Author: Neha Jangeti

Hello! I am Neha Jangeti (pronounced nay-ha jan-geti). I am a Sociology PhD Student at the University of North Texas. My research areas include organizations, occupations, and work (OOW), reproductive health, and medical sociology.

New Publication: “Gone Too Long or Back Too Soon? Perceptions of Paid Parental Leave‐Taking and Variations by Gender and Family Structure” by Richard J. Petts, Reilly Kincaid, Trenton D. Mize & Gayle Kaufman

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Petts, Richard J., Reilly Kincaid, Trenton D. Mize, and Gayle Kaufman. 2025. “Gone Too Long or Back Too Soon? Perceptions of Paid Parental Leave‐Taking and Variations by Gender and Family Structure.” Journal of Marriage and Family.

Abstract

Background: Previous research largely focuses on the consequences associated with leave-taking, particularly highlighting workplace penalties associated with leave-taking. There has also been limited attention to workers with diverse family forms. We seek to better understand the culture surrounding paid parental leave in the U.S. by focusing on evaluations of leave-taking itself and whether such evaluations may reduce or exacerbate inequalities by gender, sexual orientation, and marital status.

Method: We use data on 2964 U.S. respondents from a survey experiment in which employer-offered paid parental leave-taking, parent gender, sexual orientation, and marital status were randomly assigned. We use OLS models to assess perceptions of paid leave-taking and the causal effects of parent gender, sexual orientation, and marital status on these perceptions.

Results: We find that respondents view 11 weeks of paid parental leave as the right amount of leave, on average. We also find variations in perceptions of leave-taking by parent gender, sexual orientation, and marital status; mothers with husbands and single parents are viewed more favorably for taking longer leaves than fathers with wives, mothers with wives, and fathers with husbands.

Conclusion: There is increasing support for paid leave within the U.S., but support for parents’ leave-taking largely reflects gendered stereotypes and may reinforce broader patterns of gender inequality.

New Publication: “From Accountability to Algorithms: Interorganizational Learning and the Transformation of Quantification in Education” by Jose Eos Trinidad

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Trinidad, Jose Eos. 2025. “From Accountability to Algorithms: Interorganizational Learning and the Transformation of Quantification in Education.” Qualitative Sociology (online first).

Abstract: While studies often explore the intended and unintended consequences of technologies, few have theorized how and why they change. One crucial transformation in quantitative technologies is the shift from evaluative accountability to predictive algorithms, such as in schools that use dropout prediction systems. Using the case of ninth-grade early warning indicators, I argue that the transformation of quantification resulted from interorganizational learning, or the acquisition of new knowledge through the interaction of different organizations. In particular, I show how technology changes gradually from organization-level evaluation to individual-based prediction to systems-focused improvement. Pivotal to such changes were new forms of knowledge that emerged (1) as “instructing” organizations directed changes and “receiving” organizations resisted them; (2) as organizations in various fields reciprocally collaborated; and (3) as similar organizations practiced networked learning. Although studies have traditionally highlighted the “discipline” of technologies, I illustrate the power of organizational agents to resist, adapt, and change them—with implications for the study of quantification, work, institutional change, and education.

New Publication: “Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education” by Jose Eos Trinidad

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Trinidad, Jose Eos. 2025. Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education. Oxford University Press.

(30% off with code: AUFLY30)

Abstract: In Subtle Webs, Jose Eos Trinidad reveals how organizations outside schools have created an invisible infrastructure not only to affect local school districts but also to shape US education. He illustrates this by providing a behind-the-scenes look at how local organizations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City have transformed data and worked with high schools to address the problem of students dropping out. The book argues that changes in a decentralized system happen less through top-down policy mandates or bottom-up social movements and more through “outside-in” initiatives of networked organizations spread across various local systems. By detailing change across multiple levels and across multiple locations, Trinidad uncovers new ways to think about educational transformation, policy reform, and organizational change.

Announcement: Virtual Texas Book Salon for Kim Pernell’s “Visions of Financial Order”; Join via Zoom on April 16.

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Wednesday, April 16, 1-2pm Central

Zoom: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/96255280544

The Sociology Department at the University of Texas at Austin invites you to attend a virtual book salon to celebrate the publication of Professor Kim Pernell’s Visions of Financial Order (Princeton, 2024).  Discussants include Marion Fourcade, Greta Krippner, and Marc Schneiberg

“In Visions of Financial Order, Kim Pernell traces the emergence of important national differences in financial regulation in the decades leading up to the crisis. To do so, she examines the cases of the United States, Canada, and Spain—three countries that subscribed to the same transnational regulatory framework (the Basel Capital Accord) but developed different regulatory policies in areas that would directly affect bank performance during the financial crisis. … Pernell argues that the different worldviews of national banking regulators reflected cultural beliefs about the ideal way to organize economic life to promote order, stability, and prosperity. Visions of Financial Order offers an innovative perspective on the persistent differences between regulatory institutions and the ways they shaped the unfolding of the 2008 global financial crisis.” – Princeton University Press

New Publication: “Does Wanting Diversity Mean Racial Diversity? How Race and Gender Influence Support for Corporate DEI Policies.” by Adia Harvey Wingfield & Antonia Roach

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Wingfield, Adia Harvey and Antonia Roach. (2025.) “Does Wanting Diversity Mean Racial Diversity? How Race and Gender Influence Support for Corporate DEI Policies.”Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Online first.

Abstract

In the wake of recent social movements, cultural changes, and emerging organizational norms, decisive majorities of White workers now agree with the premise that companies should strive for workplace diversity. That support rarely translates into an interest in race-conscious programming, yielding what sociologists describe as a “principle/policy gap.” Yet most of the research identifying principle/policy gaps relies on predominantly White samples. In this article, we draw from a sample of 85 Black, White, Asian American, and Latinx workers in the financial sector to examine whether the principle/policy gap is present among both White workers and those of color. Our interviews reveal mixed evidence of principle/policy gaps when it comes to race-based diversity programming. We also find that respondents’ preferences (or lack thereof) for race-conscious diversity are informed by intersections of race and gender, rendering race-based programming more attractive for some groups and gender-based initiatives more appealing for others.

Announcement: Socio-Economic Review Cafe  — Cryptomarkets & Cryptocurrencies: Trust, Value, and Market Coordination on April 1st, 2025

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Socio-Economic Review Cafe  — Cryptomarkets & Cryptocurrencies: Trust, Value, and Market Coordination

The event will take place on Tuesday, April 1st, 2025:
7:30 AM PST (Vancouver)
9:30 AM CST (Central Time, US & Canada)
Register at this link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/meeting/register/x03uBBsnQlWh5HmhvpXf5g 

Join us for an engaging SER Café event featuring a discussion with SER authors Ana Macanovic, Wojtek Przepiorka, Kobe De Keere, Martin Trans, and Stefania Milan.

Macanovic and Przepiorka’s paper, “The Moral Embeddedness of Cryptomarkets: Text Mining Feedback on Economic Exchanges on the Dark Web”, explores how cooperation is sustained in illegal cryptomarkets, online marketplaces where users trade illicit goods under conditions of anonymity. They show that while reputation systems structure exchange, their effectiveness depends on traders’ willingness to leave feedback, shifting moral norms from facilitating trust at the transaction stage to sustaining reputation as a collective good. De Keere, Trans, and Milan’s paper, “The Value of Crypto? Sociotechnical Imaginaries on Cryptocurrency in YouTube Content”, examines how cryptocurrencies are framed and valued in public discourse. Using a large-scale analysis of YouTube videos, they identify distinct imaginaries that shape how cryptocurrency’s value is constructed, contested, and legitimized.

Together, these papers offer insights into how decentralized markets function without traditional regulatory oversight, examining the mechanisms that sustain trust, reputation, and exchange, as well as the narratives that shape perceptions of value and legitimacy in digital economies.

As with all SER Café events, this session will prioritize dynamic conversation with the authors over lengthy presentations. Please come ready to engage, ask questions, and discuss these critical contributions to the field!

***

Articles:

“The Moral Embeddedness of Cryptomarkets: Text Mining Feedback on Economic Exchanges on the Dark Web” By Ana Macanovic and Wojtek Przepiorka. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad069

“The Value of Crypto? Sociotechnical Imaginaries on Cryptocurrency in YouTube Content” By Kobe De Keere, Martin Trans, and Stefania Milan.  https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwae081

Announcement: Ethnography Summer School at The University of Texas at Austin; August 18-21, 2025

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Ethnography Summer School

The University of Texas at Austin
August 18-21, 2025

The UT Austin Urban Ethnography Lab offers a four-day intensive course on ethnographic methods. The course provides an overview of ethnography as a “way of seeing” the social world and as a “way of doing” social scientific research. Participants will learn about different approaches to ethnography and the place(s) of theory in ethnographic research. They will also examine the need for warrants and puzzles in ethnography, the various ways of reconstructing subjects’ points of view, the role of reflexivity, and the ethical dilemmas present in hands-on research. Invited speakers from the Sociology Department will offer lectures on specific topics. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their own projects with attending faculty and will be offered a workshop on qualitative data analysis software, and a presentation on human subjects protection protocols.

For more information: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/sociology/research/urban-ethnography-lab/ethnography-summer-school.html

Call for Papers, Special Issue of ILR Review: Employee Ownership in the Contemporary Economy: Taking the High, Middle, or Low Road for Workers, Firms, and Society?

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Call for Papers, Special Issue of ILR Review: Employee Ownership in the Contemporary Economy: Taking the High, Middle, or Low Road for Workers, Firms, and Society?

Submission Deadline: September 1, 2025

Special Issue Co-editors:
Edward J. Carberry (University of Massachusetts Boston), edward.carberry@umb.edu
Douglas Kruse (Rutgers University), dkruse@rutgers.edu
Andrew Pendleton (University of New South Wales), a.pendleton@unsw.edu.au

We invite submissions that deepen our understanding of the impacts of employee ownership on workers; job quality; management–labor relations; organizational structures and cultures; firm performance; and broader economic, social, and political outcomes. We welcome papers from all disciplines that use any methodological approach, focusing on any form of employee ownership within any context.

See the full Call for Papers here: http://shorturl.at/0Zjsn

New Publication: “Sousveillance Work: Monitoring and Managing-Up in Patrimonial Hollywood” by Julia M. Dessauer

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Dessauer, J.M. Sousveillance Work: Monitoring and Managing-Up in Patrimonial Hollywood. Qual Sociol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-024-09580-y

Abstract: How do workers come to know what their bosses need and want? This paper shows how laborers in patrimonial work environments learn to serve their bosses through bottom-up observation, rather than top-down instruction. The author uses the case of assistants in Hollywood to introduce the concept of sousveillance work, which is the labor of monitoring, anticipating, and fulfilling a boss’s mutable needs and wants. Drawing on 60 + interviews with professionals in Hollywood, the author reveals how sousveillance work helps assistants manage-up and mitigate volatility wrought by their patrimonial superiors. The concept of sousveillance work adds to research on labor and uncertainty in creative industries, and also helps to reveal how patrimonial systems are sustained in contemporary work environments.





New Publication: “The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting  Class and Conformity” by Kaspar Burger, Francesca Mele, Monica Johnson, Jeylan Mortimer & Xiaowen Han

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Kaspar Burger, Francesca Mele, Monica Johnson, Jeylan Mortimer, and Xiaowen Han. 2025. “The intergenerational reproduction of self-direction at work: Revisiting Class and Conformity.”  Social Forces. Online First https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article/doi/10.1093/sf/soaf016/7996444?utm_source=advanceaccess&utm_campaign=sf&utm_medium=email

Abstract: In his path-breaking monograph, Class and Conformity, Melvin Kohn reasoned that parents prepare their children for the same conditions of work that they themselves experience. Kohn and his colleagues’ research focused on the influence of parental self-direction at work on parental child-rearing values and practices, as well as the self-directed values of children. The intergenerational transmission of occupational self-direction from parents to the succeeding generation of adult children, strongly implied by Kohn’s analysis, has not been empirically tested. Using two-generation longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (N = 1139), we estimate a structural equation model to assess the intergenerational continuity of occupational self-direction. We find evidence supporting a key inference of Kohn’s analysis: that self-direction at work, a primary feature of jobs of higher social class standing, is transmitted across generations via self-directed psychological orientations, operationalized here as intrinsic work values. Intrinsic values also significantly predicted second-generation educational attainment, contributing further to the reproduction of socioeconomic inequality. The findings enhance understanding of the intergenerational transmission of advantage.

YDS data are publicly available at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research archive, University of Michigan (ICPSR 24881).