Category: Announcements

Announcement: Digital Statecraft and Political Economy in China Conference at UC Berkeley on May 8-9

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Digital Statecraft and Political Economy in China Conference
May 8-9, 2026
University of California, Berkeley
Conference website: www.dspeconference.com

Digital technologies, from big data, AI, and algorithmic governance to cloud computing and data infrastructures, are transforming how states drive development, govern society, exercise authority, and compete globally. This conference brings together fourteen in-depth qualitative studies that examine how state actors deploy digital tools in practice and how political institutions shape technological development.

Focusing on China as a strategically important and empirically challenging case, the conference showcases new ways to open the “black box” of digital governance beyond dominant computational methods and macro-level analyses. It advances a sociological agenda by showing how digitalization is reshaping core theories of the state and political economy, reconfiguring state capacity, bureaucratic operations, platform governance, and government–firm relations, while moving beyond conventional “digital authoritarianism” frameworks to foreground on-the-ground politics, institutional frictions, and organizational processes.

The papers engage broader debates on the transformation of the state under digitalization, the political economy of data, platforms, digital industries, and the shifting terrain of geopolitical competition.

Interdisciplinary and international in scope, the conference features scholars from four continents. It will be held at UC Berkeley and is open to the public, with both onsite and online participation. Breakfast and lunch will be provided for onsite attendees. Registration is required; online access details will be shared upon registration.

Register here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdqfT0H_0j6GL2RT50n_AQgHMcU37MKBoHqxDcDI0hv0knFpQ/viewform

Organizers:
Yan Long, UC Berkeley, Department of Sociology
Le Lin, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Department of Sociology
Zhifan Luo, McMaster University, Department of Sociology

Sponsors:
UC Berkeley Sociology Department, Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, Fudan-UC Center

Contact
For questions regarding the conference, registration, or attendance, please contact the coordinator, Zhehang Zhang (UC Berkeley, Department of Sociology) at zhehang@berkeley.edu

Call for Papers for Special Issue: “Networks of Expertise: New Approaches to Study Professions and the Social Organization of Expert Labor”

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The Journal of Professions and Organization has a call for papers for a special issue on “Networks of Expertise: New Approaches to Study Professions and the Social Organization of Expert Labor.”

This special issue is dedicated to empirical and theoretical contributions that harness the innovative potential of the expanded lens of expertise networks. It particularly welcomes submissions that explore the specific contributions of this approach to the study of experts, professions, organizations, and past as well as ongoing shifts in the social organization of expertise. This includes contributions that elaborate on, develop, apply, or critique the network of expertise approach, and/or bring it into conversation with existing approaches to foster a deeper understanding of both continuities and discontinuities in the social organization of expertise. Contributions from varied national contexts, institutional and organizational settings, and types of expertise are equally encouraged. Questions of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • How do different groups of experts coordinate for approaching expert tasks and problems?
  • Under what conditions is trust in experts sustained or lost? Which types of performative work and expertise network structures are better suited to securing trust in expertise?
  • What are the societal preconditions and consequences of the changing nature of expertise?
  • How do organizations enable and constrain (alternative) expert performance, and what impact do new organizational demands and recent organizational forms, such as platform organizations, have?
  • What are the changes in the organization of expert labor following the introduction of new technologies (e.g., new energy sources and GenAI)? When is AI used to monitor or control expert work, when does it create new markets for expertise, and under what conditions does it become an alternative to professionalized expert opinion? 
  • What theories help us to better grasp the phenomenon of networked expertise, and what potential does the study of expertise offer for theorizing (including theorizing from so-called neglected cases (Krause 2021, 2024)?
  • What methodological “tools of the trade” are helpful for comprehensively mapping networks of expertise?

Timeline and Information

Abstract deadline: July 15, 2026 (1-2 pages)

Invitation from the special issue editors to submit full manuscripts: September 15, 2026

Full paper submission: March 15, 2027 (up to 10,000 words including all references, tables, and appendices)

Please submit abstracts to the special issue editors for initial review. When submitting full manuscripts, please follow the submission guidelines of The Journal of Professions and Organization and indicate that the manuscript is intended for the special issue “Networks of Expertise: New Approaches to Study Professions and the Social Organization of Expert Labor.”

For further information, authors are encouraged to contact the special issue editors:

Netta Avnoon (navnon@uwo.ca)

Désirée Waibel (desiree.waibel@unilu.ch)

Gil Eyal (ge2027@columbia.edu)

You can find more information at the Journal of Professions and Organization.

OOW Virtual Panel on Platform Work

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, virtual sessionLeave a comment

May 6th, 2-3 pm EDT (11am-noon PDT/ 7-8pm BDT)

We invite you to join our virtual panel on digital platform work featuring:

Dr. Elif Birced, Dr. Hatim Rahman, and Dr. Kathleen Griesbach.

Work on digital platforms has exploded in the past decade and continues to evolve with technology. Today, these platforms cover an ever-increasing range of jobs. This panel brings together research on various types of platform work, including content creation, professional services, and ride-hailing and delivery.  

Register for the Zoom link here: https://tinyurl.com/oowplatformpanel

Presenter Bios:

Elif Birced is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Sloan School of Management and Schwarzman College of Computing. Broady, her research is at the intersection of sociology of work, cultural production and social media. Specifically, she studies how technology is reshaping work, worker commitment, and control over work with a particular focus on social media platforms. She will be an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Villanova University, starting in Fall 2026. 

Hatim A. Rahman is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations and Sociology (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. His research investigates how artificial intelligence is impacting the nature of work and employment relationships in organizations and labor markets. His award-winning book, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers (University of California Press), investigates how digital labor platform organizations use algorithms to control workers’ job opportunities. 

Kathleen Griesbach is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is broadly interested in work and inequality, the significance of time and space for social experience, and the dynamic interplay between culture and economic life. Much of her research examines how temporal and spatial instability shape workers’ experiences, and how workers in turn pursue dignity, meaning, and a path forward amid economic instability. She received her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.

SER Café Event: Taxing the Super Rich

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Join us for the next SER Café event on the theme “Taxing the Super Rich.” This session will feature a discussion with recent Socio-Economic Review authors Marlies Glasius (University of Amsterdam) and Andy Summers (London School of Economics).

In her 2025 article “Tax talk in the Rich Lists: from celebrating to scrutinizing the super-rich,” Marlies Glasius examines journalism surrounding the Sunday Times and Forbes Rich Lists from 1995 to 2022 to analyze how media narratives about taxing the super-rich have evolved, showing that coverage of wealth taxation and tax avoidance changed markedly after the global financial crisis.

The second article, “‘But Switzerland’s boring’: tax migration and the pull of place-specific cultural capital,” by Sam Friedman, Victoria Gronwald, Andy Summers, and Emma Taylor, investigates how economic elites weigh taxation when deciding where to live, finding that attachment to place—particularly London’s cultural infrastructure—often outweighs the financial incentives of tax migration. Andy Summers will join the discussion to represent the author team.

The event will take place on 30 March 2026 at 09:00 PDT / 17:00 BST / 18:00 CEST. Please register at this link: https://ucsd.zoom.us/meeting/register/Wf4VkWXFS12d0lfYdkuBaA.

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. Our authors look forward to your questions and comments.

Team SER Café (Ezgi, Fan, and Kyungmo)
Socio-Economic Review

Featured on Work in Progress: Steven Vallas Reviews Kathleen Thelen’s Attention Shoppers!

On By Neha JangetiIn Announcements, new book, Publications, Work in Progress BlogLeave a comment

We invite you to read “Political Roots of the Amazon Economy: A Review of Kathleen Thelen’s Attention Shoppers!” by Steven Vallas. This review highlights the book’s major contributions, with particular attention to its implications for debates over affordability in American society.

Book Overview: The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticing customers with cheap goods and speedy delivery. Attention, Shoppers! traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium in which large, low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet.

Offering a comparative perspective on the history of American political economy, Kathleen Thelen shows how large-scale retailers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden faced a far less hospitable regulatory environment than companies in the United States, which enjoyed judicial forbearance and often active government support. As American companies grew in scale and scope, they assembled an ever-expanding political coalition that could be weaponized to head off regulatory efforts, leveraging their market strength to squeeze suppliers and workers and even engaging in outright rule-breaking when they encountered resistance.

Placing the rise of the Amazon economy in a broader comparative-historical context, Attention, Shoppers! reveals how large discount retailers have successfully exploited a uniquely permissive regulatory landscape to create a shopper’s paradise built on cheap labor and mass consumption.
Book overview reprinted from Princeton University Press.

Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work focuses on the political economy of the rich democracies, with a current emphasis on the study of American capitalism in comparative perspective. She is the author, among others, of Attention Shoppers! American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy (Princeton University Press, 2025), Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (2014) and How Institutions Evolve(2004), and co-editor of The American Political Economy: Politics, Markets, and Power (with Jacob Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Paul Pierson, 2022), Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis (with James Mahoney, 2015), and Beyond Continuity (with Wolfgang Streeck, 2005). Her awards include the  Friedrich Schiedel-Award for Politics & Technology (2020), the Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Prize (2019); the Michael Endres Research Prize (2019), the Barrington Moore Book Prize (2015), the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the APSR (2005), the Mattei Dogan Award for Comparative Research (2006), and the Max Planck Research Award (2003). She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in 2009. She was awarded honorary degrees at the Free University of Amsterdam (2013), the London School of Economics (2017), the European University Institute in Florence (2018), and the University of Copenhagen (2018).

Dr. Thelen has served as President of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Chair of the Council for European Studies, and as the President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Thelen is a permanent external member of the Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung (Cologne, Germany).

Steven Vallas is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Northeastern University in Boston. Most of his research concerns the transformation of work, struggles over new technologies, and responses to the demands of the new economy. His books and articles have appeared in all the usual places. He is currently at work on an NSF-funded study of the algorithmic workplace, focusing on ride-hailing, home maintenance, courier, and caregiving platforms. He is also conducting research on logistics workers, with a particular focus on Amazon workers.

Call for Papers for the 3rd Equitable Opportunity Conference

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3rd Equitable Opportunity Conference:

Diagnosing and Addressing Inequality Mechanisms

Call for Papers

May 15-16, 2026

Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal

Organizers: Lisa Cohen & HJ Jung (McGill) and Chris Rider (Michigan)

Submission Deadline: February 28, 2026

We use the term “equitable opportunity” deliberately. “Equitable” indicates circumstances in which no disparities result from “differential treatment” (i.e., unequal treatment yields different outcomes) or “disparate impact” (i.e., equivalent treatment yields different outcomes). “Opportunity” highlights possibilities to obtain an education or a job, launch a business, experience socioeconomic mobility, etc. that vary across people, time, and place. “Equitable Opportunity”, therefore, focuses us on understanding and addressing situations where differential treatment or disparate impact generate uneven distributions that violate our notions of equity.

The conference aims to:

  • Promote equity research on organizations that spans disciplines and fields, highlighting novel theories, methodologies, findings, and implications for research, practice, and policy.
  • Foster the exchange of ideas and practices among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, bridging gaps between theory and practice.
  • Facilitate research collaborations between researchers and organizations interested in  collaborating on research projects, policymaking, and organizational interventions.
  • Feature multidisciplinary approaches to understanding the equity challenge that organizational leaders face as they try to be inclusive of diverse notions of fairness and justice. 

Preliminary Program Highlights

Keynote Address: Damon Phillips (Wharton)

Plenary Speakers: Laura Adler (Yale), Stephanie Creary (Wharton), Sonia Kang (Toronto), Zoe Kinias (Western Ontario), and András Tilcsik (Toronto)

  • Editors’ panel featuring editors from top journals like AMJ, ASQ, MS, and Organization Science.
  • Informal networking opportunities.
  • Pre-conference workshop for PhD students

Call for Presentations and Posters

Submissions are invited from faculty, doctoral students, and researchers on equity and opportunity in organizations.

Submission Guidelines

·       Contact name, affiliation/institution, and email address.

·       Names and affiliations of all contributing authors in order.

·       Presenter’s name, affiliation/institution, and email address.

  • Title of the presentation.
  • Short abstract (max 150 words) for the program.
  • Indicate your preference for presentation type:  (1) oral paper presentation; (2) poster presentation; or (3) either oral or poster.
  • Extended abstract (max 1,500 words) with sections: (1) Motivation & Research Question; (2) Theoretical Objectives, (3) Methodological Approach; (4) Data & Results (if applicable); (5) Intended Contribution; and (6) Relevance for the “Equitable Opportunities” Theme.

Submissions should be entered here. The deadline is February 28, 2026.

Conference submissions will be reviewed by the EOC Scientific Review Committee. Papers will also be considered for publication in a volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations on this theme.

Pre-Conference Doctoral Student Workshop

Doctoral students may also apply to attend a doctoral student pre-conference workshop on the morning of Friday, May 15th.  Interested applicants should submit a CV and a statement of no more than two pages here. The statement should specifically describe how their research addresses the concept of “equitable opportunities” and why they wish to participate.

Registration

This year, we will charge a nominal registration fee and offer fee waivers to scholars who lack funding to attend this conference. Information on how to register will be distributed after the paper submission deadline. Space will be limited but we hope to include attendees who do not submit papers.

Scholars at all career stages are encouraged to submit proposals. We also encourage submissions from practitioners who are interested in engaging researchers on the concept of equitable opportunities.

The conference will begin with lunch on Friday,  May 15th and will end about 5pm on Saturday, May 16th. For more information, please contact Chris Rider at riderci@umich.edu or Lisa Cohen at lisa.cohen2@mcgill.ca.

Developing and Communicating Your Scholarly Identity

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Virtual Event for Graduate Student Scholars of Organizations, Occupations, and Work

Date: February 19, 2026
Time: 2:00–3:30 PM Eastern / 11:00 AM–12:30 PM Pacific
Location: Zoom
Registration required: www.tinyurl.com/oowgradevent

This virtual event is an opportunity for graduate students who study organizations, occupations, and work to: 

  • meet peers with similar interests; 
  • learn about how to develop and effectively communicate your scholarly identity to others; and 
  • ask questions and receive advice from a panel of advanced grad students and recent PhDs in academia and in industry!

The event is open to any graduate student with these interests; membership in ASA or the OOW section is not required. 

By the end of the event, you will have learned and practiced how to effectively communicate your scholarly identity and research—an important skill for the job market, meeting new people at conferences, and just getting more comfortable talking to others about your research. Plus, you’ll get a chance to meet other grad students with similar interests and get your questions answered by people who successfully landed a postdoc or job—and have recent experience effectively communicating their research to others.

Register to receive the Zoom link: www.tinyurl.com/oowgradevent.

If you have any questions, please contact a member of the OOW Mentorship committee:

New Publication: “The Problem with Rapport in Interview-Based Studies”

On By Jessica UrzúaIn Announcements, PublicationsLeave a comment

Rao, Aliya Hamid. 2026. “The Problem with Rapport in Interview-Based Studies.” Qualitative Sociology.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-025-09619-8

Abstract: Rapport is an orienting principle in qualitative research. It is a capacious concept which, in practice, is deployed by researchers in a wide variety of ways. Despite its definitional ambiguity, in interview-based studies, researchers often link rapport to obtaining more open and honest – and thus high-quality – data. While rapport has been critiqued in the ethnographic tradition, these critiques have not extended to the particularities of interview-based studies. I offer two critiques of rapport as an orienting principle in interview-based studies. First, I question the assumption that rapport is an unmitigated methodological positive and consider instances when it may not be particularly useful or may even be detrimental to data collection. Second, I argue that the privileged position rapport occupies as an ideal-type of researcher-participant relationship risks foreclosing other types of researcher-participant relationships. The overemphasis on rapport may serve to harm data transparency and epistemic accountability. I argue for de-centering rapport as an orienting principle for interview-based studies.

Author:

Aliya Hamid Rao is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics (Department of Methodology).

Announcement: Please Join Socio-Economic Review (SER) Café Event on Friday, January 30th, 2026 via Zoom!

On By Neha JangetiIn Announcements, virtual sessionLeave a comment

Join us for an engaging SER Café event featuring a thought-provoking discussion with recent Socio-Economic Review authors, Tiago Vieira (European University Institute), Pedro Mendonça (Heriot-Watt University), Qi Song (Northwestern University), and Tiantian Liu (The University of Manchester).

The paper published by Tiago Vieira and Pedro Mendonça in 2025, The times, are they changing? Examining platform companies’ chameleonic labour process as a response to the Spanish Rey Rider, Tiago Vieira, Pedro Mendonça investigates the impact of Spain’s Ley Rider (Rider Law), which established a universal presumption of employment for platform couriers by highlighting platform companies as “institutional chameleons,” to underline their ability to adjust their operations to either comply with or circumvent new regulatory frameworks. Qi Song and Tiantian Liu published their study in 2025 called Transcending boundaries and breaking social safety nets: how digital platforms reorganize the market and exacerbate economic insecurity, Qi Song, Tiantian Liu to explore the platformization of the Chinese freight transportation sector, specifically the emergence of the Full Truck Alliance (FTA) by arguing that platforms have replaced traditional “relational infrastructures”—social networks based on trust and local ties—with centralized digital infrastructures.

The event will take place on Friday, January 30th, 2026, 8:00 AM PT / 4:00 PM GMT (UK) / 5:00 PM CET. Please register at this link: https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/yewOixmESU6pA75inJbSeQ

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. Our authors look forward to your questions and comments.

Team SER Café (Ezgi, Fan, and Kyungmo)

Socio-Economic Review

Call for Applications: 2026 Warwick Summer School on Practice and Process Studies

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To Know is to Act: Revisiting and rethinking learning and knowing from practice & process perspectives

An international gathering dedicated to the study, advancement and future development of practice-based studies in organisation, administrative and social studies, University of Warwick, Tuesday 30 June and Wednesday 01 and Thursday 02 July 2026.

Keynote Speakers

  • Jean Lave, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley
  • Erik Rietveld, Socrates Professor, Senior Researcher, University of Amsterdam
  • Callen Anthony, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations, NYU Stern

Research Clinics & Faculty

Participants will have the opportunity to present their work in research clinics and receive feedback from peers and senior scholars, including:

  • Ann Langley, HEC Montréal & Warwick Business School
  • Davide Nicolini, Warwick Business School
  • Hari Tsoukas, University of Cyprus & Warwick Business School
  • Jörgen Sandberg, University of Queensland
  • Katharina Dittrich, Warwick Business School
  • Qian Li, Warwick Business School
  • Omid Omidvar, Warwick Business School
  • Ila Bharatan, Warwick Business School

Application Details

  • Application deadline: Friday, 28 February 2026
  • Notification & registration deadline: Monday, 31 March 2026
  • Format: In-person
  • Location: University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Apply here: Application form
More information: Summer School webpage

For questions, please contact IKON@wbs.ac.uk.