Several culture panels were brought up to our attention by members of the Section:

 

Title:  Global Work, Culture and Inequality

Sun, August 13, 10:30am to 12:10pm
Session Description:

Multiple scholars have documented the power of work as a moral measure in the United States.  Despite increased work precariousness, and some reported ambivalence about work by cohort or generation, there is evidence that many invest increasing symbolic importance in work – in having a full-time job, being busy, working long hours, and the like – as proof of one’s adulthood, honor, or character.  How does this compare globally or, in the US, across populations?  Panelists will consider the culture of work in various contexts and comparatively, including in finance/tech sectors, in the US, Europe and elsewhere, and by gender, race and class.

Discussant:  Jennifer M. Silva, Bucknell University

Panel:

Mary Brinton, Harvard University.  “Cultural Conceptions of Work:  Gendered Narratives in Spain, Japan, and the U.S.”

Olivier Godechot, Sciences Po, Paris, France. “One Divides into Two: Team Moves in Finance”

Jeremy Schulz, University of California, Berkeley. “Cultural Workscapes: The Lives of Business Professionals in France, Norway, and the US”

Allison J.  Pugh and Sarah Mosseri, University of Virginia.  “The Moral Measure of Overwork.”

 

 

Special Session. The “Culture” of Immigration: Understanding Migration Through (Non-Essentialist) Cultural Analysis

Sun, August 13, 10:30am to 12:10pm, Palais des congrès de Montréal, Level 5, 511D

Organizer and Presider: John O’Brien, NYU Abu Dhabi

Despite the “cultural” nature of many of the issues central to migration scholarship, the application of tools and concepts from the sociology of culture to investigate questions of immigration has been, overall, halting and uneven (Levitt 2005, Menjivar 2010). This session will explore the possibilities of a more cultural approach to the study of migration by bringing together sociologists who are employing tools of cultural analysis to study migration processes and subjectivities. The session will both highlight effective strategies for using culture to investigate pressing and timely questions about migration, and identify common threads that might form the basis of a shared cultural sociology of immigration. The questions that such a sociology would seek to answer, both in this session and beyond, might include: How do migrants classify and assign meaning to members of receiving country populations, and vice versa? How is cultural life and practice reorganized at the level of everyday life in the process of settlement? How are newly emergent forms of identity and self-classification among migrant populations contested and negotiated in the intra-group setting? How do migrants receive, adapt, or reject cultural practices, schemas, and discourses made newly available in the receiving country context? How do migrants understand and experience notions of citizenship, nationality, legality, and belonging in everyday life? How can long-standing terms of analysis such as “assimilation” and “acculturation” be reconceptualized to provide increased analytical leverage and empirical rigor? Presentations in this session will highlight innovate approaches to the study of migration through cultural sociology.

Panel Presentations:

How the Meanings of Ethnicity Change by Context, Life Course Phase, and Legal Status – Robert Courtney Smith, City University of New York-Baruch College, Graduate Center

Racial Remittances: How Ideologies of Race Travel with Migrants – Sylvia Zamora, Loyola Marymount University

Gendered Institutions and Immigrant Categorizing – Sara R. Curran, University of Washington

Dreams Fulfilled or Dreams Dashed: West African Diversity Visa Lottery Winners in the United States – Onoso Ikphemi Imoagene, University of Pennsylvania