This episode we speak with Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen, the dynamic duo behind our very own website, The Society Pages. Big things are happening at TSP and Chris and Doug are here to give us the scoop on the new features on the way in the coming weeks and months, such as The Reading List, more Special Features, and our exciting new collaboration with W.W. Norton.
This week we talk with Bartholomew Ryan from the Walker Art Center and co-curator of the Baby Marx exhibition. We chat about what happens when you combine social theorists, puppetry, and a trip to Occupy Wall Street.
This week we talk with Gary Alan Fine. We discuss his recent article in Contexts, Uncertain Knowledge, on how rumors shape our world and explain why some people still think we have a Kenyan President.
Today we talk with Joe Soss, author of the forthcoming book, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race, co-authored with Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram. Soss traces the major changes and continuities in welfare provision and poverty governance in the United States over the past 40 years, and the racial, political, and economic factors in creating these policies.
This week we talk with Corey Shdaimah, author of Negotiating Justice: Progressive Lawyering, Low-Income Clients, and the Quest for Social Change. Shdaimah examines how the themes central to progressive lawyering—autonomy, collaboration, transformation, and social change—look on the ground, in the legal services office. We discuss the ethnographic methods she used for this research, and how lawyers and clients navigate their relationships with one another.
This week we talk with Elijah Anderson, author of The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. With urban ethnographies like Streetwise, A Place on the Corner, and Code of the Street, Anderson has captured the racial micropolitics that occurs in everyday urban life, highlighting the subtle rules and norms that guide interaction between whites, African Americans, and members of other ethnic groups. In his new book, Anderson returns to familiar territory, though this time he calls attention to parts of the city where more inclusive street behaviors are taking form. “Cosmopolitan canopies” are unique urban spaces that have a street culture that celebrates civility and mutual respect for difference, and Anderson argues they contribute to a broader cultural acceptance around race and diversity.
Sorry, we had to remove this episode. Watch this post for a replacement in the future.
This episode on Office Hours, we talk with Megan Comfort about her book, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. The book is the outcome of her ethnographic research at San Quentin Prison, studying how intimate relationships are sustained while male partners are incarcerated.
This episode we talk with Monte Bute, a backstage sociologist at Metropolitan State University. Last year, Monte was diagnosed with stage three pulmonary lymphoma. Rather than retreating quietly, however, Monte has turned his illness into a learning experience for students (he’s continued to teach) and into an opportunity to revisit some of the core questions of the human experience. We talk about the effect of Durkheim on sociology’s impoverished understanding of dying, and the ways in which literature and the humanities do a better job of grasping the existential realities of dying. Other topics include Monte’s Facebook page, his take on the Minnesota state shutdown, and why Monte has changed his opinion on Tuesdays with Morrie (following up on his discussion with John Hines).
This episode we speak with Tom Stone, the documentary photographer behind the evocative images featured in Mark Rank’s Spring 2011 feature Rethinking American Poverty. The photos are drawn from Stone’s “American Outsiders” series, which you can view online at tomstonegallery.com/art or on flickr.
This week on Office Hours: Annette Lareau, who was at the University of Minnesota a few weeks back to give a talk at the Sociology Department’s annual Sociological Research Institute. While Lareau was in town, we had a chance to chat with her about her current research on how parents decide where to live and where to send their kids to school, and on the success of her bestselling book, Unequal Childhoods, as well as giving us a preview of the forthcoming second edition.