In my new book, Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future In Israel- Palestine (Vanderbilt UP, 2017), I examine how collective memories of a contested past can be used as a weapon of the weak for political change. The book presents and conceptualizes a surge in memories of a difficult past among civil society and grassroots groups around the world in the last two decades, which I term “memory activism.” Continue reading Book Summary: Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future In Israel- Palestine

When I saw that Lyn Spillman’s (Univ. of Notre Dame) session, “History in Cultural Explanation,” was to feature no less than five papers, I wondered how on earth everyone would be able to give due diligence to their rich historical work within the allotted time. This might have been a problem with less capable presenters, but not with this group, whose presentations were all richly detailed and cogent and together demonstrated a useful array of concepts (cultural imaginaries, micro-practices, artefacts, continuity) and methods (corpus linguistics) for historical analysis, and convincingly demonstrated the irreplaceable role of historical analysis in the study of culture. Continue reading Conference Report: History in Cultural Explanation

Michéle Lamont (Harvard) organized an informative session titled “Stigmatization and Discrimination”, in which she, Graziella Moraes D. Silva (The Graduate Institute, Geneva),  Jessica S. Wellburn (University of Iowa), and Joshua Guetzkow (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) discussed findings from their book Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel. Throughout the session, presenters discussed how cultural context shapes perceptions of and responses to stigmatization and discrimination. Continue reading Conference Report: Stigmatization and Discrimination

In a paper session organized, and presided, by Ronald Jacobs (Univ. of Albany), cultural sociologists reflected on the events leading up to the 2016 US Presidential election, and the aftermath. In particular, the talks consider the intersection of meaning and power, politics and media. Continue reading Conference Report: Culture & the 2016 Presidential Election