ASA News

• Meet the Candidates for 2022 ASA Elections
• Spotlight on Annual Meeting Location: Los Angeles, the Showplace Global City and its Creative Destructive Impulses
• Apply to be the TRAILS Lead Editor by May 30
• Thank You to ASA’s Generous Supporters
• Apply for a 2022 ASA Community Action Research Initiative Grant by August 31

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Meet the Candidates for 2022 ASA Elections

In accordance with election policies established by the ASA Council, biographical sketches of the candidates for leadership positions in the ASA elections appear in alphabetical order by office below.

Candidates for President-Elect

Joya Misra

Present Professional Position: Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Personal Statement: I am deeply honored to have been nominated. ASA has provided me with many opportunities, and the potential to give back is quite meaningful. My research spans gender, race, class, politics and movements, labor and work, family, global and transnational sociology, and higher education, using qualitative, quantitative, and comparative historical methods. I am deeply committed to public sociology, and think sociology is critical to efforts to craft a better world. My goal, if elected, would be to see the ASA reflect all of its members in our collective vision and work: those doing applied work, as well as those working in community colleges, 4-year colleges, and universities, whether in sociology or in interdisciplinary programs. I believe the association should include, value, recognize, and support all sociologists, while creatively engaging with wider publics to create more equitable societies.

Former Professional Positions Held

• Director of the Institute for Social Science Research, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2019-present
• Assistant & Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1999-2009
• Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Georgia, 1994-1999

Education

• PhD, Emory University, 1994
• MA, Emory University, 1991
• BA, Centenary College, 1988

Positions Held in ASA

• Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past Chair Sex & Gender Section of the ASA, 2020-2023
• Vice President-Elect, Vice President, and Past Vice President, American Sociological Association, 2018-2021
• Member & Chair, Distinguished Book Committee, American Sociological Association, 2016-2019
• Council Member, American Sociological Association, 2010-2013
• Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past Chair Race, Gender & Class Section of the ASA, 2009-2012

Offices Held in Other Organizations

• Member, Racial/Ethnic Minority Graduate Fellowship Committee, Society for the Study of Social Problems, 2022
• Editor, Gender & Society, 2011-2015
• Member, Executive Office & Budgets, Sociologists for Women in Society, 2011-2014
• Member & Chair, Feminist Mentoring Award, Sociologists for Women in Society 2010-2013
• Chair, Career Development Committee, Sociologists for Women in Society, 2009-2011

Publications

• Misra, Joya, Ethel Mickey, Ember Kanelee, Laurel Smith-Doerr. 2022. “Creating Inclusive Department Climates in STEM Fields.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Forthcoming.
• Misra, Joya and Kyla Walters. 2022. Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Inequalities Shape Retail Clothing Work. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Misra, Joya, KerryAnn O’Meara, Alexandra Kuvaeva, Dawn Kiyoe Culpepper, and Audrey Jaeger. 2021. “Gendered and Racialized Perceptions of Faculty Workload.” Gender & Society. 35: 358-394.
• Misra, Joya, Celeste Vaughan Curington, and Venus Mary Green. 2021. “Methods of Intersectional Research.” Sociological Spectrum. 4: 9-28.
• Janoski, Thomas, Cedric de Leon, Joya Misra, and Isaac Martin. (Eds.) 2020. The New Handbook of Political Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Brian Powell

Present Professional Position: James Rudy Professor of Sociology, Indiana University, 2008-present

Personal Statement: If you asked sociologists what they think about the ASA, you would hear some positive comments, but you mostly would hear a litany of serious concerns: among them, the high costs of membership and conferences, its inattention to the challenges faced by so many members and in particular its graduate students and recent PhDs, its incomplete approach to inclusion and equity, and the disconnect between the ASA and the daily lives of its members. I am sympathetic to these concerns and am convinced that the ASA can and must reassess its goals and practices. Change, however, requires not only a vision but also a good understanding of the organization. Having served in multiple leadership roles both in and out of the ASA, I am well positioned and fully committed to collaborating with the ASA and its members to identify and implement creative and resourceful solutions for its many challenges.

Former Professional Positions Held

• Chair of Department of Sociology, Indiana University, 2014-2017
• Co-Director of Preparing Future Faculty Program, Indiana University, 1995-present
• Affiliated Faculty of Kinsey Institute and Gender Studies, Indiana University, 1986-present

Education

• PhD, Emory University, 1984
• MA, Emory University, 1980
• BA, Hobart and William Smith College, 1976

Positions Held in ASA

• Vice-President, American Sociological Association, 2013-2014
• Council Member, American Sociological Association, 2012-2015
• Chair, ASA Social Psychology Section, 2011-2012
• Chair, ASA Sociology of Education Section, 2009-2010
• Member, ASA Publications Committee, 2002-2005

Offices Held in Other Organizations

• Chair, General Social Survey Scientific Advisory Board, 2020-present
• President, Sociological Research Association, 2019-2021
• Panelist, National Science Foundation Sociology Advisory Board/Committee of Visitors, 2002-2004, 2006-2010, 2016
• Member, Council on Contemporary Families Board of Directors, 2011-2012
• Founding Member, Teaching and Learning Introductory Sociology (TLIS) Network, 2010

Publications

• Quadlin, Natasha and Powell, Brian. 2022. Who Should Pay? Higher Education, Responsibility, and the Public. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Powell, Brian, Landon Schnabel, and Lauren Apgar. 2017. “Denial of Service to Same-Sex and Interracial Couples: Evidence from a National Survey Experiment.” Science Advances 3:1-8, s1-s17.
• Cheng, Simon and Brian Powell. 2015. “Measurement, Methods, and Divergent Patterns: Reassessing the Effects of Same-Sex Parenting.” Social Science Research 52:615-626.
• Powell, Brian, Catherine Bolzendahl, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman. 2010. Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family. American Sociological Association Rose Series. New York: Russell Sage Foundation (Paperback edition, 2012).
• Cheng, Simon and Brian Powell. 2007. “Under and Beyond Constraints: Resource Allocation to Young Children from Biracial Families.” American Journal of Sociology 112(4):1044-1094.

Candidates for Vice President-Elect

Michael D. Kennedy

Present Professional Position: Professor of Sociology and of International and Public Affairs, Brown University, 2009-present

Personal Statement: Sociology’s contributions to the public good are more critical than ever. While we vary in our emphases, we all can identify sociology’s intellectual distinctions. As an association, however, we need to face our organizational, material, and cultural challenges in thoughtful solidarity. Whether addressing pandemic-magnified digital transformations of belonging, or confronting the crisis framed by climate change and escalated by authoritarian practices, it is crucial that we as an association develop a collective response that is transformative and resilient. My engagements range broadly across, and beyond, our discipline. I appreciate different knowledge culture vernaculars, including Twitter @Prof_Kennedy. I work globally too, recognizing how we are, and can be better, connected. I’ve had many administrative responsibilities within my employing universities and on governing boards of other knowledge networks. I have experience translating good intentions into effective organizational work. I run for ASA VP to extend the meaningfulness and consequence of our assembly.

Former Professional Positions Held

• Swearer Director, Watson Institute of International Studies, Brown University, 2009-11
• Assistant Professor to Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, 1986-2009
• Vice Provost for International Affairs and Director of the International Institute, University of Michigan, 1999-2004

Education

• PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1985
• MA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1981
• AB in Sociology and Anthropology, Davidson College, 1979

Positions Held in ASA

• Chair, Section on Global and Transnational Sociology, 2019-20
• Chair, Theda Skocpol Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Comparative and Historical Sociology, 2019
• Editorial Board, Contemporary Sociology, 2014-16
• Chair, Nominating Committee, Section on Global and Transnational Sociology 2012
• Editorial Board, Sociological Theory, 1994-98

Offices Held in Other Organizations

• Committee Member and (Co)Chair, Open Society Foundations’ Higher Education Support Program and Education Program 2015-21
• Member, Governing Board, European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-19
• Member, International Academic Advisers Panel, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University 2015-17
• Member and Executive Committee Chair, Board of Directors, Social Science Research Council, 2006-15
• Member, Board of Directors, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 2004-06

Publications

• kehal, prabhdeep singh, Laura Garbes and Michael D. Kennedy. 2021. “Critical Sociology of Knowledge.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology. Ed. Lynette Spillman. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kennedy, Michael D. 2020. “Normative Frames and Systemic Imperatives: Gouldner, Szelényi and New Class Fracture” pp 25-51 in Tamás Demeter (eds.), Intellectuals, Inequalities and Transitions: Prospects for a Critical Sociology Leiden-Boston: Brill.
• Kennedy, Michael D. 2019. “National Cultures and Racial Formations: Articulating the Knowledge Cultures of Kloskowska and Du Bois” Kultura i Spoleczenstwo 63:3:7-30.
• Kennedy, Michael D. and Merone Tadesse. 2019. “Towards a Theory and Practice of Diversity and Inclusiveness in Globalizing US Universities: The Transformational Solidarity of Knowledge Activism” Youth and Globalization 1: 254-281.
• Kennedy, Michael D. 2015. Globalizing Knowledge: Intellectuals, Universities, and Publics in Transformation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

 

Jennifer A. Reich

Present Professional Position: Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado Denver, 2014-present and Director of University Honors and Leadership, 2019-present

Personal Statement: I have served as an ASA Council member and a leader in Sections, committees, and organizations within and beyond ASA because I value and want to invest in the diverse work sociologists do to teach, mentor, research, and affect change. I have been faculty at a small private institution, a public university that serves high numbers of first-generation students and students of color, and a medical school. I work hard to mentor and support students and faculty around the country, bring sociology to public conversations in policy and media, and address inequality, particularly in support of families and communities. As Vice President, I will use my expertise and experience to ensure that as we build the next phase of engagement since the COVID-19 pandemic began, ASA serves all sociologists—in the range of positions and kinds of work we do—with commitment to equity, accessibility, transparency, and accountability.

Former Professional Positions Held

• Co-Director and Qualitative Methods Mentor, Clinical Faculty Scholars Program, University of Colorado School of Medicine, 2014-2019
• Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Denver, 2014-2017
• Assistant and Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Denver, 2004-2014

Education

• PhD, University of California, Davis, 2002
• MA, University of California, Davis, 1997
• BA, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1993

Positions Held in ASA

• Council member, 2018-2021
• Nominations committee member, Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, 2020-2021
• Member, Committee on Sections, 2018-2021
• Chair, Sex and Gender Section, 2015-2017
• Chair, Teaching Committee, Medical Sociology Section, 2013-2015

Offices Held in Other Organizations

• Program committee member, Pacific Sociological Association, 2019-2021
• Editorial Board member, Journal of Marriage and Family, 2013-2020
• Panel member, Fellowships and grants selection panel, American Association of University Women, 2018-2020
• Program co-chair, Law and Society CRN 9: Law and Health. Annual meeting, 2018
• Chair, Publications committee, Sociologists for Women in Society, 2013-2015

Publications

• Thornton, Courtney and Jennifer Reich. Forthcoming. “Black Mothers and Vaccine Refusal: Gendered Racism, Healthcare, and the State” Gender & Society.
• Reich, Jennifer. 2021. “Power, Positionality, and the Ethic of Care in Qualitative Research” Qualitative Sociology 44(4):575-581.
• Reich, Jennifer. 2020. “Vaccine Refusal and Pharmaceutical Acquiescence: Parental Control and Ambivalence in Managing Children’s Health” American Sociological Review Vol 85(1): 106–127.
• Reich, Jennifer. 2016. Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. NY: New York University Press.
• Reich, Jennifer. 2005. Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System NY: Routledge.

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Spotlight on Annual Meeting Location: Los Angeles, the Showplace Global City and its Creative Destructive Impulses

Jan Lin, Professor of Sociology, Occidental College

The area of Los Angeles that is made up of the Los Angeles Convention Center, its adjacent Crypto.com Arena (previously Staples Center), and LA Live is a vibrant tourism, sports, and entertainment showplace that exports “showtime” NBA basketball and Hollywood film and music culture to the U.S. and the rest of the world. Culture industries are leading sectors in Los Angeles just as finance/Wall Street is a leading sector in New York City. Luxury hotels and condominium towers have sprouted in the neighborhood in the last 15 years, some involving transnational Chinese investor visas or corporate capital including the JW Marriott hotel, the 4-towered Metropolis complex, and the 3-towered Oceanwide Plaza. Further north on Figueroa Street is the Wilshire Grand Center, which was financed by Hanjin/Korean Airlines and in 2017 took claim as the tallest building (including its spire) west of Chicago. Look at the top at night for the neon red and blue yin-yang Korean Air logo which alternates with the “I” brand logo of the on-site InterContinental Hotel.

Los Angeles History from Pueblo to Global City

Looking back in urban history from the glitz and grandiosity of twenty-first century downtown LA, the metropolis was originally established by Spanish colonialist missionaries as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (“the town of our Lady the Queen of the Angels”) in 1781, northeast of downtown near the Los Angeles River Tongva indigenous settlement of Yaanga. You can visit the El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument across from Union Station Los Angeles, which has a plaque memorializing the founders, the original mixed-race pobladores. Olvera Street is adjacent to El Pueblo, with Mexican markets and eateries as well as Avila Adobe, the first residence in the city. After Anglo conquest in 1848, the development of the city proceeded in a gridiron plan surveyed by Edward Ord and tilting toward the southwest. The coming of steam rail in the late 1880s and electric railways after 1900, however, led to the decentralization of the growing metropolis as it crossed 80 miles of the coastal plain and foothills from Santa Monica to Redlands.

You can visit Angel’s Flight—a short inclined funicular railway that is a preserved artifact of the electric cable car era built in 1901—which is across Hill Street from the Grand Central Market, a colorful emporium of produce vendors and culturally diverse eateries. It rises up Bunker Hill to California Plaza—the site of fountains and an open-air theater and stage where the nonprofit Grand Performances hosts free summer weekend world music, hip hop, jazz and dance events. Continue north along Grand Avenue to visit LA’s Civic Center landmarks including the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Broad, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and Grand Park.

Back to the story of decentralization, freeway construction in the mid-twentieth century set the stage for Los Angeles to become the American epitome of the decentralized sprawling postwar automobile-oriented metropolis. In an historical illustration of LA’s “bureaucracies of displacement,” the downtown urban growth machine made use of eminent domain and federal Highway Act funding to bulldoze and eviscerate Boyle Heights and East LA, the heart of the Mexican American community, with monstrous freeway interchanges. The tragic story is dramatically documented in Betsy Kalin’s film, East L.A. Interchange (2015) and the section of Judith Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, The Division of the Barrios. Another infamous episode was the eviction and razing of the Chicanx community at Chavez Ravine before the construction of Dodger Stadium. The intracity freeways helped open up new subdivisions in areas such as the San Fernando Valley and Anaheim in Orange County, where white homogeneity was naturalized amidst the innocent allure of the suburban ideal, as represented in TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and at theme parks like Disneyland. The Watts Riots racial disturbances of 1965 punctured the idyllic facade of suburban prosperity and expressed the rage of a marginalized community that felt criminalized by racialized policing.

In 1965 also came the liberalization of federal immigration policy, fostering rapid growth of immigration, especially from Latin America and Asia in the 1970s and ’80s. Neoliberal policies also fostered more openness to foreign investment, and the increasing mobility of labor and capital facilitated the rise of Los Angeles as a global city. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach expanded infrastructure for world trade through the region and LAX airport handled increasing flows of immigrants and international visitors. African American Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley led the LA growth machine from 1973 to 1993 through a multiracial coalition that triumphally promoted its international image while staging the 1984 Summer Olympics. A booming economy and surplus capital accumulation led Japanese corporate investors to purchase trophy downtown LA skyscrapers in the 1980s.

The Decline and Reemergence of the LA Growth Machine

The 1990s were a darker time for Los Angeles, as it was wracked by the Rodney King racial uprisings, continuing white flight, slow growth interests, suburban secession movements, and urban sprawl that challenged the spirit of regional growth consensus. The Los Angeles School of Urbanism represented the metropolis as an urban symbol of postmodernism and social fragmentation, and Black-Korean conflict emerged as a new arena of interracial disharmony.

But the LA growth machine has resisted its perceived demise and has reemerged through a new phase of urban restructuring in the first two decades of the twenty-first century with a more centralized capitalist growth regime, based upon growing downtown redevelopment, gentrification, and the return of the white middle-class to a variety of central city and inner-ring neighborhoods. These include Westside neighborhoods such as Venice, Crenshaw and Leimert Park, Koreatown, Silver Lake, and Echo Park. And along the LA Metro Gold Line on LA’s Eastside there are a series of neighborhoods experiencing rapid transition near stations, including Highland Park, Lincoln Heights, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and Boyle Heights.

Gentrification epicenters commonly surround LA Metro transit stations, where transit-oriented development projects including high-density upmarket housing, hotels, and place-branding schemes are promoted by developers in partnership with the neoliberal state. Neoliberal urban capitalism increasingly involves public-private partnerships in the wake of federal retrenchment, from transportation, housing, and social services spending and administrative devolution to the local authorities who increasingly roll-out tax incentives for private investment and place promotion. But the creative impulses of neoliberal capitalism also foment destructive effects, as gentrification has fostered residential displacement, racial conflicts, and new socioeconomic class divides. The strategy of accumulation by dispossession rolls forward through a bureaucracy of displacement.

Working-class and immigrant families in Latinx gentrification epicenters, such as Highland Park and Boyle Heights, have been particularly confronted by shifting fortunes, including foreclosures during the Great Recession, followed by entry of speculator-flippers and then corporate developers to their neighborhoods. Mass evictions of multiple family households from apartment buildings are especially traumatic and socially uprooting as they disrupt social networks built up over the years to provide childcare and confront the challenges of urban life.

Antigentrification movements have emerged to defend threatened communities and assert their right to the city, including the North East Los Angeles Alliance, Defend Boyle Heights, and Chinatown Community for Equitable Development. They have held rent strikes, tenants’ workshops, nighttime vigils, and street demonstrations with calls that “Gentrification is the New Colonialism” and “Housing is a Human Right.” They promote public dialogue about the plight of the displaced and the unhoused, the need for affordable housing, and the emancipatory possibilities of a more inclusive and socially just city.

Los Angeles, the showplace global city, is a shining prism of redevelopment and gentrification for a reemergent urban growth machine. But these creative impulses also foment displacement and social destructiveness, putting a spotlight on neighborhood activism and the cause of urban justice.

Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.

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Apply to be the TRAILS Lead Editor by May 30

We’re accepting applications for the lead editor of TRAILS. The editor is responsible for leading the peer-review process, providing leadership to the TRAILS editorial board and contributors, and also works to expand the range, quantity, and quality of teaching resources in the library. This position has a three-year term beginning on September 1, 2022, and ending on August 31, 2025. The deadline to apply is May 30, 2022. Administrative support is provided by staff in the ASA Office. The TRAILS editorship includes an honorarium of $2,000 per year, plus funding to pay a student assistant and cover the cost of attending one regional sociological association meeting per year for TRAILS outreach and promotion. Candidates must be members of the ASA. Applications from members of underrepresented groups are encouraged. Visit here for selection criteria and submission instructions. Contact [email protected] with questions.

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Thank You to ASA’s Generous Supporters

ASA acknowledges the generous support of the following individuals, whose financial contributions (July 1, 2021, through December 30, 2021) to the association have strengthened our discipline.

Some of these donations provide unrestricted support to ASA, and others are used specifically for the American Sociological Fund, the Carla B. Howery Teaching Enhancement Fund, or the Community Action Research Initiative. In addition, this list includes both five-year leadership pledge donations and one-time donations for the Campaign for Inclusion. This campaign supports our longstanding Minority Fellowship Program and our Annual Meeting Travel Fund.

If you are interested in making a contribution to support ASA in its mission to serve sociologists in their work, advance sociology as a science and profession, and promote the contributions and use of sociology to society, please click here.

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Apply for a 2022 ASA Community Action Research Initiative Grant by August 31

ASA encourages applications for Community Action Research Initiative (CARI) grants. CARI grants are used for projects that bring social science knowledge and methods to bear in addressing community-based problems. Applicants must be sociologists seeking to work with community organizations or community action initiatives.

Applications are encouraged from sociologists working in a variety of work settings, including academic institutions, research institutes, private and non-profit organizations, and government agencies. Graduate students are eligible to apply, but CARI funds cannot be used to support dissertation research. While ASA membership is not a criterion for applying, it is required to receive a grant. All ASA members are obligated to follow the ASA Code of Ethics, and grantees must provide pertinent IRB approval if necessary. Grants are for up to $3,000 of direct costs.

For more information and to apply, click here. Send your questions to Margaret Weigers Vitullo at [email protected] or (202) 247-9862.

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