Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation (2015, NYU Press)

Edited by Caroline W. Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward T. Walker
Foreword by Craig Calhoun

Contributors: Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Emily Cummins, Ernesto Ganuza, Nina Eliasoph, J. Matthew Judge, Daniel Kreiss, Caroline Lee, Isaac Martin, Michael McQuarrie, David Meyer, Aaron Panofsky, Francesca Polletta, Amanda Pullum, David Schielfer, Steven Vallas, Edward Walker

Opportunities to “have your say,” “get involved,” and “join the conversation” are everywhere in public life. From crowdsourcing and town hall meetings to government experiments with social media, participatory politics increasingly seem like a revolutionary antidote to the decline of civic engagement and the thinning of the contemporary public sphere. Many argue that, with new technologies, flexible organizational cultures, and a supportive policymaking context, we now hold the keys to large-scale democratic revitalization. Democratizing Inequalities shows that the equation may not be so simple. Modern societies face a variety of structural problems that limit potentials for true democratization, as well as vast inequalities in political action and voice that are not easily resolved by participatory solutions. Popular participation may even reinforce elite power in unexpected ways. Resisting an oversimplified account of participation as empowerment, this collection of essays brings together a diverse range of leading scholars to reveal surprising insights into how dilemmas of the new public participation play out in politics and organizations. Through investigations including fights over the authenticity of business-sponsored public participation, the surge of the Tea Party, the role of corporations in electoral campaigns, and participatory budgeting practices in Brazil, Democratizing Inequalities seeks to refresh our understanding of public participation and trace the reshaping of authority in today’s political environment.

Continue reading “Announcement: New Volume: Democratizing Inequalities” →

The OOW section has seven sessions this year.

1-3.  Three open submission, open-topic sessions, organized by Heather Haveman and Phyllis Moen:

The Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section welcomes submissions on any topic relevant to the section’s mission, from very micro (individual worker) to very macro (interorganizational fields).  The organizers, Phyllis Moen and Heather Haveman, will sift through the submissions and create three coherent sessions.

Continue reading “OOW sections at ASA 2015” →

Continue reading “The Oxford Handbook of Sociology, Social Theory and Organization Studies: Contemporary Currents” →

Dear Section Members,

We are writing because we have learned that a significant number of members in this section also are members of the social psychology section. Effective August 1, 2014, we became the new coeditors of Social Psychology Quarterly. In an effort to expand the breadth of the journal, we are reaching out to you to encourage you to consider submitting your work to SPQ. We would like to attract more contributions to the journal from a broad base of researchers who use social psychological approaches. We think that for many in this section, this would include your work.

Continue reading “New editors of Social Psychology Quarterly” →

Dear Colleague,

With the beginning of the new academic year, I would like to kindly draw your attention to the Economic Sociology and Political Economy online academic community.

The ES/PE community’s goal is to disseminate the insights of socio-political research of the economy to the public and academics; and to serve as a platform on which our members (already more than 23,000 researchers, students, practitioners and activists from 90 countries) share relevant information, exchange ideas and create collaborations (generating about 50,000 monthly website visits)

Continue reading “The Economic Sociology and Political Economy online academic community” →

Hi everyone – we are working on a new delivery system for our section announcements. This will involve a few test posts over the next day or so. Sorry for cluttering your inbox – we’re looking forward to rolling out the new listserve system. Thanks for your patience!

From Andrew Jorgenson:

We are pleased to announce that the new journal Sociology of Development (published by University of California Press) is ready for manuscript submissions! The journal webpage, which includes manuscript preparation information, is here. The manuscript submission webpage is here.

Sociology of Development is a new venue for scholarly work that addresses issues of development, broadly considered. Areas of interest include economic development and well-being, gender, health, inequality, poverty, environment and sustainability, political economy, conflict, and social movements, to mention only a few. Basic as well as policy-oriented research is welcome. The journal further recognizes the interdisciplinary scope of development studies and encourages submissions from related fields, including (but not limited to) political science, economics, geography, anthropology, and health sciences. A foundational principle of this journal is the promotion and encouragement of intellectual diversity within the study of development. As such, the journal encourages submissions from all scholars of development sociology, regardless of theoretical orientation, methodological preference, region of investigation, or historical period of study.

Best wishes,
Andrew Jorgenson and Jeffrey Kentor, Co-Editors

The OOW section announces the formation of a new Student Affairs Committee.  The Committee will be chaired by the Student Representative to Council, Kim Pernell-Gallagher during the 2014-2015 year. Its purpose is to serve as a vehicle for addressing the interests of students and engaging them more fully in the life of the Section. The creation of this committee coincides with the transition to an elected student representative to the section council. By drawing on the ideas and energies of multiple graduate students, it is intended that the committee will generate proposals for new initiatives/activities while sustaining a greater critical mass of involvement than a lone student representative could.  The members for 2014-2015 are:  Curtis Chan (Harvard); Sarah Mosseri (University of Virginia); Hang Young Lee (Duke); Kim Pernell-Gallagher (Harvard — Chair); Laura Rogers (UC San Diego); Jessica Santana (Stanford); Ben Shostakovsky (UC Berkeley).   Thank you to OOW Council Members Elizabeth Gorman and Adam Goldstein for chairing the Task Force, which put together the Student Affairs Committee.

From Dan Cornfield:

Please join me in congratulating  Ayse Yetis-Bayraktar (Bogazici University), Michelle J. Budig (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)!

Their article—“From the Shop Floor to the Kitchen Floor: Maternal Occupational Complexity and Children’s Reading and Math Skills”— in the February 2013 issue of Work and Occupations was selected as one of five finalists in the international competition for the 2013 Rosabeth Kanter Award!

The honor was announced at the Work and Familiy Researchers Network Conference in New York City on Saturday, June 21, 2014.

Continue reading “Work and Occupations Article Finalist for Kanter Award” →