Category Archives: Blog

Call for Papers: Non-union class struggles from below

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ISA session being organized — “Non-union class struggles from below” — Session of the ISA World Congress of Sociology, July 2018, Toronto. Organized by Marcel Paret (University of Utah and University of Johannesburg)

While many observers lament the declining significance and political power of organized labor, unions were never the only protagonists of resistance from below. Historical accounts include numerous examples of struggles by working classes and other economically marginalized groups. Similar examples of non-union resistance from below are rampant in the contemporary period of widespread economic insecurity. Groups that scholars consider to be especially “precarious” or even “surplus” to global capitalism – the unemployed, part-time and temporary workers, those eking out a living through “informal” activities, etc. – are prominent within these struggles. These struggles from below often connect economic demands to issues of citizenship, nationalism, and community.

This session will focus on class struggles from below, broadly defined but excluding struggles by capitalists and elites, that are taking place outside of formal union organizations. While maintaining emphasis on class-related demands and issues such as wages, land, and basic livelihood, relevant struggles may include significant or even dominant non-class dimensions (e.g. citizenship). Informal social networks, community-based organizations, political parties, or other non-union entities are also relevant. The goal is to highlight and contrast non-union class struggles in different parts of the globe, with attention to the influence of varying local, national, and regional contexts.

Relevant themes may include, but are not limited to:

  • protests and riots by the urban poor;
  • mobilization by, for, and against migrants;
  • struggles by indigenous groups;
  • class dimensions of nationalist movements;
  • Occupy-type movements against austerity and economic inequality;
  • middle class movements;
  • peasant movements and/or struggles against land dispossession;
  • organization by self-employed workers or independent contractors;
  • political party mobilization;
  • workplace resistance by non-unionized workers;
  • worker centers and other community-based worker organizations.

To submit a paper to this session, please go to the following link: https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Session10931.html. Click the “Submit an Abstract to this Session” button to upload your submission. You will need to create an account with ISA if you do not have one already.

This session will be organized as a roundtable, and is listed in the program under “RC44 Roundtable”. Please direct any questions to Marcel Paret at marcelparet@gmail.com.

New Job Posting – Boston College

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The Department of Sociology and the International Studies Program at Boston College invite applications for a tenure track assistant professor position. A successful candidate is one whose research, teaching, and advising are relevant to the consideration of global history, culture, and social structure, as well as to the social justice mission of the sociology department’s PhD program.  Scholars with expertise in any geographic area, or those who do transnational or international sociology, are invited to apply.  The tenure line will be located in the sociology department. The position, which begins in Fall 2018, entails half-time undergraduate teaching in International Studies and half-time graduate and undergraduate teaching in the Department of Sociology.  Preference will be given to entry-level applicants, but excellent candidates at the advanced Assistant Professor level will also be considered.

Applicants should apply at https://apply.interfolio.com/42892.  Required documents include a cover letter describing relevant research, teaching accomplishments, and plans; a current CV; two pieces of recent scholarship; and a list of three references that will provide letters of recommendation for applicants that are shortlisted. The screening committee will begin reviewing applications on September 1, 2017, and will continue to review them until the position is filled.

All inquiries should be sent to Andrew Jorgenson, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Chair of the Search Committee, at jorgenan@bc.edu.

Boston College is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other legally protected status. To learn more about how BC supports diversity and inclusion throughout the university please visit the Office for Institutional Diversity at http://www.bc.edu/offices/diversity.

Announcing the Winners of the 2017 Section Awards

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Please join us in congratulating the winners of our 2017 Section Awards! Many thanks to the members of our award committees, without whom none of this would be possible. The awards will be given at our business meeting, Monday, August 14 at 5:30pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Level 5, 517B.

Distinguished Article Award

Mayrl, Damon and Sarah Quinn. 2016. “Defining the State from Within: Boundaries, Schemas, and Associational Policymaking.” Sociological Theory 34(1): 1–26.

Graduate Student Paper Award
Arar, Rawan. Forthcoming. “International solidarity and ethnic boundaries: using the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to strengthen ethno-national claims in Northern Ireland.” Nations and Nationalism.

 

Distinguished Book Award (Co-Winners)

Vargas, Robert. 2016. Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio. Oxford University Press.

Zubrzycki, Geneviève. 2016. Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec. University of Chicago Press.

New Book Series: Princeton Series in Global and Comparative Sociology

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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.

Webinar on Critical Realism

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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.