Category: Publications

New Publication: “The Moralization of Gender (In)Equality: Contested Hybrid Repertoires Among Men in High-Tech Organizations” by Dr. Tair Karazi-Presler

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Karazi-Presler, Tair. 2026. “The Moralization of Gender (In)Equality: Contested Hybrid Repertoires Among Men in High-Tech Organizations.” Men and Masculinities. doi:10.1177/1097184X261465812 

Abstract: This article examines how men negotiate the moral meanings of gender (in)equality in high-tech organizations that publicly promote gender equality while reproducing persistent inequality regimes. Based on 35 in-depth interviews, the analysis conceptualizes their accounts as contested hybrid moral repertoires: morally charged and contested ways of making sense of gender (in)equality in ostensibly egalitarian organizations. Three intertwined dynamics emerged. First, men challenge gender hierarchy by supporting gender equality and recognizing women’s exclusion. Second, they reinforce hierarchy through tensions between political correctness and authenticity, framing restraint as a burden and spontaneity as sincerity. Third, they preserve privilege through discourses of unfairness, reverse discrimination, and lost power. Drawing on the cultural sociology of morality, the article extends scholarship on hybrid masculinities by foregrounding moral sense-making and contributes to the sociology of gender and organizations by showing how moral evaluations and claims to legitimacy become mechanisms through which gender inequality is reproduced.

New Publication: “Participant Observation in the 21st Century: How the Digital Dimension Matters for All Ethnographers.” 

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Crooke, Catherine L. 2026. “Participant Observation in the 21st Century: How the Digital Dimension Matters for All Ethnographers.” Qualitative Research 26(2): 457–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941261420113

Abstract: Scholarship on participant observation in the digital era has produced a proliferation of labels—virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, and netnography, among others—that often position digitally attuned methods as specialized departures from ethnography’s core. This framing risks obscuring the relevance of digital practices for ethnographers whose research questions do not centrally concern technology. The present article proposes that attention to the multifaceted digital dimensions of social life enhances participant observation even for those who study social processes whose center of gravity is offline. Drawing on a multiyear ethnographic study initiated shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasize that much ostensibly ‘in-person’ work unfolds through screens and digital infrastructures. Consciously engaging these environments expands ethnographic insight in three key ways: increasing the surface area of observable interaction, foregrounding participants’ extended social networks, and illuminating collaborative interpretive work among research participants.

Catherine L. Crooke is a lawyer and PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. She uses qualitative methods to study law, migration, work, organizations, and professions. Her dissertation draws on over four years of participant observation and nearly 100 interviews with Los Angeles-based legal service providers to examine the U.S. immigration system as a site of both legal promise and institutional erosion. Foregrounding the everyday experiences of immigration lawyers, she shows how institutional instability reshapes professional practice and transforms the meaning of legality itself. More broadly, her project offers a framework for understanding how professionals sustain moral commitments within institutions marked by constraint.

Catherine’s scholarship appears in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Qualitative Research, and has received support from numerous funding agencies including the Ford Foundation, the American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, the Center for Engaged Scholarship, and the Center for Institutional Courage. She holds a JD from Yale Law School, an MSc from the University of Oxford, and a BA from Columbia University.

New Publication: “The Inauthenticity of Organizational Diversity Initiatives: Perspectives from the Tech Industry”

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Wilcox, Annika and Neeraj Rajasekar. 2026. “The Inauthenticity of Organizational Diversity Initiatives: Perspectives from the Tech Industry.” The Sociological Quarterly.  https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2026.2644528

Abstract: Organizations often use diversity initiatives to craft an image of moral goodness while doing little to address workplace inequalities. This disconnect is intensified in the U.S. technology industry, where companies attempt to claim identities as progressive diversity supporters despite obvious patterns of inequality and discrimination. How do tech employees make sense of this contradiction? This study combines the sociology of diversity, sociology of organizations, and organizational authenticity literatures to analyze, via 31 in-depth interviews, how employees of a large U.S. tech company evaluate diversity initiatives in the U.S. tech industry. Results show that tech workers question the authenticity of high-tech diversity programs: they frame technology companies as lacking commitment to diversity, overemphasizing conformity to diversity-related norms, and demonstrating dubious inconsistency in their approach to diversity. Nonetheless, they moderate their criticisms by noting that tech companies do “try” to take responsibility for diversity. Interviewees voiced these impressions similarly across race and gender. We therefore argue that the (in)authenticity of diversity initiatives can be a unifying concern amongst individuals with differing social identities. As diversity initiatives exist largely due to social pressures, they will need to overcome issues of inauthenticity in order to survive widespread sociopolitical critiques.

Annika Wilcox is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice at East Stroudsburg University. Her research examines how organizational inequalities are reproduced and challenged, primarily focusing on diversity/DEI discourse and initiatives. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Social Science Research, Sociological Forum, and Research in the Sociology of Work.  

Neeraj Rajasekar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Sociology/Anthropology department at University of Illinois, Springfield. He completed his PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 2021. He has written scholarly articles and book chapters about diversity discourse, diversity attitudes, racial attitudes, racial inequality, and the history of multiculturalism in the United States. His publications have appeared in Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Social Currents, Sociological Forum, and other journals.

New Publication: “Jurisdictional Gerrymandering: The Authority of Problems without Solutions” by Shira Zilberstein

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Zilberstein, Shira. 2026. “Jurisdictional Gerrymandering: The Authority of Problems without Solutions.” Social Problems. doi:10.1093/socpro/spag024

Abstract: This paper develops the concept of jurisdictional gerrymandering to explain how professionals selectively invoke boundaries around their expertise to frame their role and maintain authority in solving problems that extend beyond their jurisdiction. Drawing on a study of artificial intelligence (AI) model development for healthcare, I analyze how AI practitioners position their work in relation to health equity, an issue they acknowledge cannot be solved through technology. Rather than claiming full authority over equity solutions or deferring to other domains, AI practitioners engage in jurisdictional gerrymandering by critiquing, projecting, and dissolving jurisdiction for different aspects of defining and solving health equity. This process enables them to retain authority to participate in health equity problem solving through moral alignment without accountability for solutions. In contrast to jurisdictional models of professional authority or networked expertise, jurisdictional gerrymandering unbundles defining and solving problems. It reveals a key mechanism through which authority is maintained without asserting control or claiming to be able to achieve solutions. Jurisdictional gerrymandering enables problem frames to continually serve as justifications for technological projects and expert interventions regardless of solutions, shedding light on tensions between innovation, expertise, and responsibility for social problems.

Shira Zilberstein is a PhD candidate in sociology at Harvard University and a fellow in the Science and Technology Studies program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on cultural sociology, science and technology studies and organizations, as well as theory and methods. She is interested in the production, interpretation and evaluation of ideas and the dynamics between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forms of knowledge in institutional and technical settings. To this end, she has conducted research on grassroots artists, international non-governmental organizations, American college students, academics and journalists. Her dissertation focuses on applied interdisciplinary research collaborations in the field of artificial intelligence. The project studies the ways in which social impact is understood and structured by organizational incentives and decision-making processes that define and seek to address social needs.

New Publication: “The (State–Private) Ties That Bind: Status, Interactions, and Economic Development in India” by Aruna Ranganathan & Laura Doering

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Ranganathan, Aruna, and Laura Doering. 2026. “The (State–Private) Ties That Bind: Status, Interactions, and Economic Development in India.” Sociology of Development 1–31. doi:10.1525/sod.2026.2893447.

Abstract: Governments often collaborate with the private sector to design and implement major economic initiatives. In studying such state–society collaborations, sociologists tend to focus on how institutional contexts shape outcomes. Although this institutional approach has been highly generative, it can overlook important micro-level interaction patterns between state and private-sector actors that also affect economic outcomes. In this study, we examine how bureaucrats in the Indian government interacted with private-sector representatives to design and implement an industrial crafts park. Drawing on ethnographic observations, interviews, and supplemental survey data, we show how bureaucrats’ status biases in favor of certain private-sector actors produced interaction patterns that blinded them to fatal flaws in the project’s design and ultimately contributed to its dramatic failure. By bringing an interactionist lens to state–society economic engagements, this study reveals how interaction patterns can aggregate to shape large-scale development outcomes. More broadly, it highlights an important but undertheorized pathway through which bureaucrats may inadvertently reinforce social stratification through the very projects intended to reduce economic inequality. We suggest that an interactionist approach to state–private collaborations and policy design can contribute to efforts to address global poverty.

Aruna Ranganathan holds the Dong Koo Kim Chancellor’s Chair in Social Entrepreneurship and is an Associate Professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Prof. Ranganathan is also affiliated with the Sociology department and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley. She was formerly an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University. Ranganathan spent her childhood in the Middle East, India, and Singapore before graduating with honors from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business with a BCom in organizational behavior and human resources. She also received an MS in international and comparative labor from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and an MS/PhD in management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Laura Doering is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and is cross-appointed in the Department of Sociology. As an economic sociologist, she examines how interactions and social psychological processes shape outcomes for households, organizations, and markets. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Sociological Science, Sociology of Development, and Journal of Business Venturing. Professor Doering’s research and writing have appeared in The New York Times, BBC News, The Globe and Mail, Salon, and other outlets.

New Publication: “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates”

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Movahed, Masoud, and Emilio A. Parrado. 2026. “Varieties of Capitalism and Cross-national Variation in Fertility Rates.” Demography 63 (2): 511–536. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-12563895.

Abstract: The institutional approach to explaining cross-national variation in demographic outcomes has gained increasing visibility in both academic research and public policy discourse. In this vein, much of the literature has focused on the effects of welfare programs on risk management and the associated costs of fertility. However, an alternative, more comprehensive perspective, namely, the “varieties of capitalism,” emphasizes the role of broader social-structural and institutional characteristics of national economies in generating socioeconomic outcomes. This perspective has not been extended to debates around cross-national differences in demographic outcomes. We fill this void by elaborating on a varieties of capitalism account of cross-national and longitudinal variation in fertility rates. Drawing on panel data spanning more than three decades (1985‒2019) across 21 countries in the Global North, we investigate how institutional factors, through the lens of the varieties of capitalism perspective, correlate with differences in total fertility rates between countries and over time. Our results demonstrate that crucial institutional dimensions, such as centralization of wage bargaining, the employment protection index, and active labor market policies, are associated with variation in total fertility rates across countries and over time.

Authors:

  • Masoud Movahed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
  • Emilio A. Parrado is Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology and Director of Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

New Publication: “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes”

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Protasiuk, Ewa. 2026. “The Foundational Role of Legal Status Categories in Stratifying Job Loss Outcomes.” Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spag014

Abstract: Job loss is a common, stratifying experience in the contemporary labor market, but scholars have undertheorized its relationship to a major axis of inequality: legal status. To bridge this gap, this paper uses qualitative data from interviews and participant observation to compare outcomes after job loss among 76 restaurant workers in three different legal status categories (U.S.-born citizens, immigrants who are legally authorized to work, and immigrants without this authorization). Situated amidst a discussion of unemployment regulations and legal status categories as sites of governance and stratification, my findings point to two mechanisms of legal status-based stratification among unemployed workers. First, legal status directly determines eligibility for unemployment relief. Second, legal status divergently shapes interactions with the unemployment relief system due to differing risks of legal violence associated with distinct statuses. I show that, through these mechanisms, legal status stratifies workers’ agency over the timing and conditions of their return to work after job loss. I also discuss gendered patterns within legal status categories. These findings extend the framework of unemployment as a socially stratifying institution, integrate legal status into theories of gender in unemployment stratification, and contribute to literatures on immigrant job loss as well as immigration and stratification.

Author: Ewa Protasiuk is an incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

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

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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.

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

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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).

New Publication: “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States”

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Yavorsky, Jill, Yue Qian, and Rebecca Glauber. 2025. “Workplace Productivity: Gender, Parenthood, and Career Consequences in the United States.” Gender, Work & Organization 1–21. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.70027

Main Findings: Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we find that managers more severely penalize mothers, compared to fathers, when their job productivity decreases due to childcare issues outside their control. This result was primarily driven by men managers who gave fathers a greater benefit of the doubt when it came to their decreased productivity. 

Abstract: Many dual-earner parents face ongoing challenges to securing reliable and accessible childcare, which potentially affect their productivity at work and consequential career rewards. Although productivity can ebb and flow, limited research has examined how productivity changes influence parents’ access to organizational rewards, especially when productivity changes result from childcare issues outside their control. The answer to this question is crucial for understanding gender inequality given that childcare issues are more likely to affect mothers’ productivity and employers could enact gender biases toward mothers (or fathers) when their productivity changes. Using a novel survey experiment fielded among 975 US managers, we assessed how a parent’s productivity changes (because of childcare issues outside their control) influenced managers’ recommendations of future organizational rewards (pay, promotions, etc.) to the parent. First, we find that managers assigned lower career rewards to workers whose productivity decreased, relative to workers whose productivity increased or stayed constant. Second, managers more severely penalized mothers, compared to fathers, when their productivity decreased. Third, exploratory analyses suggested that the widened gender gap in career rewards among parents whose productivity decreased was driven by men managers who penalized fathers less than women managers, primarily because men managers did not view fathers’ decreased productivity as evidence of reduced competence, professional commitment, or interest in advancement. By revealing pro-male biases that help explain the greater penalties faced by mothers relative to fathers when their productivity declined, our findings expose potential long-lasting impacts of parents experiencing disruptions to childcare on gender inequality in the workplace.

Authors:

Jill Yavorsky is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizational Science at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

Yue Qian is a Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Rebecca Glauber is a Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire.