and voter participation & turnout will be announced throughout the year. Please use this form to RSVP and/or sign up for email updates on these events. Zoom links and additional announcements will be circulated to those who have signed up. Thank you for your interest!

Organizers: Daniel Laurison, Jennifer Dudley, Jennifer Heerwig, Wendy Li