liability shedding as the complement of opportunity hoarding

Sociologists of inequality have long been interested in “opportunity hoarding.” The basic idea, attributed to Tilly’s book Durable Inequality, is that groups who have resources typically try to exclude others from accessing those resources. As Diamond and Lewis define it in a recent article, citing Tilly:

In contrast to exploitation, opportunity hoarding occurs when “members of a categorically bounded network acquire access to a resource that is valuable, renewable, subject to monopoly” and exclude other groups from access to it (Tilly, 1999: p. 10). While exploitation is the purview of elite actors, opportunity hoarding is typically practiced by a wide range of actors who attempt to secure their relatively privileged social position through monopolizing scarce resources.

We can see opportunity hoarding in, for example, the heavy reliance on network hiring when coupled with racially homogenous social networks. This kind of mechanism informs DiTomaso’s argument that “favoritism or advantages that whites provide to other whites that is the primary mechanism by which racial inequality is reproduced in the post-civil rights period in the U.S.”

In line with these scholars, I agree opportunity hoarding is a tremendously useful framework for understanding the production and reproduction of durable, categorical (group-based) inequalities. But, I think that the focus on the hoarding of opportunities may have led scholars to downplay or miss an important complement: the shedding of liabilities. If opportunity hoarding is about controlling access to valuable resources, liability shedding is about the capacity for a group to avoid exposures to claims on group resources and other potential collective risks.

citizenship as legitimized racism

Over at Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram argues that the root of the problems exposed in this week’s reelection of Donald Trump is nationalism:

“The underlying problem is nationalism and the organization of the world into nation states, a form of organization that fosters and promotes nationalist sentiment and attachment and downplays transnational concern and solidarity”

I agree. It’s not the only problem (I don’t think we can, for example, reduce misogyny to questions of nationalism even as gender and sexism clearly shaped citizenship both historically and in the present, see e.g. Glenn’s Unequal Freedom). But it’s certainly one of the roots. Americans are socialized to treat non-Americans as less-than and other, and that is the underlying premise on which conversations around topics like immigration, foreign aid, climate change, national security, and more are premised. And the same is true for those in other nations socialized into a similar model of citizenship. I’m not a moral philosopher, but the whole thing strikes me as fundamentally immoral and basically unjustifiable.

Beyond being generically immoral to divide the world around citizenship, in the case of American citizenship (and probably many others), it’s also racist.

qualitative standards, heated arguments

Late last week, sociologist Justin Pickett opened a debate on X: “We need more attention to selection bias in qualitative research.” The reason: his critique of a Social Problems article by sociologist Uriel Serrano. Pickett, a full professor, argued that Serrano, a postdoc, had made a methodological error by not sufficiently emphasizing that his interview and focus group participants were all selected from among members of a single organization:

…while completing three years of participant observations with the Brothers Sons Selves Coalition (BSS). BSS is a community-based educational space that engages young men and masculine-identified youth in abolitionist organizing, political education, healing programming, and youth participatory action research.

Because of this lack of attention, Pickett argues that the article’s conclusions could be the result of that organization’s work and not of the pattern the article claims: “carceral seepage articulates the scale and pacing of policing in the lives
of young people of color,” as an answer to the research question: “how does witnessing and experiencing everyday policing shape the racialized emotions of racially minoritized young people?”

Sociology Convention Advice

It’s been a long time since we’ve shared advice about surviving the ASA convention, and maybe the advice has changed in recent years. Last year, too late to help, I saw worries people expressed about getting along at the convention, so I thought I’d start a thread for advice. Please add your advice and share this around different social media platforms. Here are answers to FAQs I saw last year. You will note that none of these are about how to do a good presentation.

1. Section business meetings are often good places to run into people in your area. This is definitely true at the CBSM business meeting. In my experience other sections vary, some are friendly and sociable, while nobody bothers to go to the meetings of others.
2. Off-site receptions hosted by ASA sections or other ASA groups are not “private” events any more than the receptions held in the convention center. If you are a member of a section, you are definitely welcome at that reception no matter where it is held. Receptions are held off site because the costs of a reception at a convention center or convention hotel is typically outrageous, like $40 for a bowl of chips. Groups get more and better food cheaper at a restaurant. You are welcome as a first year grad or an unemployed sociologist or whatever.
3. There is a time-honored tradition of crashing the receptions for groups you are not a member of. There are some ticketed events that people pay in advance for that are fundraisers, like the Minority Fellows program reception, that you cannot crash. But all the section receptions are open to anyone who shows up, and many receptions are jointly held by multiple sections whose members do not know each other. As long as you behave nicely and avoid acting like a drunken or otherwise offensive a** can go to any of these openly publicized events.
4. Receptions may or may not be good places to meet people. Don’t expect deep intellectual conversations over appetizers and drinks. If you are outgoing, just try to strike up conversations with people around you using your normal social skills. If you are, like me, more introverted and less good at small talk, the trick is to put on an act, act like you are comfortable and not worried about whether you know anybody. Find a place to sit or stand, make eye contact and say hi to the people around you, and respond if a more outgoing person tries to start a conversation. If you encounter “famous person” it is OK to say “oh, I’m excited to meet you, I’ve read your work.” It is, however, rude to then launch into a 10 minute criticism of their work. (No kidding, this actually happened to me at a reception at about 11 pm, 2 grad students–guess their genders–accosted me and wanted me to listen appreciatively while they told me what was wrong with my work.)
5. The person you try to talk to (famous or otherwise) may or may not respond to your conversational initiatives. Don’t take it personally if they don’t, just move on. Your own conversational initiatives can include asking their opinion of the conference or a panel or the convention city, you can certainly give the 30 second version of what you are working on (but avoid the 10 minute version as an opening gambit).
6. “This is more a comment than a question” is a standing joke. Trying to get noticed at someone else’s panel by giving an extended description of your own research just makes other people laugh at you. A short statement of the form “this session is so exciting, I am working on similar issues, here is an interesting question” and then trying to connect with people later to ask for their paper and offer your own goes over much better as colleagueship.
7. Advice about eating more cheaply at conventions. I usually find a grocery store near the hotel and have food in my room for meals I’m not sharing with others. There are also inexpensive food courts and sandwich type places where you can get food in most hotel districts (including near the convention center in Montreal). If you are flexible about what you eat, it is possible to get food by cruising receptions. There is typically lots of food at the opening night reception and at the reception after the presidential address. Section receptions vary in food quality and it is not uncommon to hear people passing the word about where the reception food is good. However, reception cruising is obviously easier when the receptions are near each other, and harder when they are scattered all around the city, as it seems like they will be in Montreal.
8. Although in my experience many senior people are generous about paying for meals for other people, there is another group of predatory diners (many quite affluent) who will order expensive food in a group and then at the end just say “let’s just split the check,” thus wrecking the budget of the low income person who ordered something cheap to keep their costs down. This is a warning. It is not easy to deal with this without “looking bad” to the predators, but I suggest that if you are worried about being stuck like this that you speak up right at the beginning and tell the wait staff and the table that you’d like a separate check.

malpractice or best practice? the fight over “rigor” in criminal justice reform

The following is a guest post by Jonathan Ben-Menachem.

Two criminal justice reform heavyweights are trading blows over a seemingly arcane subject: research methods. In a tweet, Jennifer Doleac, Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice at Arnold Ventures, accused the Vera Institute of Justice of “research malpractice” for their evaluation of New York college-in-prison programs. In a response posted on Vera’s website, President Nick Turner accused Doleac of “giving comfort to the opponents of reform.” 

introducing theory and social inquiry

The below is a letter from the editorial board of a new journal, Theory and Social Inquiry. Here is the statement in its original PDF form. While I had no hand in this, I wholly endorse the endeavor.

“where dada?”

Note: This is a post about why I am voting in favor of the ASA resolution sponsored by the Sociologists for Palestine.

how to run an article award committee

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.

asa defense of christina cross

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 from the site formerly known as Twitter and I thought folks might want to be able to link the text to a stable URL not requiring a login.

college and underemployment

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.

statements from the asa theory section council on t&s editorial changes

The ASA Theory Section Council just released two statements on the editorial changes at the journal Theory and Society. The first statement responds to the new editors’ statement of goals and addresses inclusivity and pluralism in social theory. The second addresses editorial independence and Springer’s handling of the editorial transition. The two statements are reproduced in full below.

2024 junior theorists symposium call for papers

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.

guest post: some reflections on theory and society

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 admire Hirschman and his work, and I think the questions are reasonable, and they present a good opportunity to reflect on the direction of the journal and the field more broadly – so I fired off some responses below.

Although it will probably be obvious as people read this, I should say at the outset that I did not consult at all with Springer, the new lead editors, or other members of the new editorial board in answering these questions. I’m speaking for and as myself alone and can’t speak meaningfully about how representative my answers are with respect to the rest of the board or other stakeholders.

guest post: springer nature response on t&s

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.

they work hard for the money

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 publishers.

This is what, I believe, sits at the crux of the recent changes to Theory & Society, a storied journal that offered a visible and respected venue for social theory.