Author: JY Lin

Hi, I am JY (pronounced J-Y). I am a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Oregon, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. My research areas include the nature of work, social movements, reproduction and fertility, and environmental sociology.

New Publication: “Competence over Partisanship” by Greer Mello

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Greer Mellon (2025). “Competence over Partisanship: Party Affiliation Does Not Affect the Selection of School District Superintendents.” American Sociological Review 90 (4): 561–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224251346993

Abstract: 

In recent decades, affective polarization and partisan animosity have risen sharply in the United States. To what extent have these trends affected hiring decisions? I examine partisan biases in hiring by considering the case of school district superintendent appointments: chief executives of local U.S. elementary/secondary education systems. I analyze mixed-methods data on a decade of hiring outcomes in Florida and California from 2009 to 2019. Despite rising polarization, the data consistently show that partisan affiliation is not a primary factor in these hiring decisions. Quantitative analyses reveal no significant relationship between changes in board partisan composition and superintendent hiring outcomes within school districts. I find no relationship between board-level partisan composition and superintendent exits. Qualitative findings show hiring decisions are primarily shaped by evaluations of candidates’ interpersonal skills and competence, even among board members with strong partisan views on other policy issues. Board members discuss a strong commitment to building consensus in their selections. While I cannot rule out very small effects, these results show that school boards do not routinely prioritize applicants from their own political party. This study advances research on affective polarization and social closure by demonstrating the contingent nature of partisan affiliation on decision-making and by providing evidence of a strong respect for professionalism in a critical U.S. public sector setting.

Author:

Greer Mellon, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University

PSTC &  Annenberg Institute for School Reform 

greermellon.com 

CfA: ICOS2026

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Call for Abstracts
International Conference on Organizational Sociology
ICOS 2026

Plurality, Diversity and Social Inequality in Organizations

March 16/17, 2026
University of Potsdam, Germany 

Joint conference by:

  • Research Committee 17 “Sociology of Organizations” of the International Sociological Association
  • Section for Organizational Sociology of the German Sociological Association
  • Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam
  • DFG-Network “Modes of organizational diversity: theories, methodologies and practices “
  • “Organization & Society” Research Group, at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU Trondheim

Submission Deadline for abstracts (600-1200 words, excl. references): November 10, 2025

Organizations are confronted with a plurality of rapidly changing challenges to which they respond in various ways. Among these challenges are the organizational governance of claims for the recognition of group identities and differences, issues of sustainability, climate action, organizational responsibility, and the challenges posed by digitalization and generative AI. These processes of rapid change do not occur simultaneously across the world; they often begin in some countries or regions and are taken up elsewhere only after several years. When organizations adapt to such newly emerging challenges, their responses may remain superficial, or organizational changes may take so long that trends and socio-political discourses in the organizational environment shift before the changes are fully implemented.

We call for papers addressing rapid and gradual, superficial and profound organizational changes, as well as organizational resistance to expectations of change, in the following three themes:

ICOS has a special “themed but not siloed” format – featuring multiple themes without rigid boundaries. Session hopping is encouraged! 

All information can be found under www.icos2026.org

New Book: Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs by Corey Moss-Pech

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Title: Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs

Author: Corey Moss-Pech, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University

Publisher Link: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo246051255.html

Publisher’s description:
Humanities majors are used to answering the question, “So, what are you going to do with that degree?” The common misconception is that students in humanities programs don’t learn any useful skills for the real world. In Major Trade-Offs, sociologist Corey Moss-Pech argues that not only do humanities majors learn real-world skills, but they actually use them when they graduate. Despite this discrepancy, graduates with so-called practical degrees like business and engineering are much more likely to find employment, and they earn higher salaries. Why do we belittle a liberal arts education despite the valuable skills that students acquire during their studies?
 
Major Trade-Offs addresses this question by following students from different majors as they enter the workforce. To understand the relationship between majors and entry-level jobs, Moss-Pech conducted nearly 200 interviews with roughly ninety students from four majors at a large Midwestern university: engineering, business, English, and communications. He follows these students through their senior years, chronicling their internships and the support their universities provide in helping them pursue their career paths. He found that graduates from practical majors entered the labor market successfully, typically through structured internship programs. However, many ended up in entry-level jobs that, while well-paid, were largely clerical and didn’t necessarily require a degree to perform. On the other hand, liberal arts majors rarely accessed structured internships and were largely left to carve out their own paths, but did use their degree skills once they secured a job. These results challenge popular myths about the “marketability” of these different majors and offer a new vision for the future of higher education. Liberal arts skills are essential in the labor market, and yet educators and policymakers still push resources into the practical arts, perpetuating the myth that those majors are more valuable while depriving students of a well-rounded education and leaving them no better prepared for the workforce than liberal arts students.
 
Of interest to students, educators, and employers, Major Trade-Offs calls on colleges and universities to advocate for liberal arts majors, leveling the playing field for students as they plan for entry-level work.
 

Call for Book Proposals: ASA Rose Series in Sociology

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The ASA Rose Series in Sociology, a joint publication of the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Sociological Association, invites seasoned scholars to submit proposals for books that offer fresh perspectives on enduring controversies, challenge prevailing paradigms, and provide synthetic analyses of contemporary public issues. The series focuses on critical areas of research, including the Future of Work, Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration, and Social, Political, and Economic Inequality. We also welcome interdisciplinary work that intersects with these themes. Rose Series books are designed to be accessible to both academic and general audiences, ensuring broad impact and relevance across multiple fields.

Benefits of Publishing with the Rose Series:

  • Quick and Professional Review Process: Russell Sage compensates expert reviewers to ensure timely and high-quality evaluations of proposals.
  • Seminar with Established Scholars: Authors are invited to present drafts of their manuscripts to leading experts, strengthening the final product and generating excitement for the forthcoming book.
  • Extensive Marketing Support: The Rose Editors, Russell Sage Foundation, and ASA collaborate on a comprehensive marketing effort to maximize the visibility and impact of Rose Series books.
  • Author Meets Critic Session at ASA Annual Meeting: Each year, one new Rose Series book is selected for a special Author Meets Critic panel discussion at the ASA Annual Meeting.
  • Rose Book Speaker Series: Hosted by the University at Albany Rose Editors, this lecture series offers authors a platform to present their work to diverse audiences and emphasize the policy relevance of their research.

Interested authors are encouraged to submit their proposals. Proposals are reviewed on a rolling basis. For more information, please contact us at roseseries@albany.edu or reach out to a member of our editorial team: Joanna Dreby (jdreby@albany.edu), Aaron Major (amajor@albany.edu), Katherine Trent (ktrent@albany.edu), and  Steve Messner (smessner@albany.edu).

Job Opportunity

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The University of Maryland, Baltimore County(UMBC) Department of Sociology is hiring a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor for Fall 2025. This is a one-year appointment focusing on teaching. The department is looking for candidates with experience teaching core sociology courses, including Basic Concepts in Sociology, Methodology of Social Research, Analysis of Sociological Data, and Sociological Theory, also electives on topics such as crime, law, and society; the social dimensions of health; and social inequality.

For full details on qualifications and application procedures, visit https://apply.interfolio.com/163555. The position is also listed on the ASA Career Center at ASA Job Listing.

Please feel free to share this opportunity with anyone who may be interested!

Visiting_TeachingProf_Position_UMBCDownload

Two New Publications

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Hello, here are two new publications from OOW members!

Ghaziani, Amin. 2025. “The Cultural Field of Queer Nightlife: Organizations, Artists, and Curatorial Activism.” The Sociological Quarterly. 

ABSTRACT: Queer nightlife is recognized by humanists as an artistic project, while social scientists use it more often as a case to examine deviance and regulatory control, macro-structural inequities, substance use, and sexual violence. In this article, I invite researchers to prioritize culture and creativity in theoretical frameworks of nightlife. Based on 112 interviews about underground parties in London that have arisen as gay bars close, I argue that, more than just an art form, queer nightlife is a cultural field. The conceptual shift from form to field accents the organizational plurality of nightlife, relational artmaking practices, and the aesthetics of activism. While these themes have been described by others—and they are by no means exhaustive—I use them to explain broad associations between art and event-based nightlife scenes in the context of community-level disruptions.

Neeraj Rajasekar, Evan Gunderson, and Annika Wilcox. 2025. “The Language of “Diversity” or “DEI”? Exploring Job Titles of Diversity Professionals in US Institutions of Higher Education.” Sociological Forum. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13047

ABSTRACT : Diversity discourse and related policy have been common in US higher education, and many such institutions employ diversity professionals. As diversity has historically been a contested concept, the language schools use to articulate diversity can greatly shape the discursive environment and work faced by diversity professionals, especially in the current moment of regular political attacks on diversity and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices in US higher education. This study analyzes the language of diversity in US higher education via analysis of diversity-related job titles. We examine job title data collected from thousands of colleges and universities across the country over an 18-year period, with special attention to educational institutions’ use of “diversity” versus “DEI” terminology. We also analyze how institutional characteristics and contextual factors are associated with language in diversity-related job titles. We find that te language of DEI became substantially more prominent over time, rising steadily from 2015 through 2022. While this may change in the near future, our study illustrates that DEI language had some momentum in American institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the past decade. Notably, schools’ language choice has little association with institutional characteristics or contextual factors, which has implications in a moment where anti-DEI politics and policy are affecting IHEs around the country. We discuss our analysis in the context of the current political-legal landscape and consider directions for future research examining the language of diversity and DEI in US society.

New Publication: “Class identity vs intersectional solidarities: Divergent models for organizing gig workers in Seoul and Toronto” by Youngrong Lee

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Lee, Youngrong. (2025). Class identity vs intersectional solidarities: Divergent models for organizing gig workers in Seoul and Toronto. International Journal of Comparative Sociology,  online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152241312904

ABSTRACT

Studies indicate that gig workers, one of the leading groups revitalizing labor movements globally, have organized by diverging from traditional union strategies. How do they achieve this in diverse local contexts? Drawing on 21 months of international ethnographic fieldwork with gig workers’ unions in Seoul and Toronto, this article examines how and why these two unions develop different strategies for addressing critical crises. Comparative analysis reveals that while the shared labor process and the multinational parent company drive the unions toward new unionism, different worker subjectivities are emphasized by each union based on specific axes of oppression: working-class citizen men in Seoul and racialized immigrants in Toronto. These union orientations are linked to the unions’ distinct histories, including the biographies of founding members. My argument is twofold. First, to better understand rising gig workers’ organizing efforts around the globe, we must consider both global and local contexts. While gig labor processes push gig workers’ unions to move away from traditional union tactics, two key local factors—the workforce’s demographic makeup and union histories—shape their divergent models. Second, it is critical to understand the process of cultivating solidarity—not only building solidarity itself but also deciding which groups to be in solidarity within the local context.