Register now for the 23^rd semi-annual Gender, Professions, and Organizations writing workshop at the ASA annual meeting (Friday, August 9th) by signing up here: https://forms.gle/Ghe1LP7SQExAQwaq9. 

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

The 23rd semi-annual Gender, Professions, and Organizations Writing Workshop is back this summer from 9 am to 5 pm on Friday, August 9, 2024 – the day of pre-conference activities for the ASA annual meeting in Montreal. Originally a workgroup of sociologists studying gender and academic careers, scientific organizations, and organizational transformations to promote gender equality, the workshop has grown to now include scholars of gender, professions, and organizations more broadly. Our aims are to learn about the range of work of attendees, facilitate collaboration, build community across career stages, and most importantly to dedicate time for writing. This is an opportunity to write, network, and collaborate. We encourage new and returning participants. If you’ve never come, welcome, and if you have, welcome back! 

As a group, we will discuss our current research projects. This exercise provides useful information to explore potential collaborations throughout the day. There will be designated blocks of independent, quiet writing time. You may use this time any way you wish: brainstorm a new paper, put finishing touches on a manuscript, work with collaborators, or analyze data. There will be separate, designated spaces for conversations around research and collaboration.

 The full-day workshop is organized as two standalone sessions, each with time for introductions and time for writing. We will take a lunch break in between the two sessions. At the end of the day, we come together for a discussion of what we have accomplished and our future plans. Participants are welcome to join for the morning, afternoon, or both. 

Anyone attending ASA is welcome to join the workshop; however space is limited. We will start a waitlist based on registration order if necessary. The workshop begins early on the 9th, so we recommend arriving in Montreal on the 8th.

Your ASA meeting fee will cover the room cost for the workshop. Participants should bring their own laptop computers (and maybe an extension cord) and snacks to share, as we do not have extra funding. 

Please contact one of the current co-organizers with any questions. Register by July 26th, using this form https://forms.gle/Ghe1LP7SQExAQwaq9. 

Kristen McNeill (kristen.mcneill@graduateinstitute.ch, Assistant Professor, Geneva Graduate Institute)

Former organizers: Sharla Alegria, Melissa Abad, Ethel Mickey, Elizabeta Shifrin, Rodica Lisnic, Kathrin Zippel, Laura Kramer, Christina Falci, Laura Hirshfield, Julia McQuillan, Enobong Hannah (Anna) Branch, Shauna Morimoto, Firuzeh Shokooh Valle

Join our lively discussion of directions for sociological work on prescient topics like AI, work automation, surveillance,  digitization, algorithmic management, and platform work, as well as on the implications for inequality along lines of  class, race/ethnicity, and gender.  

DATE: Thursday, May 2, 2024 

TIME: 10am-11am EST 

Please contact the moderator for the Zoom link at argun@ku.edu. 

PANELISTS:  

Dr. Ya-Wen Lei, Harvard University. Her recent research focuses on work automation and augmentation, and on techno-state  capitalism. Dr. Lei’s scholarship spans across political sociology, sociology work and labor, economic sociology, and science and  technology studies. She is the lead of author of “Automation and Augmentation: AI, Robots, and Work,” Annual Review of Sociology (2024) and the author of “Delivering Solidarity: Platform Architecture and Collective Contention in China’s Platform Economy,”  American Sociological Review (2021), “Upgrading China through Automation: Manufacturers, Workers and the Techno Developmental State,” Work, Employment and Society (2022), and The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State  Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2023).  

Dr. Karen Levy, Cornell University. She researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on  social and organizational aspects of surveillance. Much of Dr. Levy’s research analyzes the uses of monitoring for social control in  various contexts, from long-haul trucking to intimate relationships. She is also interested in how data collection uniquely impacts,  and is contested by, marginalized populations. She is the author of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace  

Surveillance (Princeton University Press, 2023) and “Privacy Threats in Intimate Relationships,” Journal of Cybersecurity (2020)  

Dr. Lindsey Cameron, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on how algorithmic management is changing the modern  workplace, with an emphasis on the gig economy. Professor Cameron has an on-going, seven-year ethnography of the largest  sector of the gig economy, the ride-hailing industry, examining how algorithmic management changes managerial control. She is  the author of “The Making of the ‘Good Bad’ Job: How Algorithmic Management Repurposes Workplace Consent through Constant  and Confined Choice,” Administrative Science Quarterly (2024), and “’Making out’ While Driving: Relational and Efficiency Games  in the Gig Economy,” Organization Science (2022). 

Dr. Benjamin Shestakofsky, University of Pennsylvania. His research centers on the relationship between work, technology, organizations, and political economy. Some of his recent projects examine the hidden workers who support AI systems, the governance of digital platforms, and how venture capital affects organizational culture and change in the tech industry. He is the author of Behind the Startup How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (University of California Press, 2024), and co-author of “Making Platforms Work: Relationship Labor and the Management of Publics,” Theory and Society (2020). 

Moderated by Dr. Argun Saatcioglu, University of Kansas

The annual Northeastern University Qualitative Research Conference will be held virtually on April 3, 2024, from 10am to 1pm EST! The conference is free of charge. Register here.

The aim of the conference is to build a global community of qualitative scholars in order to advance qualitative methods and develop junior scholars. To do so, we have invited a group of amazing qualitative scholars to discuss the following topics: 
 
1) “The dos and don’ts of mixed methods”

Panelists: Kim Elsbach (UC Davis), Siobhan O’Mahony (Boston University), Michael Pratt (Boston College), Aruna Ranganathan (UC Berkeley)

2) “Sharing best practices in qualitative Research: Recommendations from the experts in the field.”

Panelists: Tima Bansal (Ivey), Christine Beckman (University of Southern California), Lindsey Cameron (Wharton), Matthew Grimes (University of Cambridge)

3) Plenary remarks: Kisha Lashley (University of Virgina)

This systematic analysis of everyday life inside a tech startup dissects the logic of venture capital and its consequences for entrepreneurs, workers, and societies.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520395039/behind-the-startup

In recent years, dreams about our technological future have soured as digital platforms have undermined privacy, eroded labor rights, and weakened democratic discourse. In light of the negative consequences of innovation, some blame harmful algorithms or greedy CEOs. Behind the Startup focuses instead on the role of capital and the influence of financiers. Drawing on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, this book examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it.

Investors push startups to scale as quickly as possible to inflate the value of their asset. Benjamin Shestakofsky shows how these demands create organizational problems that managers solve by combining high-tech systems with low-wage human labor. With its focus on the financialization of innovation, Behind the Startup explains how the gains generated by these companies are funneled into the pockets of a small cadre of elite investors and entrepreneurs. To promote innovation that benefits the many rather than the few, Shestakofsky compellingly argues that we must focus less on fixing the technology and more on changing the financial infrastructure that supports it.

All OOW members are invited to participate in an informal, online discussion of Erin Hatton’s Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment on April 15nd, 12-1pm EST. 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 2.) 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).

Featuring a conversation with SER authors Carly R. Knight (New York University), and Ann-Christine Schulz (Institute for Digital Transformation and Strategy) and Alexander Himme (Kuehne Logistics University)

Join us for a discussion of contemporary capitalism through institutional studies. Knight, in “Classifying the corporation: the role of naturalizing analogies in American corporate development, 1870–1930,” traces the history of the classification of the corporation and finds that the symbolic privatization of the corporation was the joint product of both liberal and progressive legal theorizing. The “naturalizing analogies” employed by theorists, Knight argues, are critical to understanding the symbolic structure of corporate capitalism. Schulz and Himme, in “Stock market reactions to downsizing announcements: an analysis through an institutional lens”, examine stock market reactions to corporate downsizing using a neo-institutional perspective and demonstrate the performance effects of corporate downsizing and investors’ role in legitimizing this prevalent business practice.

Come and join us to discuss how to understand the current state of capitalism and inequalities from the angle of institutions. The event will take place on Thursday, March 14^th, at 8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM CET. Register at this link!

As with all SER Cafe events, we will facilitate a dynamic conversation with the authors. No lengthy talks. Our authors look forward to your questions and comments.