American Sociological Association
Ernesto Castaneda
"Immigrant Political Voice in a Comparative Perspective"
Abstract: Why are Muslim immigrants in Europe commonly perceived as contentious, while
Latino immigrants in the United States are often perceived as passive? What
explains these different perceptions? This project uses surveys and multi-sited
ethnography to study the avenues for political voice and integration of
immigrants. It takes into account the role of the sending community in individual
meaning-making, as well as the socialization and institutional practices of the
receiving community. The transnational circuit of Mexico- New York is compared
with those of North Africa-Paris, and Morocco-Barcelona. The results point to
the importance of the state in creating perceptions of belonging and exclusion and
how they get translated into different forms of contentious politics and everyday
citizenship.
ASA Annual Meeting, Mini-Conference: Comparing Past and Present.
Saturday, August 8, 4:30 p.m. - 6:10 p.m.
Hilton San Francisco
Nancy Davenport
"Learning to Doctor In Vivo: Narrative Templates and the Creation of Patient Stories"
Abstract: What allows doctors to see patients so briefly and yet to know so much about them, to diagnose them and treat them and discharge them under such time constraints? In this piece, I argue that medical residents create diagnostic stories that answer the question, What’s going on with this patient? They do not build these stories from scratch. The stories that residents tell of a patient-with-illness are built on narrative templates, an accumulation of knowledge of different “kinds” of patients, illnesses, and situations. They provide the preliminary structure, the warp and weft, for building a patient story that holds together long enough to diagnose, treat, and discharge the patient. In a process that is routine, habitual, and iterative, narrative templates suggest lines of questioning that describe what a disease is likely to be. These curtail what information is relevant to the patient’s story, a relevance that is revised as the physician begins to settle on a story. Physicians build patient stories from multiple templates—the diabetic who is a “poor historian” and is starting to have memory problems—that constrain further the storylines available to the physician.
ASA Annual Meeting, Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session: Patients Meet Providers: Fifty Years of Medical Sociology-Contributions and New Directions.
Sunday, August 9, 8:30 a.m. - 10:10 a.m.
Parc 55 Hotel
Daniel Fridman
"From Rats to Riches: Game Playing and the Production of the Capitalist Self"
Abstract: This article examines Cashflow, a board game that readers of best-seller financial success books play in order to learn the basics of investing and to enhance their financial skills. Cashflow is a fictitious market, in which players simulate buying and selling assets with the ultimate goal of becoming `financially free.´ Based on participant observation of clubs in the United States and Argentina , and drawing on Michel Callon´s concept of performativity, the article focuses on four topics. First, the role of the game in establishing ideological definitions of what it means to be rich. Second, the development of calculative tools. Third, players´ work on the self, through which they explore what may be fostering or limiting their chances of financial success. Finally, the work done by players to fit the game with reality.
ASA Annual Meeting, Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session: What's New at the Intersection of Culture and the Economy?
Monday, August 10, 8:30 a.m. - 10:10 a.m.
Hilton San Francisco
Li-Wen Lin
"Corporate Governance Perspectives on Stratification and Inequality"
Abstract: A large number of studies in sociology have identified many organizational attributes that have profound impact on opportunity, mobility, and inequality within and across firms, including organizational size, growth rate, demography, unionization, and technology. This paper examines an important but generally ignored cluster of organizational attributes – corporate governance features. This paper reviews three linkages (ownership structures, executive and managerial compensation, and board compositions) between corporate governance and stratification.
ASA Annual Meeting, Table 2: International Sociology
Monday, August 10, 8:30 a.m. - 10:10 a.m.
Hilton San Francisco
Dan Navon
"Embracing Victimhood: Zionist national identity and Holocaust memory transformed in 1967 Israel and the US"
Abstract: Approaching identity as a diachronous phenomenon partly constituted by narratives allows us to see the role of relational structures and path dependency in national and political identity change. While previous work on national identity change has focused primarily on the maneuverings of political entrepreneurs, I also attend to the shifting relations of ‘narrative-identities’ and the way that political entrepreneurs also adapt to narrative conditions that are not of their own choosing or making and whose dynamics and reverberations they cannot easily control. Examining the impact of the war of June 1967 on Israeli-Zionist and American-Jewish identity by recourse to ministers’ Holocaust commemoration speeches, media, organizational records and other materials reveals that the previously divergent narrative-identities of Israeli and American Jews became, through a path dependent process inaugurated in May 1967, subject to a powerful isomorphism centered on the Holocaust, victimhood and Israel . This remarkable shift was made possible, despite the apparent absence of prior political entrepreneurialism towards it, by the anomalous foundational structure of Zionism as a form of nationalism in Anderson ’s sense of an imagined community. The relational structures engendered by this partial unification of national identities helped ensure the resiliency of the new narrative-identity, with important socio-political consequences.
ASA Annual Meeting, Regular Session: Nations/Nationalism
Sunday, August 9, 2:30 p.m. - 4:10 p.m.
Parc 55 Hotel
Natasha Rossi
"Sociologists Barred from the Courtroom: The Use of Social Science Evidence in U.S. Federal Courts, 1945-2004" Abstract: The U.S. Federal Courts have a long history of employing social scientific reasoning, but it was not until the Supreme Court landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that such evidence had its sources cited, which has become standard practice today. Yet despite such achievements, most socio-legal research to date consists of qualitative assessments of the use of social science evidence in the Supreme Court. In contrast, the current paper is a quantitative assessment of the extent to which social science evidence has penetrated the lower federal courts from 1945-2004. The LexisNexis database was used to identify federal court cases citing social scientific expertise (from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology and political science) in nine areas of law (corporate, criminal, education, environmental, family, health, international, labor, and public health and welfare). Psychological evidence was found to be the most dominant of all other disciplines, except for economic evidence in corporate law. The penetration of sociological, anthropological and political science evidence was close to zero. It is argued that psychological evidence prevails as it is by nature better suited to questions of adjudication than that of the other disciplines. Special attention is given to the non-use of sociological evidence.
ASA Annual Meeting, Regular Session: Sociology of Law
Saturday, August 8, 8:30 a.m. -10:10 a.m.
Parc 55 Hotel
Harel Shapira
"The Making of a Border Town"
Abstract: By focusing on Arivaca, a rural community in Southern Arizona, this paper examines how the ongoing militarization of the United States / Mexico border is experienced at the local level. Examining local border politics offers a novel perspective on the transformations of globalization. While the tendency in such scholarship has been to equate globalization with the operation of international market forces and labor flows, the case of Arivaca shows that globalization also transforms communities through the mobilization of the state as an extensive security apparatus. However this project does not go uncontested, as local residents resist the changes taking place, experiencing what is happening as an assault on their freedom and privacy. Dominant narratives of immigration and globalization focus either on the economic impact of migrants or on issues of identity politics framed around themes language, culture, and assimilation. However, in Arivaca the politics of globalization revolve around residents’ complex relationship to the Border Patrol and the broader apparatus of the state. By examining these dynamics, the border, rather than a static object, can be seen as ongoing project, neither a historical nor definitive, in which stopping illegal immigrants and controlling local residents are co-constitutive aspects.
ASA Annual Meeting, Roundtable on Latin American Politics and Border Studies
Monday, August 10, 10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Parc 55 Hotel
Eun Shin
"Competing Norms in the Worldwide Diffusion of Legal Abortion and Their Effects on Abortion Rates"
Abstract: This study explores the legal abortion among 196 countries to examine the dynamics of legalization and its effects on abortion rates. In this article, we argue that the adaptation of legal abortion is affected not only by domestic environments but also by international norms, namely population control regime and women’s reproductive right regime. We hypothesize these two competing cultural norms equally increase the probability of adopting legal abortion policy in the countries, but differently affect the national abortion rates through contrastive policy practices and ideology. To test this hypothesis, we will conduct two analyses using the data of the year of adopting legal abortion among 196 countries and the abortion ratio of 56 countries which legalize all abortion without restriction.
ASA Annual Meeting, Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology
Tuesday, August 11, 8:30 a.m. - 10:10 a.m.
Hilton San Francisco
Matthias Thiemann
"Janus-faced States and Ambiguous Assets: The Case of US Mortgage Debt"
Abstract: Debt creation has been at the center of the finance-led growth regime that came to an end in 2008. This paper investigates the role of the U.S.-state in the increasing prevalence of indebtedness of its citizens. Using an IPE perspective, the paper focuses on the role of the state in channeling international capital into mortgage debt, given the prominence of government sponsored enterprises in its expansion. In its ambivalent relationship to these federal mortgage banks, the U.S.-government pursued socio-economic goals connected to home ownership through private capital, while keeping the debt incurred by the banks off the budget-balance. The ambiguity surrounding the debt of these banks made it highly attractive to foreign investors, allowing the US to substitute international capital for public expenses. The paper argues that a focus on state-action in the monetary circuit allows us to better understand how certain states benefitted from the ascendance of finance.
ASA Annual Meeting, Table 6: The Role of States & Different Types of Capital in Organizing National Economic Activity Unit, Sub Unit: Section on Political Economy of the World System, Roundtable Session
Saturday, August 8, 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Hilton San Francisco
Anna Zamora
"The Legitimacy of the New: Contemporary Art Museums and Their Practices"
Abstract: What legitimates the implementation of new practices in contemporary art museums? Building upon Boltanski and Thevenolt’s work (1999), this paper analyzes the arguments of museum professionals, artists, and audiences participating in the Warm Up Series at the PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York . Interview data reveal three main claims legitimizing new museum practices, namely: a) the distance between the new and the old art museum, b) the satisfaction of the audience, and c) the authenticity of contemporary artists and works. Overall, the study of how contemporary art museums justify themselves as well as their practices reveals the strategies for organizations to legitimate the new.
ASA Annual Meeting, Section on Sociology of Culture, Table 6: Legitimacy and Legitimizing Aesthetic Practices
Sunday, August 9, 8.30 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Hilton San Francisco
Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics
Dennis Bogusz
"Corporate Governance or Corporate Governments? Voluntary Firm Practices on Paths to Regulation"
Abstract: Several voluntary corporate governance practices originating in the United States during the 1980s have since become the “gold standard” of publicly traded firms. The adoption of these practices by firms in various capital markets precedes institutional change in the capital markets, specifically securities laws and stock market rules. An interesting tension arises when some voluntary practices precede this institutional change while others remain voluntary. Estimates from a heterogeneous diffusion model indicate the likelihood of adoption of voluntary practices by publicly traded banks in China, France, Germany and the United States given firm-level characteristics and the influence of early adopters on others. Convergence in both organizational behavior and capital market institutions is evident, implicating regulatory policy, firm strategy, and future research on voluntary rules of firm control.
SASE Conference, Markets, Firms & Institutions Panel
Saturday, July 18, 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Paris , 56 rue des Saints-Pères: Salle 407
Elena Krumova
"Temporary Organizations as Dual Experiments: The Case of a Regional Planning Project on the Black Sea Coast"
Abstract: Temporary organizations, or projects, are increasingly adopted as the proper unit of economic action, and hence analysis, in the literature on knowledge governance and innovation in both new and traditional industries. Most of the innovation that takes place in these studies is developed incrementally through recombining knowledge from different corners of the industry. What is missing from such accounts is the possibility for a radical change in organizing patterns, i.e. to major innovation that leads to the creation of entire new fields of opportunities. Drawing on evidence from a two-year case study of a regional planning project on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, this paper makes the argument that such innovations could happen through public policy planning projects. Such projects are high in ambiguity and complexity, as they bring together different organizations from different sectors with often clashing values and evaluation criteria. Innovation can happen when the tensions and ambiguities inherent in such projects find ways to resolve themselves through a dual experiment in both deliberative democracy and market-making. Both components to this experiment are necessary conditions to the possibility of innovation. As the case shows, the project had to find open spaces where such experimentation was possible in order to present an alternative to the patterns of over-development, mass tourism, and down-spiraling price competition on the coast. Thus, collaborative economic action, when expanded to take into account actors beyond firms, can be seen as capable of introducing a shift in organizing patterns.
SASE Conference, Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Panel: Innovation, Networks and Clusters (III)
Saturday, July 18, 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Paris, 13 rue de l'Université: S-10
Olivia Nicol
"A crisis without responsibility"
Abstract: In the United States, the current financial crisis appears as a system without actors at all levels: governors of major public institutions, CEOs of major banks, financial actors all blame the nebulous for the breakdown of the economy. Nevertheless, the search for responsibilities in the crisis, present in the academic debate from the beginning, has recently appeared in mass media. The bailout, implying a direct involvement of taxpayers, has redefined the terms of the public debate. What we see emerging is a competition over the crystallization of a narrative of the crisis. The evolution of the narrative of the crisis reveals the tension between the actors at play, notably Main Street and Wall Street.
In my paper I will specify the dynamics of the phenomenon through *interviews* with financial workers of Wall Street. The interviews that I have conducted up to now reveal that financial workers dodge all responsibility; they consider that putting the blame on Wall Street is a populist attitude. Instead, they blame Main Street, mortgage brokers, and politicians for the current crisis. Nevertheless, their discourse is very ambiguous, because they also admit past excesses in financial institutions. This ambiguity is likely to be revealing of a narrative still under construction, one where the image of the banker is at stake.
SASE Conference, Giving Accounts of Crisis and Responsibility
Friday, July 17, 1:45 p.m.
Paris, 13 rue de l'Université: S-07
Rajiv Nunna
"Financial Regulation and the Savings and Loan Thrift Crisis: A Socio-Legal Analysis of Monetary Disorder"
Abstract: The roots of the current crisis in housing and credit can be traced to a historical transition in the primary business of U.S. financial institutions – from ‘bank-based’ (originate and hold) to ‘market-based’ (originate and distribute) forms of debt creation – that was in part a historical consequence of the piecemeal dismantling of Depression-era regulations. Drafted partially as a response to an insolvency crisis of the Savings and Loan thrift banking-system, the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA) of 1980 and the Alternative Mortgage Parity Transactions Act (AMPTA) of 1982 would for the first time bring into being a nationally integrated and privatized market in subprime lending within the United States . What was a virtually non-existent market accounting for approximately 1.4% of all home loans originated in 1983 would in the following decades expand its share exponentially to almost 20% by 2005. Equally, if not more significant, would be the rise of thinly capitalized and unevenly regulated non-depository lending institutions whose annual share of these mortgage originations would soar from 0.5% in 1979 to 56.7% in 2006. In order to grasp the legal-institutional origins of a securitized subprime lending market that began to unravel in the wake of Bear Stearns’ hedge fund implosion in March 2007, this paper argues that a historical analysis of the DIDMCA and AMPTA – as well as the Great Inflation of the 1970s which precipitated it – is absolutely essential.
SASE Conference, The Conventions behind the Crisis of Neo-Liberal Capitalism
Friday, July 17, 3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Paris, 13 rue de l'Université: S-13
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