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.

WORK2025 Conference “Work in the Era of Unruly AI” from August 20-22, 2025 in Turku, Finland (also online)

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The multidisciplinary, international WORK2025 conference is from August 20-22, 2025, at the University of Turku and online. WORK2025 offers 19 exciting research streams, five inspiring keynote talks, and nice breaks between the sessions to share knowledge, research results, and discuss new directions in research.

The main theme of WORK2025, “Work in the era of unruly AI,” will explore the “unruliness” of AI in contemporary working life. WORK2025 calls upon presentations and posters to address the main theme and various issues related to work and working life. WORK2025 welcomes abstracts from a wide variety of interdisciplinary, empirical, and theoretical perspectives.

Check out the streams and submit your abstract no later than February 20, 2025 at www.work2025.fi!

Click to access work2025-conference-2.pdf

Special Issue Call for Papers OOW

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Special Issue: The Precarity of Work and Life: How Insecurity Equalizes and Stratifies People’s Experiences

Submission deadline: Tuesday, September 2, 2025

In 2023, an opinion piece in the New York Times posed a question: “why does everyone feel so insecure?” As the article delineates, “insecurity” is frequently described as the defining characteristic of our contemporary lives. However, despite the wide use of this concept in public debates as well as in the social sciences, socio-economic insecurity — and, to a lesser extent, its close cousin, “precarity” — have been subjected to very little theoretical conceptualization and/or dedicated research that seeks to systematize and concretize insecurity as a field of study. Our special issue aims to resolve this absence, with a particular focus on how socio-economic insecurity relates to the maintenance, reconfiguration, or legitimation of inequality.

Insecurity sets up an important puzzle for the social sciences: on the one hand, insecurity is felt by “everybody,” as Astra Taylor suggests in the New York Times, or at least a large and growing portion of the population. On the other, insecurity and precarity are the products of an economy that is increasingly unequal. In order to solve this puzzle, sociologists need to further investigate how experiences of insecurity vary and the ways in which economic and cultural factors shape different varieties of insecurity. We ask: Is everyone really experiencing insecurity? How is insecurity related to people’s structural conditions?

In order to address this puzzle, we welcome articles that address all aspects of socio-economic insecurity that go beyond orthodox economic framings and that can lead to empirical advancements, as well as theoretical developments, in how we understand insecurity vis-à-vis inequality. We invite submissions that use diverse methodological approaches, e.g. that explore subjective experiences of insecurity through in-depth qualitative or ethnographic research, that investigate generalizable or cross-national trends through quantitative data-based analyses, or that engage with mixed methodologies. We are particularly interested in sociological studies that address the following aspects of insecurity:

Topics for this call for papers include but are not restricted to:

·  Research on insecurity that moves beyond a limited conceptualization of insecurity and precarity as primarily related to employment to one that engages with the financial aspects of people’s instability, the relationship between employment and finances, as well as the unequal ways in how people negotiate socioeconomic uncertainty in their lives overall. What are the connections between work precarity and insecurity in livelihoods? How do the manifestations of insecurity differ nationally and globally in various spheres of individuals’ lives (e.g. housing, food consumption, debt and finance)? How is insecurity related to intersectional inequalities pertaining to class, gender, race/ethnicity and sexual identity?

·  Studies that employ an understanding of socio-economic insecurity that goes beyond a purely (macro)economic focus or the use of “objective” economic measures. We aim to deepen the focus on the subjective experiences of insecurity that are often linked to the decline in social status of previously secure social strata (e.g. the squeezed middle classes). What is the relationship between the objective and subjective insecurity experienced by individuals? What is the temporal construction of insecurity and how is present insecurity shaped by past experiences and projections/expectations of future conditions? How does insecurity contribute to redefining class positions and class boundaries? How do increases and decreases in insecurity influence social status threat or social status gains across the globe?

Guest Editors:
Dr. Lorenza Antonucci
University of Birmingham
United Kingdom

Dr. Elena Ayala-Hurtado
Princeton University
United States

Announcement: OOW Book Club on 2/28 & 4/18

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All OOW members are invited to participate in an informal, online discussion of Gray and Suri’s Ghost Work on Friday, Feb 28, 12-1pm Eastern Time. 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 chapters 1 & 3.) 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).


All OOW members are invited to participate in an informal, online discussion of Fourcade and Healy’s The Ordinal Society on Friday, April 18, 12-1pm Eastern Time. 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 1.) 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? Please contact Laura Doering (laura.doering@utoronto.ca).

SER Cafe: Gender disparities in the workplace on 1/24 

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Join us for an engaging SER Café event featuring a thought-provoking discussion with SER authors, Anne-Kathrin Kronberg, Anna Gerlach, Marta Fana, Davide Villani, and Martina Bisello.

The paper by Kronberg and Gerlach, “Off to a slow start: which workplace policies can limit gender pay gaps across firm tenure?”, explores the pressing issue of how workplace policies impact gender pay gaps over employee tenure. Fana, Villani and Bisello investigate gender gaps in workplace power and control, finding that women face more control than men within the same job, even after accounting for factors like education and seniority in “Gender gaps in power and control within jobs”.

Together, these papers offer compelling insights into the interplay between workplace practices, organizational culture, and policy interventions in perpetuating or mitigating gender inequalities. As workplace equity remains a pivotal issue, these studies provide a deeper understanding of the structural barriers and potential pathways toward closing gender gaps.

The event will take place on Friday, January 24th, at 8AM PST/ 11AM EST/ 5PM CET. Register at this link!

https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/03fMIgUpRseoMPjBdjX8GA

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

CALL FOR ASA OOW SECTION SESSION SUBMISSIONS – CHICAGO 2025

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CALL FOR ASA OOW SECTION SESSION SUBMISSIONS – CHICAGO 2025

The OOW call for submissions for our annual conference is now out!
Call for Submissions: https://www.asanet.org/2025-annual-meeting/call-for-submissions/

Section Sessions: https://www.asanet.org/2025-annual-meeting/call-for-submissions/papers-extended-abstracts/section-sessions/

1 – Organizations
We invite paper submissions under the broad topic of organizations, including studies that assess the implications of their structures, norms, policies, and practices.
(Session Organizer) Elizabeth A. Armstrong, University of Michigan; (Session Organizer) Matthew Clair, Stanford University 

2 – Professions and Occupations
We invite paper submissions on the broad topic of professions and occupations, including studies that focus on their emergence, evolution, and implications. 
(Session Organizer) Nicholas Occhiuto, Hunter College; (Session Organizer) Alexandrea Ravenelle, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 

3 – Gender Inequality in Organizations
We invite paper submissions under the topic of gender inequality in organizations.
(Session Organizer) Sharla Alegria, University of Toronto; (Session Organizer) Alexandra Kalev, Tel-Aviv University

4 – Labor Markets
We invite paper submissions under the broad topic of labor markets, including studies that examine their structures, dynamics, and consequences.
(Session Organizer) Koji Chavez, Indiana University; (Session Organizer) Steve McDonald, North Carolina State University

5 – Future of Work
We invite paper submissions under the broad topic of the future of work.
(Session Organizer): Angèle Christin, Stanford University; (Session Organizer) Steve Vallas, Northeastern University

6 – Informal and Unregulated Economies
We invite paper submissions under the topic of informal and unregulated economies, including studies that examine migrant and transnational dynamics.
(Session Organizer) Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Princeton University; (Session Organizer) Patricia Ward, Bielefeld University

7 – AI in the Workplace (joint with Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section)
We invite paper submissions under the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace. (NB: Thanks to a special relationship between the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section and the journal Information, Communication & Society (ICS), all papers with a theme of information, communication, or media that are presented at the 2025 meetings of the ASA are eligible for submission to a special issue of ICS edited by the CITAMS chair each fall.)
(Session Organizer) Barbara Kiviat, Stanford University; (Session Organizer) Simone Zhang, New York University.

8 – Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Michel Anteby, Boston University; (Session Organizer) Sigrid Luhr, University of Illinois, Chicago

https://oowsection.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/call-for-submissions_asa_2024.docx

Section Sessions

Announcement: Co-editors Needed for the Journal Regulation & Governance; Apply by Nov 15, 2024

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Co-editors Needed for Regulation & Governance

Deadline for applications: November 15, 2024

At the end of 2024, David Levi-Faur will be stepping down as co-editor of Regulation & Governance, after nearly two decades of dedicated service to the academic community. We are looking for two new co-editors to work together with the remaining editorial team members, Alketa Peci (Fundação Getulio Vargas) and Yves Steinebach (University of Oslo).

Candidates should be renowned researchers in any of the journal’s main areas of interest (political science, socio-legal studies, psychology, criminology, sociology, organization and public management, management, economics, or other parts of the social sciences), who have the passion to continue to drive the journal forward.   To complement the strengths of the existing editorial team members, we particularly look for applicants with an interdisciplinary, comparative, and theoretically-driven lens who have backgrounds in sociology,  criminology, management, economics, psychology, or law and who have significant experience with interdisciplinary research on regulation.  

We strongly encourage applications from women and members of other historically marginalized groups or categories.  The current co-editors are based in Europe and Latin America, and we would welcome applications that further internationalize the journal.   Previous experience as an editor or in comparable activities is an important asset.  

All co-editors will jointly hold responsibility for editorial governance and oversight on submissions for papers assigned to them, including managing peer review processes and making decisions on acceptance/rejection of manuscripts.   Together, the editorial team will collaborate on matters of editorial strategy and establish a governance framework and division of labor.

Becoming a co-editor is a rewarding and fulfilling experience in which you can contribute to the vibrancy of the journal, help shape an interdisciplinary field of research, and gain recognition for your contributions.  

The post will initially be for a period of three years (renewable). We hope to have new co-editors in place by January 2025, though somewhat later starting dates will be considered if necessary.

About the Journal
Regulation & Governance is the leading journal dedicated to the study of regulatory governance. The journal publishes interdisciplinary research on regulation, governance, and emerging associated challenges worldwide, with broad implications beyond geographic and intellectual boundaries.

Key Skills and Attributes

·      A record of scholarly excellence in any of the fields covered by Regulation & Governance.

·      Strong knowledge of the relevant scholarly communities, in order to facilitate effective and timely peer review

·      Confidence in engaging with authors and researchers.

·      Commitment to ensure manuscripts are considered in a prompt, consistent and professional manner.

·      Passion to promote and continuously develop the journal.

Application Instructions
If you wish to apply for the position of co-editor for Regulation & Governance, please submit your academic CV and a very brief letter of interest (1-2 pages) via email to alketapecirg@gmail.com

Deadline for applications: November 15, 2024

We are planning to hold interviews online during the last week of November. 

If you have any questions about the role of co-editor, please feel free to contact the journal’s co-editors, Yves Steinebach (yves.steinebach@stv.uio.no), Alketa Peci (Alketa.Peci@fgv.br) and David Levi-Faur (levifaur@mail.huji.ac.il). The final selection will be conducted by a selection committee, which includes the three current editors, as well as Benjamin van Rooij (University of Amsterdam) and Tim Bartley (Georgetown University).

Call for Papers: Workshop “Bringing Politics Back to Work”; ECPR Joint Sessions, May 20-23, 2025, at Charles University, Prague

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Call for Papers: Workshop “Bringing Politics Back to Work”
ECPR Joint Sessions, May 20-23, 2025, at Charles University, Prague

Workshop details and paper submission
Deadline for abstracts: November 21, 2024

The organization of work has undergone tremendous change in recent decades, yet we know little about how this has impacted the political outlook of the employed. We ask: How does the changing organization of work, how do well-being and social relations at the workplace, and how do job quality and job satisfaction impact political conflict in advanced democracies? Linking established literature in political economy and political science with that in the sociology of work and organization, this workshop aims to set an agenda for studying the political implications of what happens at the heart of the economy: at work.

An extensive literature in political economy shows that globalization, automatization and sectoral change have impacted labor markets and occupational class structure, what in return has reshaped political conflict in advanced democracies. This literature has left surprisingly untouched, however, the blackbox of what happens at work, i.e., inside enterprises or public organizations. Work organization, management practices, job quality, and well-being at work are, in return, subject to an extensive literature in sociology, psychology, and economics – which, however, rarely establishes connections with outcomes at the political level.

This missing link is surprising, as work is a site where people spend much of their awake time, experience intergroup contact and collaboration, authority, and conflict about entitlements. It is a site where we gain a sense of social status and recognition, of efficacy, security, and fairness –or, on the contrary, experience powerlessness, insecurity, and injustice. This has a formative impact on political outlooks, including on major phenomena of our time such as preferences for redistribution, political populism, or affective polarization.

“Bringing politics back to work”, we aim to shed light on mechanisms that link work and politics. We are looking forward to receiving paper proposals that contribute to the following questions by the deadline of 21st November 2024:

▪ 1: How do the organization of work, wellbeing at work, job quality, or contact/ conflict at the workplace inform individual political preferences in advanced democracies?

▪ 2: How does this relationship between work and politics vary by groups and context (countries, sectors, occupations, gender, age)?

▪ 3: How do political actors such as parties or unions address and politicize contemporary experiences at work?

▪ 4: How do social policies and welfare state arrangements influence these dynamics?

Organizers:
Paulus Wagner, European University Institute, paulus.wagner@eui.eu
Bruno Palier, Sciences Po Paris, bruno.palier@sciencespo.fr

Endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Political Economy and Welfare State Politics

Call for Abstracts: The Organization of Illegal Marketplaces; Institute of Sociology, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland; Due Dec 1, 2024

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PAPER DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP (PDW)

THE ORGANIZATION OF ILLEGAL MARKETPLACES

April 3 & 4, 2025, Institute of Sociology, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland

Abstract Submission:
Please send an abstract of 500 words and a short biographical note to gdumont@emlyon.com and loic.pignolo@unisg.ch by December 1, 2024. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 1, 2025.

Papers must be submitted by March 6, 2025. There is no registration fee. They will cover lunch on both days and the dinner on the first day. Partial grants for travel and accommodation can be provided to a small number of participants with limited resources. Please indicate if you require financial support. Participation in the workshop is open to all upon registration.

Please click on the link for more details: https://oowsection.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/cfp-pdw-the-organization-of-illegal-marketplaces.pdf

Organizing Committee:
Loïc Pignolo, Universität St. Gallen, Switzerland
Guillaume Dumont, Emlyon Business School, France

Illegal marketplaces are “organized places, whether physical (e.g., a weekly trading event in the town square) or virtual (e.g., an electronic platform, such as Etsy) for ztrade” (Aspers and Darr, 2022; p.824). They operate based on shared norms, roles, meanings, and routines implemented by marketplace organizers or derived from mutual adjustment among actors, thereby shaping trade in important ways (e.g., Aspers and Darr, 2022; Dewey and Buzzetti, 2024; Tzanetakis, 2018; Tzanetakis et al., 2016). They offer the means to facilitate illegal transactions and provide opportunities and sources of power for marketplace organizers through place-based cooperation, gathering of people, infrastructure, digital technologies, and/or pooling of resources. No less importantly, they are a focus of attention for policymaking and law enforcement, with most state institutions striving to eradicate them (e.g., Beckert and Dewey, 2017; Coomber et al., 2019; Gottschalk, 2010; Paoli, 2014).

Whether online or offline, illegal marketplaces are places where the dynamics of markets, illegality, state institutions, vulnerability, and power intersect, raising important questions that have yet to be addressed by the emerging stream of scholarship in this field: What social, spatial, and technological conditions allow for the emergence of illegal marketplaces? How are they organized to face the coordination problems associated with illegality? Who are the organizers, how do they make decisions, and what resources do they use? How do they help to set prices, facilitate product supply, and protect traders? Who are the market participants, and how is power distributed among them? What are the differences between online illegal marketplaces and physical ones?

This third edition of the “Ethnographies of Illegality” Paper Development Workshop (PDW) will focus on selected organizational and managerial aspects of illegal marketplaces. We welcome proposals that investigate illegal marketplaces using ethnographic and, more broadly, qualitative approaches and address one or more of the following four themes.

Regulation: Illegal marketplaces are legally embedded, making the study of regulations and legal frameworks crucial for understanding them. The fourth theme explores the relation between illegal marketplaces and their local regulatory contexts. We encourage authors to uncover the complexity of the relation between state institutions and law enforcement agencies, their role in shaping markets, and marketplaces’ organizational, spatial, and working characteristics.

By exploring these themes across contexts and activities, the workshop aims to produce new knowledge in three areas: the infrastructure(s) and organizations that enable illegal marketplaces to emerge, grow, and transform; the contemporary cultural forms of illegal exchange in different geographical locations; and the differences and similarities between illegal marketplaces and their legal counterparts.

Organization: The operation of illegal marketplaces requires organizational structures, governance, and cultures, as well as conventions, maintenance, and development strategies. This theme focuses on the organizational aspects, particularly the organizational forms, rules, monitoring mechanisms, and sanctions enabling the operation of illegal marketplaces, as well as the socialization of market participants, their coordination problems, and power distribution.

Space: Illegal marketplaces are often located at the intersection of online and offline spaces. This theme focuses on rethinking the notion of space in relation to illegal marketplaces. We encourage authors to consider how market participants appropriate specific spaces and places to develop their activities and how multiple spaces are intimately connected in the design and operation of marketplaces.

Work: Illegal marketplaces involve the work and labor of different actors. This third theme will approach the activities and tasks performed in markets and marketplaces through the conceptual lens of work, allowing for the exploration of essential aspects of their functioning, such as the division of labor, labor relations among actors, consequences of organizational elements for their working conditions and careers, and meaning of their work.

Conference Call: Organizing Plurality – INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIOLOGY (ICOS), March 2025 in Hamburg, Germany

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Organizing Plurality

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIOLOGY (ICOS)

March 27 & 28, 2025  Hamburg, Germany

Call for Abstracts is now open!

Submission Deadline: November 30, 2024

The German Section of Organizational Sociology and its European peers are organizing the International Conference on  Organizational Sociology ICOS 2025 at Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany, in March 2025.

The main topic is “Organizing Plurality,” which will be discussed in relation to several societal trends:
1) Organizations and  Valuation
2) Organizations and Sustainability
3) Organizations and Digitalization
4) Organizations and Governance

Additional details can also be found on the pdf: icos2025_organizing-plurality.pdf

You can find the full Call for Papers and more information on their homepage, icos2025.com.

Announcement: Submit to the ISA Session on “New Digital Technologies, Power and Work: Labor Control and Resistance” by October 15

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Please consider submitting by October 15 to a  “New Digital Technologies, Power and Work: Labor Control and Resistance” session at the International Sociological Association Forum on Sociology in Rabat, Morocco, 6-11 July 2025. 

Please see the link below for a detailed description:
https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2025/webprogrampreliminary/Session19472.html

If you are interested in submitting an abstract for this session, the Call for Abstracts is at https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/rabat-2025/5th-isa-forum-call-for-abstracts.

The call closes on October 15th (note that the ISA observes Central Europe Time).

“If you have not attended ISA before, it is truly an international sociology conference with distinct inflections in each location where it meets—I have found every ISA conference I have attended to be fascinating, and of course, Rabat itself is a very interesting place in a very interesting region. In addition to this session, I encourage you to scan other possible sessions (Research Council 44 is the ISA’s Labor Movements section; RC 30 is the Sociology of Work).”
– Dr. Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning and Sociology, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs