The Comparative Historical Sociology Section of the ASA is proud to announce it will be hosting it’s annual mini-conference at the University of Washington on August 19th, 2016. Titled Can Comparative Historical Sociology Save the World? the conference explores how scholars might use the tools of comparative and historical sociology to engage issues of public concern. Our day will begin with an opening plenary featuring Peter Evans, Fatma Müge Göçek, Ebenezer Obadare, Fabio Rojas, and section chair, Monica Prasad. Three panel sessions will cover timely themes such as the practice of policy-relevant research, international migration, and legacies of race and gender inequality. The program will conclude in a joint reception with the Economic Sociology section, which is also hosting a mini-conference at the University of Washington.

View the conference program and register online at https://chsminicon2016.squarespace.com/. Registrations on our before August 11th will include a box lunch. We look forward to seeing you in Seattle!

ASA Rose Series in Sociology, a book series published by the Russell Sage Foundation, is seeking book proposals. The Rose Series publishes cutting-edge, highly visible, and accessible books that offer synthetic analyses of existing fields, challenge prevailing paradigms, and/or offer fresh views on enduring controversies. Books published in the Series reach a broad audience of sociologists, other social scientists, and policymakers. Please submit a 1-page summary and CV to: Lee Clarke, rose.series@sociology.rutgers.edu. For more information, go here.

This year’s Junior Theorists Symposium will take place in Seattle on Friday, August 19, 2016. RSVP’s to juniortheorists@gmail.com are highly encouraged so that we can plan appropriate amounts of caffeinated libation accordingly.

The full schedule of papers can be found here.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The New Press.

Hochschild travels deep into a stronghold of the conservative right: Louisiana bayou country—an area on the brink of environmental crisis and suffering from poor health, widespread poverty, and low literacy rates and life expectancy. Her mission: to scale the “empathy wall” and do what so few of us do: trulylisten to the other side in order to understand why they believe—and feel—the way they do.

Over the course of five years, Hochschild situated herself in “red” America: she attends fish fries, gumbo cook-offs, Pentecostal church services and Trump rallies; visits schools, political party groups and oil-soaked wetlands; and engages in long, thoughtful conversations while pouring over photo albums, during card games, and over cookies at kitchen tables. Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that many on the political right have been “duped” into voting against their interests. In the right-wing world she explores, Hochschild discovers powerful forces—fear of cultural eclipse, economic decline, perceived government betrayal—which override self-interest, as progressives see it, and help explain the emotional appeal of a candidate like Donald Trump. Even as Hochschild gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she champions, she discovers surprising common ground in philosophy (belief in fairness and hard work ), in ideas (“let’s get big money out of government,” one Tea Party member tells her) and in policy (“Lets ban the deposit of fracking waste in our nature preserves.”)

For desk and exam copies, please contact Sam Hall.

ASA Rose Series in Sociology, a book series published by the Russell Sage Foundation, is seeking book proposals. The Rose Series publishes cutting-edge, highly visible, and accessible books that offer synthetic analyses of existing fields, challenge prevailing paradigms, and/or offer fresh views on enduring controversies. Books published in the Series reach a broad audience of sociologists, other social scientists, and policymakers. Please submit a 1-page summary and CV to: Lee Clarke, rose.series@sociology.rutgers.edu. For more information, visit http://www.asanet.org/research-publications/rose-series-sociology.