Colloquia
Sociology Department Colloquium Series
Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
MONDAYS, 2:00 - 3:30 PM
[unless otherwise noted]
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Economy & Society Initiative.
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Engaging for IMPACT: Evaluating Innovations in Democratic Reform:
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Abstract:
How wildfire drives inequalities in the built environment
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Abstract: The #1 use case of generative AI in 2025 was for therapy and companionship, with tens of millions monthly users. Many who use AI companions say they seek to avoid shame, judgment, conflict, or simply that they don’t want to be a “burden” on others. The emotional trouble that we might call “relational friction” leads them to pursue AI as a technological exit option. We need to know more about relational friction between human beings to understand what is at stake in these trends. Existing research in education and design argues there is “productive” and “unproductive friction,” depending on whether tensions lead to openness and learning or to people turning away from challenge.
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Abstract: The talk is based on Bandelj’s new book, which examines how we turned children into financial and emotional investments and child-rearing into laborious work. At the turn of the twentieth century, children went from being economically useful, often working to support families, to being seen by their parents as vulnerable and emotionally priceless. In the new millennium, however, parents have become overinvested in the emotional economy of parenting. Analyzing in-depth interviews with parents, national financial datasets, and decades of child-rearing books reveals how parents today spend, save, and even go into debt for the sake of children. They take on parenting as the hardest but most important job and commit their entire selves to being a good parent. The economization and emotionalization of society work together to drive parental overinvestment, offering a dizzying array of products and platforms to turn children into human capital—from financial instruments to extracurricular programs to therapeutic parenting advice.
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
The years 1872-1928 were formative in American, and indeed global, history. They saw the consolidation of a gold standard order recognized by Karl Polanyi for its subordination of democratic demands to the dangerous fiction of self-regulating markets--alongside eerily familiar tendencies: repressive politics; jingoism, expansionism, and nativism; escalating inequality; big money campaigns; political and state-sponsored violence; and concentrated corporate power. The ensuing years dissolved into what Polanyi characterized as a near-collapse of Western civilization, following patterns recognized by WEB Du Bois as symptomatic of racial empire.
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Blumer Room - 402 Social Sciences Building
Faculty Panel featuring Professors: Marion Fourcade, Yan Long, Armando Millan, and Cihan Tugal. Moderation by Sociology PhD candidate Daniel Lobo.
This event is organized by the Graduate Student Association for Admitted Students during the 2026 visit weekend.