Calls for Papers and Participants

From Kristóf Nagy:

Call-for-Proposal: Infrastructures of Trading and Transferring Art since 1900 Workshop

Organized by: Gregor M. Langfeld (University of Amsterdam/Open University, Netherlands)
Kristóf Nagy (KEMKI – Central European Research Institute for Art History, Hungary)
Lynn Rother (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany)

Deadline: 31 January 2024. Speakers will be informed by 11 February 2024.
Dates of the Workshop: June 26–28, 2024.
Location of the Workshop: KEMKI – Central European Research Institute for Art History

From Dr. Anna Schwenck:

Call-for-Abstracts: Sounds in Times of War. Popular Music, (Contentious) Politics and Social Change Since Russia’s War on Ukrain. Special theme-section of “Baltic Worlds”

Guest Editors: Anna Schwenck (Siegen University), Aleksej Tikhonov (UZH Zurich), David-Emil Wickström (Popakademie Baden-Württemberg)

Deadline Abstracts: by January 31, 2024
Deadline Articles: July 31, 2024
Estimated publication: second quarter of 2025

From Jiayi Tian:

Event Title: Art Production and Valuation in a Global Context.
A BSA Sociology of the Arts Study Group Event

Link (info and registration): https://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events/art-production-and-valuation-in-a-global-context/

20 February 2024 (4.00-5.30pm GMT)
Online

About the Event
How is art produced, mediated, and valued within a global context? Larissa Buchholz’s recent book The Global Rules of Art(Princeton University Press, 2022) examines the historical emergence of a global cultural field and the diverse ways artists from formerly colonized or “peripheral” countries become valued worldwide. This conversation will focus primarily on the book’s findings but also moves beyond it to other forms of art production, especially the works of outsider and self-taught artists who are far away from the well-established art institutions and art market centers.
We will be joined by the book’s author Prof. Larissa Buchholz and sociologist Jiayi Tian who works with the self-taught artists in post-socialist China. The event will run as a conversation between the two speakers, with ample opportunity for audience discussion.

New Books

Gardner, Peter Robert and Benjamin Abrams. Symbolic Objects in Contentious Politics. University of Michigan Press, 2023. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/book.111514.

When we observe protest marches, striking workers on picket lines, and insurgent movements in the world today, a litany of objects routinely fill our field of vision. Some such objects are ubiquitous the world over, like flags, banners, and placards. Others are situationally unique: Who could have anticipated the historical importance of a flower placed in the barrel of a gun, a flaming torch, a sea of umbrellas, a motorist’s yellow vest, a feather headdress, an AK-47, or a knitted pink hat? This book explores the “stuff” at the heart of protests, revolutions, civil wars, and other contentious political events, with particular focus on those objects that have or acquire symbolic importance. In the context of “contentious politics” (disruptive political episodes where people try to change societies without going through institutions), certain objects can divide and unite social groups, tell stories, make declarations, spark controversy, and even trigger violent upheavals.

Low, Kelvin E. Y. Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2023. doi:10.1017/9781009240826.

From constructions of rasa (taste) in pre-colonial India and Indonesia, children and sensory discipline within the monastic orders of the Edo period of Japan, to sound expressives among the Semai in Peninsular Malaysia, the sensory soteriology of Tibetan Buddhism, and sensory warscapes of WWII, this book analyses how sensory cultures in Asia frame social order and disorder. Illustrated with a wide range of fascinating examples, it explores key anthropological themes, such as culture and language, food and foodways, morality, transnationalism and violence, and provides granular analyses on sensory relations, sensory pairings, and intersensoriality. By offering rich ethnographic perspectives on inter- and intra-regional sense relations, the book engages with a variety of sensory models, and moves beyond narrower sensory regimes bounded by group, nation or temporality. A pioneering exploration of the senses in and out of Asia, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in social and cultural anthropology.

Schwenck, Anna (2024). Flexible Authoritarianism: Cultivating Ambition and Loyalty in Russia, Oxford University Press.

Flexible Authoritarianism challenges the idea that the transnational rise of authoritarianism is a backlash against economic globalization and neoliberal capitalism. Flexible authoritarianism–a form of government that simultaneously incentivizes a can-do spirit and suppresses dissent–reflects the resonance between authoritarian and neoliberal ideologies in today’s comeback of strongman rule. The book conveys the look and feel of flexible authoritarianism in Russia through the eyes of up-and-coming youth.

Drawing on field observations, in-depth interviews, and analyses of documents and video clips, Anna Schwenck demonstrates how flexible authoritarianism is stabilized ideologically by the insignia of cool start-up capitalism and by familiar cultural forms such as the summer camp. It critically evaluates how loyalty to the regime–the order underlying political and economic life in a polity–is produced and contested among those young people who seek key positions in politics, business, the public sector, or creative industries.

Joseph A. Kotarba. (2023). Music in the Course of Life. Routledge.

The author integrates over 40 years of research on the social aspects of music. His theoretical orientation is symbolic interaction, with a taste of existential thought and postmodernism. The music styles examined include pop music, the blues, heavy metal, rap, children’s music, rave/dance and religious/spiritual among others. His methodological approach is distinctly interpretive and qualitative. The presentation is narrative. Dr. Kotarba arranges his analysis according to a revision of life course theory. Music serves as a fundamental resource for meaning throughout life. The life course model is suggestive of the range of music experiences, but the actual availability, selection and appreciation of music in everyday life are essentially situational and are shaped by interaction with the audiences-to-self that are present.

New Articles

Daly, Mary; Leon, Margarita, Pfau-Effinger, Birgit; Ranci, Costanzo & Rostgaard, Tine (2022) COVID-19 and Policies for Care Homes in European Welfare States: Too little, too late? Journal of European Social Policy, 32, 1: 48-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/09589287211055672

Eggers, Thurid; Grages, Christopher; Pfau-Effinger, Birgit (2023) How culture influences the strengthening of market principles in conservative welfare states: The case of long-term care policy. International Journal of Social Welfare (Online First), https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12612

Eggers, T.; Grages, C.; Pfau-Effinger, B. (2022): Re-Traditionalizing Childcare in the Pandemic? Policies on Childcare in the COVID-19 Pandemic in Different Types of Care Arrangements, in Armenia, A.; Duffy, M.; Price-Glynn, K. (eds.): Carework in a Changing World. New Brunswick: Rudgers University Press.

Hart-Brinson, Peter, M.L. Tlachac, and Emily Lepien. 2024. “Contradictions in Experiences of Compulsory Sexuality and Pathways to Asexual Citizenship.” Sexuality and Culture, 28, 1, pp. 187-213. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-023-10110-1

Jasso, Guillermina. 2021. “The Methods and Surprises of Sociological Theory: Ideas, Postulates, Predictions, Distributions, Unification.” Pp. 17-36 in Seth Abrutyn and Omar Lizardo (eds.), Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory. New York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78205-4_2 .

Jasso, Guillermina. 2023. “Fifty Years of Justice Research: Seven Signposts Past and Future.” Social Justice Research 36(3):305-324. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-023-00419-5 . View-only sharelink https://rdcu.be/djH1E .

Maciel, Andre F., and Michelle F. Weinberger. 2023. “Crowdfunding as a market-fostering gift system.” Journal of Consumer Research: ucad052.

Mueller, Jason C. 2023. “Does the United States owe Reparations to Somalia?” Race & Class 65(1): 61-82. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231155358.

Mueller, Jason C. 2023. “Universality, Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd Uprising.” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 24(3): 361-382. https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2023.2168717.

Mueller, Jason C. 2023. “Subjective Destitution, Love, and Rebellion in Pandemic Times: Theorizing with Hot Skull.” Human Geography, online first here: https://doi.org/10.1177/19427786231190848.
Och, Ralf; Pfau-Effinger, Birgit. 2023. Marketization policies in the neoliberal era: How culture and governance structures affect the introduction of market principles in local care policies, Environment & Planning C, 4, 3: 448–465 , https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23996544221137959
Pfau-Effinger, Birgit. 2023. Theorizing the Role of Culture and Family Policy for Women’s Employment Behavior, in Daly, Mary; Pfau-Effinger, Birgit; Gilbert, Neil; Besharov, Douglas (eds.) The Oxford International Handbook of Family Policy, Series ‘The Oxford Library of International Social Policy’, New York: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-family-policy-9780197518151?cc=de&lang=en&
Pfau-Effinger, Birgit; Sebastian, Marcel. 2022. Institutional persistence despite cultural change: A historical case study of the re-categorization of dogs in Germany, Agriculture and Human Values, 39, 1: 473–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10272-4
Pfau-Effinger, Birgit. 2022. La culture comme variable dans l’analyse de la politique sociale, in Giraud, O.; Perrier, G. (eds.) Politiques sociales: l’état des saviors, Paris: Édition La Découverte Recherche.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2023. “The interpretive and relational work of financial innovation: A resemblance of assurance in Islamic finance.” Journal of Cultural Economy 16(6):793-811. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2023.2196990.

Pitluck, Aaron Z. 2022. “Beyond debt and equity: Dissecting the red herring and a path forward for normative critiques of finance.” Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 93:60-74. (Open Access). https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2022.930105

Schwenck, Anna. 2023. Performances Of Closeness and the Staging of Resistance with Mainstream Musics. Analyzing the Symbolism of Pandemic Skeptical Protests. In Daniel, Antje, Anna Schwenck and Fabian Virchow (Hrsg.), The Protests of Pandemic Skeptics in Germany and Austria. Prismatic Perspectives. Special Issue of German Politics and Society 41 (2), 35-60. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/gps/41/2/gps410203.xml

Stoicescu, Maria and Michael G. Flaherty. OnlineFirst. “Tinder and Time Work through the Lens of Gender: Temporal Agency, Technology, and Intimacy.” Social Psychology Quarterly. https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/WPFMR8FHTM6PH6B3BYDB/full