Colloquia

  A Permanent Punishment for the Poor In this presentation I discuss the criminal sentencing practice of monetary sanctions, which are now regularly imposed to people convicted of felonies across the United States.  I present data from a mixed-method study in Washington State to illustrate the “punishment continuum,” i.e., variations in the assessment and monitoring of fiscal sentences within the state.  I highlight the role of contemporary criminal justice bureaucrats and of American values in the assessment and application of legal policy. From this analysis, we see how the system of monetary sanctions is a mechanism used to require offenders to express their remorse and accountability for their offending.  And, if one is unable to make sufficient or regular payments, monetary sanctions serve as a permanent punishment with dramatic consequences for individuals’ emotions, re-entry into their communities, and future life chances.  

  Monday, October 26, 2-3:30pm in 402 Barrows   Anthropology at War: Robert H. Lowie and the Transformation of the Culture Concept, 1904-1954

  Monday, October 19, 2-3:30pm in 420 Barrows Hall Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

  Monday, October 12 from 2-3:30 in Barrows 402 The Rise of China in the Global Arts Market

    Hackathons and the Making of Entrepreneurial Citizenship This talk focuses on how valorized forms of work become models of citizenship. Today, the halls of TED and Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, and crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, and education alike. I will examine these claims ethnographically and historically with an eye towards the kinds of social orders these practices rely on and produce. I focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site of social practice where techniques and work processes from information technology production become ways of remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce technologies; they always, however, produce subjects. This paper argues that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient towards Silicon Valley for models of social change. Such optimistic, high-velocity practice aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference.

  2:00-3:30pm, ​Monday, September 28 in Barrows 402 Sociology in the age of social media The World Wide Web is about four graduate student completion cycles old; blogging as a self-conscious activity is about three cycles old; widespread Facebook and Twitter use, about one and a half cycles old. What sort of public face has Sociology had during each of these phases of social media use? And where is it going to go in the future? I informally review developments and find that while Sociologists have been relatively late to each party, there are good reasons for optimism. I argue that Sociologists generally (a) overestimate the need for complexity in public interventions, as well as the public’s tolerance for High Seriousness, and (b) underestimate the strong public demand for what might seem—from a “professional” point of view—quite straightforward social-scientific concepts, data, or knowledge generally.

  What is to be Sustained? Exploring the Promises and Pitfalls of Urban Sustainability

  Neoliberal Abortion One of the more puzzling political shifts in recent years is the movement of conservative thought and political action in the direction of opposition to contraception and abortion.  Until recently, the Republican Party was the standard-bearer for expansion of these rights (President George H.W. Bush was such an enthusiastic supporter of contraception as a Congressman that he was known as “Rubbers” Bush.)  The presentation, a chapter from a forthcoming book, unpacks this political sea change as a way of exploring changes in the larger political and social culture of American society. ______________________________________________________________________________________

THE STRANGE CAREER OF RACISM IN POST-RACIAL TIMES: Observations on Race in America and in the Academy The “end of racism” has been advertised for years, yet, like Freddy Krugger, racism refuses to die. In this talk, I discuss how racism operates in post-racial America. To do so, I address four things. First, I will suggest that we cannot examine “Freddy” adequately because we keep thinking he is just about hate and prejudice. Second, I will discuss the structure and culture of racism in post-racial times by referencing my work on the “new racism” and “color-blind racism.” Third, I will discuss how race matters in the academy particularly in our own sociological houses.  Lastly, I will offer some suggestions on what is to be done if we wish to end racial domination once and for all in the country and in the academy.

  Network Effects on Behavior: How Do Mechanisms Matter? Filiz Garip (with Paul DiMaggio) Social scientists have long established that individuals’ behaviors are influenced by those of their network peers in many social domains. Recent work has also shown such network effects can exacerbate inequality in a behavior if networks are homophilous with respect to attributes that influence the adoption of that behavior. To extend this work, we first identify six distinct mechanisms that can underlie network effects: (i) simple contagion, (ii) social facilitation, (iiii) social observation, (iv) normative influence with or (v) without consensus, and (vi) network externalities. We then use an agent-based model to examine differences mechanisms make in (i) the level of overall adoption, and (ii) the level of intergroup inequality under different scenarios of network homophily.