Over the past several decades, “globalization” and “internationalization” have become new areas of focus in the social sciences. Many sociologists are no longer content with focusing on a single society as if it were an autonomous social unit, but are keen to explore processes that affect societies across the globe or that can only be understood through systematic comparisons across them. The Princeton Series in Global and Comparative Sociology aims to create a home for books that dare to compare across countries and continents. It welcomes projects written in all macro-comparative traditions in sociology and neighboring disciplines. The series is edited by Andreas Wimmer (Columbia) and curated by Meagan Levinson at Princeton University Press. Members of the advisory board are Julia Adams (Yale), Nitsan Chorev (Brown), Matthias König (Göttingen), Jim Mahoney (Northwestern), John Meyer (Stanford), Gisele Sapiro (EHESS), Saskia Sassen (Columbia), Evan Schofer (UC Irvine), and Lawrence King (Cambridge). Please submit proposals to Meagan_Levinson@press.princeton.edu.

As part of the Critical Realism Network Webinar Series, Professor Philip Gorski of Yale University would like to invite you to join the upcoming webinar with Professor Kevin Schilbrack (Department of Philosophy and Religion, Appalachian State University) on Critical Realism and the Academic Study of Religion.

Date: Wednesday, April 19th
Time: 12:00-1:30 pm EST
Click here to register: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1033739221691083777

Brief Description:  In this webinar, I’ll explore how critical realism aids our understanding of both scholars who study religious agents and the religious agents themselves. I’ll briefly contextualize the debate among religious studies scholars today about the status of the central conceptual category of “religion”. Some contemporary scholars, influenced by genealogy and deconstruction, argue that religion was not discovered in those cultures but was rather manufactured, imagined, or invented in Europe and then imposed on the rest of the world.  Here, religion is a social construction, a projection of the western imagination. On what grounds can Western scholars retain the concept? In response, I will argue that CR enables us to speak of religion as a real entity, a social structure, that operated even before the word was created. I will consider three arguments for abolishing the category of “religion” and show how CR provides tools with which we can respond to them. Second, how does CR help us understand religious agents? Religious people organize their lives around and claim to experience value-laden realities that those who are not members of their communities typically cannot see. What is needed, then, is a relational ontology where human beings are not independent substances but are rather constituted by their relations.

Berlin Summer School

The summer school aims at supporting young researchers by strengthening their ability in linking theory and empirical research. The two-week program creates an excellent basis for the development of their current research designs.

In the first week, we address the key methodological challenges of concept-building, causation/explanation, and micro-macro linkage that occur in almost all research efforts. We strive for a clarification of the epistemological foundations underlying methodological paradigms. In the second week, these methodological considerations are applied to central empirical fields of research in political science, sociology, and other related disciplines. In this second part of the program, participants are assigned to four thematic groups according to their own research topics. The thematic areas covered are: “External Governance, Inter-regionalism, and Domestic Change”, “Citizenship, Migration, and Identities”, “Social Struggle and Globalization”, and “Democracy at the Crossroads”.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL NOMINEES MUST BE REGISTERED MEMBERS OF THE ASA TO BE CONSIDERED FOR SECTION AWARDS

Political Sociology Section Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (Book) Award

Deadline: 3/15/2017

This award is given annually to the outstanding recent book in political sociology (we will not consider edited books for this award). To be eligible, the book must have a 2016 copyright date. The selection committee encourages self-nominations or suggestions of work by others. Nominations from publishers will not be accepted. To nominate a book for this award: 1) send a short letter (via e-mail) nominating the book to each committee member below and 2) have a copy of the book sent to each committee member, at the addresses below. Winners will be notified and announced prior to the ASA meetings allowing presses to advertise the prize-winning book. The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2017.