(Please note that all of the times below are in Pacific Daylight Time (PDT).

1. The Racial Politics of Culture? Critical Perspectives from Cultural Sociology 

Sat, August 6, 8:00 to 9:30am, LACC, Floor: Level 2, 303B

What is the relationship between the cultural and the racial? What political factors and social forces shape the racial politics of culture? How are processes of distinction, consumption and reproduction shaped by white supremacy? What is lost or limited when culture is framed as a race-neutral formulation in the field of sociology and wider society? For this panel, we invite empirically grounded and theoretically sophisticated papers that engage with one or more of these questions. We are open to related questions not noted here, too. We are especially interested in papers that interrogate the role of race, racialization or racism in shaping discourses on culture as a system of complex meaning-making, nationally and internationally. 

This is a joint session with the Race, Gender, and Class Section. 

Organizer and Presider: Derron Wallace, Brandeis University

1. From “Critical Race Theory” to CRT: the new front in the American Culture Wars. Yagmur Karakaya, Yale University

• Stuff White People Like: BDSM, Polyamory, Neo-Paganism, and… Cats. Julie Lynn Fennell, Gallaudet University

• ‘Decolonising fashion’: Fashion consumption and clothing practices of the South Asian Muslim communities in Glasgow. Rohit K Dasgupta, University of Glasgow; Nazli Alimen, Birmingham City University

• Examining racialized sentiments towards Muslim women’s dress using social media data. Jessica Stallone, University of Toronto

• Symbolic Divisions and Symbolic Violence: Multilingual Latina/o Peer Mentors and Racialization of ‘ESL Students.’ Melanie Jones Gast, University of Louisville; James Chisholm, University of Louisville; Yohimar Sivira Gonzalez, University of Louisville

2. International Perspectives in Cultural Sociology

Sat, August 6, 10:00 to 11:30am, LACC, Floor: Level 2, 303B

This panel invites papers that introduce concepts, theories, or perspectives in cultural sociology beyond the U.S. The goal of this panel is to expose audiences to analytical tools that are instrumental for the sociological study of culture which are heretofore little known in the U.S. Papers could focus solely on analytical tools that remain little known in the U.S. or put those analytical tools into dialogue with approaches that are more commonly used in cultural sociology in the U.S. We welcome papers that present and develop novel theoretical materials as well as those that apply new analytical tools to empirical data. 

Organizer and Presider: Vanina Leschziner, University of Toronto

1.    Literary structuralism and transnational politics. Lucile Dumont, EHESS

2.    Migrating Artists and Migrating Art: Decentering the Global Art World. Kangsan Lee, New York University; Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College; Chantal Valdivia, Wellesley College

3.    Tastes, complex tastes, and meta-tastes. Xiangyu Ma, University of Chicago

4.    The Network Structure of Cultural Elements and Organizational Creativity. Hang-Jun Cho, INSEAD; Frederic Clement Godart, INSEAD; Charles Galunic, INSEAD

Discussant: Vanina Leschziner, University of Toronto

3. Crisis of Democracy? New Perspectives from Cultural Sociology

Sun, August 7, 8:00 to 9:30am, LACC, Floor: Level 2, 304A

In recent years, mature and young democracies alike around the globe have been experiencing intensified challenges, as exemplified in the January 6th Capitol Riot in the U.S., Brexit in the U.K, Turkey’s failed coup in 2016 and its aftermath, etc. The underlying cultural-political trends, such as populism, ultra-nationalism, and authoritarianism, are prompting us to ask if liberalism and democracy are now in crisis, why we have reached this point, how social actors are envisioning new paths forwards, and how such inquiries challenge us to rethink sociological theories and paradigms. With a focus on cultural sociology, this panel welcomes papers that address these questions through empirically grounded analyses.

Organizer: Ming-Cheng M. Lo, University of California-Davis

Presider: Stephanie L. Mudge, University of California-Davis

1.    A Cultural Backlash in Europe? Evidence from the European Values Study 1999-2017. Tim Reeskens, Tilburg University; Quita Muis; Ruud Luijkx, Tilburg University; Inge Sieben

2.    Bad Company? Civil Society and Democracy in Comparative Perspective. Andrew P. Davis, North Carolina State University; Yongjun Zhang, Stony Brook University

3.    Politics of Nationhood and the Decay of the Media in Turkey. Defne Over, Texas A&M University-College Station

4.    The Dual Legacy of John Locke: Exceptionalism & Racism in America. Chandra Mukerji, University of California, San Diego

5.    Religious Dissolution and the Crisis of Liberalism: Inside a Christian Brotherhood and a Masonic Lodge. Graham Wilson Hill, University of Bern

4. Culture in a (Post)Pandemic Word (Graduate Professionalization Panel)

Sun, August 7, 10:00 to 11:00am, LACC, Floor: Level 2, 404A

The pandemic is having a significant impact on multiple aspects of contemporary cultural life—from rendering collective rituals (like concerts or sports games) risky, absurd, or less accessible, to altering the ways in which we build interpersonal trust, and challenging how people think about and calculate risk. How are cultural scholars doing research about these dynamics?

Organizer: Amy Zhang, George Mason University

Presider: Nino Bariola, The University of Texas at Austin

Panelists:  

1.    Rachel Skaggs, Ohio State University

2.    Fernando A. Calderón Figueroa, University of Toronto

3.    Vivian Shaw, Vanderbilt University

4.    Brenton David Kalinowski, Rice University

5. Section on Sociology of Culture Business Meeting

Sun, August 7, 11:00 to 11:30am, LACC, Floor: Level 2, 404A

Organizer and Presider: Ann Mische, University of Notre Dame

6. Action in Unsettled Times

Sun, August 7, 12:00 to 1:30pm, LACC, Floor: Level 2, 304B

Social life amidst the Covid-19 pandemic is, by all accounts, unsettled. Disrupted habits, disturbed routines, suspended rhythms, and unpredictability: these have come to characterize a kind of new normal. But what does it mean to act in such times of constant unsettledness? The very idea of an “unsettled context” is of fundamental importance to post-Parsonian theories of action. This panel invites papers that are willing to explore big ideas about disruption, helping to build our toolkit for understanding action in unsettled times of seemingly interminable duration.

Organizers: Christina Simko, Williams College; Michael Strand, Brandeis University 

Presider: Ann Swidler, University of California-Berkeley

• Repertoires of repair: confronting ontological insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Ryan Hagen, Columbia University; Denise Milstein, Columbia University

• The Domestic Violence Victim as COVID Crisis Figure. Paige L. Sweet, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Maya Glenn; Jacob Caponi

• The Meaning of Masks: Tracing Trajectories and Stabilizing the “New Normal.” Terence Emmett McDonnell, University of Notre Dame; Rachel Keynton, University of Notre Dame

• The Temporal Structure of Capitals: Lessons from the End of Life. Zhuofan Li, University of Arizona; Daniel Dohan, University of California-San Francisco; Corey M. Abramson, University of Arizona

• Too “Essential” For Domestic Labor? Ambiguous Availability in Essential and Remote Worker Families During COVID-19. Angela Clague, University of California, Los Angeles

Discussant: Ann Swidler, University of California-Berkeley

7. Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables Session

Sun, August 7, 2:00 to 3:30pm, JW Marriott, Floor: Gold Level, Gold Salon

Organizers: Gordon Brett, University of Toronto; Martin Lukk, University of Toronto; Taylor Price, University of Toronto

8. Joint Reception: Section on Sociology of Culture, Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements

Sun, August 7, 7:00 to 9:00pm, JW Marriott, Floor: Gold Level, Gold Salon 2

Organizers: Ann Mische, University of Notre Dame; Rory M. McVeigh, University of Notre Dame

9. Formal Models of Culture 

Tue, August 9, 8:00 to 9:30am, JW Marriott, Floor: Level 3, Plaza III