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”.

The international summer school is open to 50 PhD candidates, advanced master students, and young postdocs. The call for applications is currently open. Applications can be submitted online via the application form on the summer school webpage until March 31, 2017.

Bergen Summer Research School

‘Migration and the (Inter-)National Order of Things. Law, state practices and resistance’, June 12-22 2017.

This interdisciplinary PhD course aims to deepen the understanding of the politics of protection and control of contemporary migration. It asks: How are migrants given different bureaucratic and legal identities (e.g. refugees, stateless persons, irregular migrants) and what are the consequences of such distinctions and labels? What protection does international law and humanitarian institutions offer to different categories of people? What are the spatial, temporal and gendered implications of the protection and control practices aimed at migrants? And, how are the legal and bureaucratic identities, and institutions of migration control, challenged by migrants themselves?

This course is one of six parallel courses in 2017, spanning disciplines within health, humanities, and social sciences. In addition to the courses, there will be a series of joint sessions about research tools for PhD candidates, but also plenary sessions with keynotes, debates, and an excursion.

For more information and for applications, please visit the summer school website.

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.

Committee

Dana Fisher, Chair, University of Maryland, drfisher@umd.edu
2112 Parren Mitchell Art-Sociology Building, 3834 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20742

Elizabeth Popp Berman, University at Albany, epberman@albany.edu
Sociology, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY 12222

Elizabeth Holzer, University of Connecticut, Elizabeth.holzer@uconn.edu
Sociology Dept & Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut, 344 Mansfield Road, Storrs, CT 06269

Rima Wilkes, University of British Columbia, wilkesr@mail.ubc.ca
Sociology, 6303 NW Marine Drive, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada

Political Sociology Section Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (Article or Book Chapter) Award

Deadline: 3/15/2017

This award is offered annually for the outstanding recently published article or chapter in political sociology. To be eligible, submissions must have a 2016 publication date. The selection committee encourages either self-nominations or suggestions of work by others. (Please note that each author may have only one article nominated.) A brief nomination letter and a copy of the article or chapter should be sent to each selection committee member at the e-mail address below.

The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2017.

Committee

Amy Binder, Chair, University of California, San Diego, abinder@ucsd.edu

Sandra Levitsky, University of Michigan, slevitsk@umich.edu

Nina Eliasoph, University of Southern California, eliasoph@usc.edu

Carly Elizabeth Schall, IUPUI, cschall@iupui.edu

Political Sociology Section Best Graduate Student Paper Award

Deadline: 3/15/2017

This award is offered annually for the best graduate student paper in political sociology. Persons who were graduate students at any time during calendar year 2016 are invited to submit published or unpublished papers for this award. To be eligible, papers must be either single authored or co-authored by two or more graduate students. Articles co-authored (and/or subsequently published jointly) by a faculty and a student are not eligible. Please note that each author may have only one article nominated. A brief nomination letter and a copy of the article or chapter should be sent to each selection committee member at the e-mail addresses below. The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2017.

Committee

G. Cristina Mora, Chair, University of California, Berkeley, gcristinamora2@gmail.com

Jennifer Hsu, University of Alberta, jhsu@ualberta.ca

Bin Xu, Emory University, bin.xu@emory.edu

Cristina Lacomba, Harvard University, cristina_fernandez-gutierrez@gse.harvard.edu