Max Weber Institute for Sociology, Heidelberg University ~ CCS Faculty Fellow
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Yale University ~ CCS Junior Fellow
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University of Exeter
Abstract: This paper calls and makes the case for a Strong Program account of cultural representation. Such an account is intended as a corrective to the hegemony of Said-inspired understandings and studies of cultural representation, which blind sociology to the symbolic significance of the cultural other as a force for ‘social good’, for generating solidaristic forms of intra- and inter- relations and identities, challenging the interests of dominant institutions and the State, and driving progressive social and political change. To demonstrate these claims, the first part of the paper delineates the central concerns and theoretical structure of Said’s Orientalism, before turning to discuss the book’s wider significance for the development of the ‘Saidian Paradigm’, the dominant and paradigmatic approach to the study of cultural representation to develop in its wake. The second part of the paper demonstrates how Strong Program thinking and resources can be used and adapted to explain changes to the symbolic meanings and moral purification of collective representations of Italy and the Italians in England and Britain during the decades spanning approximately the 1820s to 1860s. The Italian case is a highly instructive one for demonstrating the capacity of Strong Program thinking to bring into view problematics, phenomena, and processes that remain scarcely conceived when viewed through the limiting lenses of Said-inspired studies of cultural representation. The paper concludes by reflecting on the gains that stand to be made from developing a Strong Program account of collective representations of the cultural other, an account capable of retaining the strengths, while going beyond the limitations of, Said-inspired understandings and studies of cultural representation.
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Yale University ~ Lecturer of Political Science and Sociology
Roots of Distrust: The Xylella Epidemic and the Crisis of Scientific Authority in Apulia
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Cardiff University
Destiny as a sociological category: Anxiety, obsession and the legacies of the Oedipal father in Baum and Appignanesi’s The New Man (2016)
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University of California, Santa Barbara
“How do you feel when you’re happy?”: Autism, socio-divergence, and the production of so-called “neurodivergent” difference in clinical spaces
Abstract: In recent years, the terms “neurodivergent” and neurobiological” have become increasingly popular ways to describe differences between autistic people and so-called “neurotypical” people. The intent is to communicate that autistic brains are not disordered, but simply wired differently, and that they are a naturally occurring form of human variation. While we agree that it is important to treat autism as difference rather than deficit, the terms neurodivergent and neurobiological nonetheless locate autistic challenges within individuals, rather than in the social interactional environments where such divergence is constructed. In this paper, we argue that autism, like other social identities, is a social fact assembled in interaction, where interactional trouble becomes the basis for attributions of neurological difference. To call attention to the irreducibly social dimension of autism, we introduce the terms “socio-typical” and “socio-divergent”, to emphasize the deviation from “commonsense” expectations that is constitutive of autism as a social phenomenon. Examining interactions between children and clinicians at a clinic specializing in autism diagnosis, we show how socio-divergent interactions are used as evidence of neurodivergence, such that co-produced atypical features of the interactions become the responsibility of the child alone. Furthermore, we argue that this process of individualizing autism is built into the Interaction Order of the clinic, which treats interactional trouble as accountable in terms of personal pathology. Finally, we discuss the implications of our social constructionist approach for the study of autism, identity, and the stigma that can arise when non-socio-typical ways of sensemaking are treated as signs of neurobiological disorder.
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Yale University ~ CCS Faculty Fellow
The Cultural Economy of Waste and the Fashion City: How Performances of Aesthetic Labor in Thrifting Generate Creative Capital for New York
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New York University
Interaction Ethology: Toward a Paradigm for Comparing Patterns of Communication and Culture Across the Human-Animal Divide
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University of Auckland
The “zero-tech” fight scene as projection of the “hyper-normate”: Ableism and Predator
Abstract: Drawing from literature on the concept of ableism and its intersectional qualities, this article provides an interpretation of the zero-tech fight scene. A recurring motif of much popular culture, zero-tech fight scenes are witnessed when protagonists for “good” and “evil” cast weapons (technologies) aside and engage in hand-to-hand combat. Positioning the 1987 film Predator as archetypal, three claims concerning the political-cultural significance of zero-tech fights scenes are advanced. First, such scenes project images of “hyper-normality” that assume and reproduce the cultural authority of ableism. Second, and closely related, zero-tech fight scenes denigrate disability by symbolically linking it to dependency, cheating, untrustworthiness and dishonorable conduct. Third, and following from notions of intersectionality, the article explores how zero-tech fight scenes are not reducible to their ableism. As with other “-isms,” ableism exerts force by tapping into a range of harmful ideological frameworks, such as racism, classism, sexism, transphobia, and so on. This aspect of our interpretation is advanced by showing how the ableist logic that underpins Predator is fortified by the logics of racism and speciesism.
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Yale University ~ CCS Postdoctoral Fellow
The Sacred and Profane Narrative Machine: The Discourse on Artificial Intelligence and Literary Authorship
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Yale University ~ CCS Postdoctoral Fellow
Constructing Disinformation. How The Threat of Disinformation is Culturally Constructed in the EU and US (2006-2023)
Abstract: Disinformation has been described as a major challenge for contemporary democracies. It has become inextricably tied to social media and large tech platforms. Online discussions on topics from Black Lives Matter to QAnon are consistently labeled as ‘disinformation’ on social media. However, what constitutes disinformation has often been taken for granted. Disinformation is presented as a self-evident, obvious, and objective category. This oversight perpetuates a normative view of disinformation as a societal woe, sidestepping critical examination of how disinformation is shaped by ongoing institutional and social processes. This study challenges this monolithic conception by examining how ‘disinformation’ is culturally constructed within policy discourses of the EU and US. By analyzing policy documents and hearings, we investigate how institutions like the European Commission, US Congress, and tech companies deploy symbolic resources to define, problematize, and address disinformation. We focus on the underlying cultural logics, moral frameworks, and temporal shifts in these discourses. This research contributes to a critical understanding of disinformation as a socially constructed phenomenon rather than an ‘objective’ reality.
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Yale University
Temporality and Representation in TikTok Videos of Chinese Migrants Crossing the U.S.-Mexico Border
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Duke University
New Cultural Insights on Social Mobility
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University of Vienna ~ CCS Faculty Fellow
A cultural sociology of climate justice
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Yale University ~ CCS Junior Fellow
Legal Double Consciousness and Refugee Law
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Yale University ~ CCS Junior Fellow
Defining Gender Violence: Knowledge Production and the Mexican State
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Yale University
The Racial Structure of Youth Soccer in the United States
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Yale University ~ CCS Visiting Faculty Fellow
Narratives we live by: Sequentiality and timeliness in temporal structuring of action
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Yale School of Management
From the Job’s Worth to the Person’s Price: Pay Equity Law and the Rise of Market-Based Pay Practices
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New York University
National Identification on Twitter or How to Find a Needle in a Haystack with LLMs
Abstract: People possess multiple identities, the relative salience of which responds dynamically to social context. Whether one thinks of oneself as a parent, an employee, a spouse, a particular gender, or an American varies from place to place and time to time. National identity in particular is a crucial master frame through which people understand their sense of collective belonging and their political choices. Yet, research on national identification has been limited to cross-sectional data, often gathered using single survey items, which fail to take into account the contextually of identity. With large-scale social media data a new approach is possible. Our study traces daily fluctuations in American identification using a random sample of U.S. Twitter/X users. Because identifying tweets that engage with nationhood is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, we employ few-shot classification using Llama 2, a large language model, combined with fine-tuning to further improve model performance. Our findings reveal that American identification rises and falls in a patterned manner, partly in response to nation-relevant events widely reported in the media. We show which events have the largest impact on nationalism time trends, estimate the collective half-life of identification events, and examine which events are politically galvanizing versus polarizing. In particular, we find that national identification gained chronic salience after 2016, when it first became a central point of contention in U.S. presidential elections.
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Emory University
If Bones Could Talk: The Origins of Trans Atlantic Slave Trade
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University of Minnesota
Networks, knowledge, meaning: the case of prosecutorial-NGO cooperation
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