Note: This is a post about why I am voting in favor of the ASA resolution sponsored by the Sociologists for Palestine. My son is a year and a half old. He started talking a little bit late – not abnormally so, but just on the later side. As a result of that, and the usual parenting anxiety, we tracked his first words very carefully. The list grew – slowly, and then quickly. After he hit the phase where he was able to copy words pretty well, we switched to listening for sentences. So, I know that in mid-March 2024, he said his first full sentence: “where dada?” Not long after he said those word ..read more

Last year, I had the honor of chairing two article award committees for ASA: the Granovetter Award for the Economic Sociology Section and the Junior Theorist Award for the Theory Section. Both committees ended up similar processes that worked fairly well, so I thought I would share a brief description in case it’s helpful to any future award committee chairs taking on the task for the first time. The context of these awards is that individuals (mostly) self-nominate papers, and a committee of ~4 scholars reads them and pick 1-2 winners and 0-2 honorable mentions (roughly, rules vary by section ..read more

Christina Cross, an Assistant Professor of Sociology, was recently subject to bad faith accusations of plagiarism by Christopher “incite a moral panic over Critical Race Theory” Rufo. Rufo leveraged similar allegations against Claudine Gay into forcing her resignation. Cross’s alleged plagiarism involves similar text to other articles… in the boilerplate description of large, commonly-used survey datasets like the PSID. Harvard Crimson discusses the story here. The American Sociological Association has issued a response, reproduced in full below because I could only find it as a pdf linked fro ..read more

The Strada Education Foundation released last week a major report, “Talent Disrupted,” on college graduates and underemployment. Trumpeted by the Wall Street Journal as demonstrating the importance of majors and internships, the large-dataset study claims to show that majoring in useful things like health sciences and quantitative-heavy subjects, along with having an internship, are the ways to avoid underemployment after college. It is a big study, and thoughtfully done. It’s commendable for including data for colleges across the spectrum of American higher ed, which is extremely heterogeneou ..read more

SUBMIT YOUR PRÉCIS HERE SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 22nd, 11:59pm Eastern Time The 18th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS) is now open to new submissions. The JTS is a conference featuring the work of emerging sociologists engaged in theoretical work, broadly defined. Sponsored in part by the Theory Section of the ASA, the conference has provided a platform for the work of early-career sociologists since 2005. We especially welcome submissions that broaden the practice of theory beyond its traditional themes, topics, and disciplinary function. The symposium will be held a ..read more

The following is a guest post by Musa al-Gharbi. In recent weeks, there has been significant turmoil around the journal Theory and Society. The previous editorial board has resigned en masse. A new set of lead editors was brought in. The journal is poised to relaunch with a new mission statement to accompany the new editorial board. I am one of the scholars who joined that board. While reading about the controversy around the journal in recent days, I encountered Dan Hirschman’s post on scatterplot that included a handful of questions he’d like to have the new editorial board members answer. I ..read more

The following is a press release from Springer, the publisher of Theory & Society. It was written for Retraction Watch (which is covering the story) and also shared with me. We thank all the previous editors of the journal and respect their decision to resign from the journal, and as such we do not wish to enter into protracted public discussions regarding this matter. We have spent a number of years assessing the journal, including the authors’ experience of the journal, and considering whether its scope reflects changes in the discipline.  Feedback from researchers suggested that th ..read more

The following is a guest post by Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra. What do market incentives do to the structure and content of knowledge? Over the past few years, I have reflected on this question in various ways, both personally and professionally. Sometimes, they alter the distribution of power within our organizations. Sometimes, they indirectly shape the course of our careers. Sometimes they alter the mechanics of how knowledge is produced and disseminated. This last path is particularly relevant today, as editorial infrastructures fall under the increasing control of a small number of for-profit ..read more

Late last month, the senior editors of the journal Theory & Society announced their collective resignation. Springer, which owns the journal, had decided to replace the existing editor-in-chief and take the journal in a new direction without consulting the existing editorial team. These resignations were soon followed (on January 4th) by the resignations of the rest of the editorial board (the corresponding editors). The full text of both resignation letters is below. The new editors-in-chief were then announced and recently posted a statement of goals which might be politely described as ..read more

ASA 2023 has been a good meeting (thus far at least)! A well-attended session on the future of democracy featured Melissa Murray and Louise Seamster (ably moderated by Scatterplot’s own Dan Hirschmann). The conversation was great, and I learned quite a bit from both of the scholars. Recent court decisions by SCOTUS and the lower courts really do threaten democratic representation, and the talks explained just how these decisions are at once dangerous and ungrounded. Similar for other institutional questions, e.g., egregious gerrymandering. That said, the panel raised a couple of issues I thoug ..read more