Society for the Study of Society Problems
Community Research and Development Division 
Fall 2019 Newsletter

In this issue:

Message from the Chair
Annual Meeting Program Theme
CRD’s 2020 Conference Events
Call for Student Paper Submissions
Call for Community Partner Paper Award Submissions
CRD Member Spotlight
SSSP CRD Member Publications
Special Calls, Invitations, and Announcements


Message from the Division Chair
As an urban and cultural sociologist, I’m thrilled to shepherd the Community Research and Development Division through the next two annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. The CRD Division strives to be a forum to share current work on the conditions, challenges, prospects, and social change efforts in urban, suburban, rural, and other place-based communities as well as identity, cultural, and interest-based communities. Over the years, the CRD Division and SSSP have afforded me opportunities to share my research on super-gentrification, racial and ethnic inequality in affordable housing, and the political economy and ethos of bohemian communities. I have also enjoyed organizing panels and critical dialogues, networking with scholars and activists, and mentoring graduate students. I hope to extend similar opportunities for research dissemination, professional growth, and community action to diverse scholars, activists, practitioners, and students engaged in community research and social justice efforts through our shared work in the CRD Division. 

We have an exciting slate of sessions planned for the SSSP 2020 annual meeting in San Francisco. Our sessions address timely issues including political economic and demographic shifts in communities, gentrification, climate change, food justice, pollution and public health, racial and community justice, immigration, creative communities, queer spaces, communities, and identities, and the use of institutional ethnography to advance community change. We will also host an “activist café” to bring together Bay Area community activists and scholars working on community justice issues. An impressive group of established and emerging scholars and practitioners have volunteered to organize these sessions. 

I invite you to continue to shape this division by submitting conference papers, proposing future conference sessions, serving on our graduate student paper award and community partner paper award committees, volunteering to be a discussant on a paper panel, and contributing to the division newsletter. If you would like to get more involved with the CRD Division, please email me at halaszj@newpaltz.edu.  

And please welcome Molly Clark-Barol, a doctoral student in Human Ecology and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as our new newsletter editor.

Good luck with the end of the semester!

Best wishes,
Judy

Judith R. Halasz, Ph.D.
Chair, Community Research and Development Division
Associate Professor and Interim Chair, Sociology Department, State University of New York at New Paltz


2020 Annual Meeting Program Theme
Bringing the Hope Back In: Sociological Imagination and Dreaming Transformation

Hope is a decisive element in any attempt to bring about social change in the direction of greater aliveness, awareness, and reason.” Fromm, Erich. 1968.

The founding meeting of the SSSP was held at Roosevelt College in Chicago in September of 1951, with a goal to “rescue sociology from the dehumanizing influences of abstract theorizing and fancifully complex research methods” (McClung Lee 1988, 12).  Turbulence abounded in the post WWII era: in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in 1951 Special Operations were being run to rescue Jews still in dangerous places; the first transnational television broadcast was aired and reached from San Francisco to Boston; Gay bars won protection from the Supreme Court; Ella Baker ran for the New York City Council; Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala (something the U.S. capitalist controlled United Fruit Company could not tolerate); and of course, there was McCarthyism.
Sociologists concerned about changing the world saw the need for an organization, a vehicle to mobilize their sociological knowledge and skills.  The founders wanted to address various forms of injustice, including sexism and racism.  Looking back to the founding, Dr. Elizabeth Briant Lee wrote in 1991, "The Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) was an organization for which the time was ripe." (Lifetimes in Humanist Sociology, Clinical Sociology Review accessed at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/csr/vol9/iss1/5)

We are again living in ripe times.  While history is not quite repeating, much of what’s happening, like a Hollywood movie, is quite predictable.  The plot is alarmingly similar: Cages, camps, control, callousness, and the breakdown of the climate, community and caring.  How did we get here?  The year 2020 is a year that begs us to look backwards, assessing the lessons and, through a critical lens, thinking about the work we do and the future we are building through our work.  What can history, the history of our organization, help us to understand?  How can our history help us to develop dreams for the future grounded in scholar activism that will help us to build futures?

We cannot stop resisting, certainly not now.  But resistance alone will not create a new world with new possibilities.  Resistance will lessen the suffering, for some, but without visions for new worlds, transformation is unlikely.  Mobilizing our sociological imaginations we can think again about the work of SSSP and how our collective work has created the SSSP that currently exists.  Let’s explore how this current moment, ripe – so so ripe, demands that we dream transformation.  What are the pathways we will build to move toward our dreams?  How can we build and support solidarity, political engagement, social movements and pedagogies of liberation?  What can we do to create structural changes that bend toward justice?  Where does our scholar activism, as we live it through SSSP, fit into our dreams of transformation, toward building new worlds?

In 2020, you are invited to come together to mobilize our sociological imaginations toward Dreaming Transformation.  Let’s come together in the spirit of Dr. Elizabeth Briant Lee and her husband, Al McClung Lee, to explore why we are doing sociology in particular ways.  The Lees did not stop with the founding of SSSP, they continued to dream transformation and build pathways throughout their lives.  We have that opportunity, to come together and create change.

Please join us in San Francisco in 2020 and together we can call upon our sociological imaginations to dream transformation, while building pathways to justice and humanity.  The hope, the wish for a better world, and the sociological imagination are linked in our work.  As members of the SSSP, let’s talk about possibilities grounded in our dreams and work.

Heather M. Dalmage, SSSP President
Roosevelt University


Call for Submissions of Paper Proposals for SSSP 2020
The call for SSSP 2020 submissions is now open. You can submit a proposal online at https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/788/. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2020.

Sessions sponsored and co-sponsored by CRD:

Gentrification and Community Responses (thematic), Co-organizers: Judith R. Halasz (SUNY New Paltz) and Meghan Ashlin Rich (University of Scranton)
Arts, Creatives, and Community: Bringing the Hope Back In (thematic), Organizer: Abby I. Templer Rodrigues (Missouri State University)
Migration, Immigration, Community, and Sanctuary Spaces (thematic, co-sponsored with Global and Racial and Ethnic Minorities Divisions), Co-organizers: Amy C. Foerster (Pace University) and Theo J. Majka (University of Dayton)
Race and Community Justice Practices and Policies (thematic, co-sponsored with Law and Society Division), Co-organized by Tyrell A. Connor (SUNY New Paltz) and Jess Lucero (Utah State University)
Queer Communities, Space, and Identities (co-sponsored with Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities Division), Organizer: Jason Orne (Drexel University)
Green Gentrification and Food Justice (co-sponsored with Environment and Technology Division), Organizer: Marisol Becerra (Ohio State University)
Activist Café: Community Activists and Scholars in Dialogue (thematic, critical dialogue, co-sponsored with Conflict, Social Action, and Change Division), Co-organizers: Amy C. Foerster (Pace University) and Ebonie Stringer Cunningham (Penn State University)
Using Institutional Ethnography as a Tool for Community Change (thematic, critical dialogue, co-sponsored with Institutional Ethnography Division), Co-organizers: Frank M. Ridzi (Le Moyne College) and Cynthia Puddu (MacEwen University)
Pollution and Public Health in Low Income Communities (critical dialogue, co-sponsored with Poverty, Class, and Inequality Division), Organized by Matthew H. McLeskey (SUNY Buffalo)
Shifting Demographics and Community Identity in the Current Political Climate (critical dialogue), Organized by Felicia M. Sullivan (jff.org)

Call for Paper Award Submissions
The CRD Division sponsors a graduate student paper award and a community partner paper award. Take a look at the call for papers below and consider submitting a paper. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2020. 

Community Research and Development Division Graduate Student Paper Competition 
The Community Research and Development Division announces its 2020 Graduate Student Paper Competition. Paper topics can focus on various aspects of communities, including their capacity, development, renewal, and relationship with other social issues or problems. Qualitative and quantitative empirical analyses, applied research, and theoretical papers are welcome. To be eligible for submission, a paper must not be published nor accepted for publication. Papers must be student-authored; they may be authored by a single student or co-authored by more than one student, but may not be co-authored by a faculty member or other non-student. Papers must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages (including all notes, references, and tables), and should include a brief abstract. To be eligible for the award, the author(s) must make a commitment to present the paper at a session during the 2020 SSSP Annual Meeting in San Francisco. To be considered, submit (a) a copy of the manuscript, (b) a cover letter specifying that the paper is to be considered in the Community Research and Development Division Graduate Student Paper Competition, and (c) a short letter from each author’s advisor certifying the person’s status as a student and including some brief comments about the research. All materials must be submitted electronically to the Annual Meeting Call for Papers on the SSSP conference website by January 31, 2020 and also sent to the Committee Co-Chairs, Dr. Jen Satya Lendrum at jsl004@aquinas.edu and Dr. Tyrell Connor at connort@newpaltz.edu. Please note that students may only submit to one division. The winner will receive a $100 cash award, a one-year student membership to SSSP, conference registration fees, and a plaque of recognition at the conference awards ceremony.

Community Research and Development Division Community Partner Paper Competition
The Community Research and Development Division announces its 2020 Community Partner Paper Competition. Consistent with our division’s mission, this paper award is intended to recognize rigorous academic work that has practical implications for members of marginalized communities and specifically, to celebrate community-engaged work. Paper topics can focus on various social issues and problems related to community, such as the causes and consequences of communities’ exclusion or marginalization from processes and resources, the capacities and strengths of communities and community movements, and the development and changes within communities. Qualitative and quantitative empirical analyses, applied research, and theoretical papers are welcome. To be eligible for submission, a paper must not be published or accepted for publication. Papers must be coauthored with a community partner; they may be coauthored by more than one faculty member and/or student, but must include at least one community partner. Community partners are characterized by any community-based entity that is outside of the academy. Papers must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages (including all notes, references, and tables), and should include a brief abstract. To be eligible for the award, the author(s) must make a commitment to present the paper at a session during the 2020 SSSP Annual Meeting in San Francisco. To be considered, submit (a) a copy of the manuscript, (b) a cover letter specifying that the paper is to be considered in the Community Research and Development Division Community Partner Paper Competition, and (c) a brief letter from the community partner commenting on his or her role in the paper. All materials must be submitted electronically to the Annual Meeting Call for Papers on the SSSP conference website by January 31, 2020 and also sent to the Committee Chair, Felicia Casanova, M.A. at f.casanova@med.miami.edu. The winner will receive a $100 cash award and a plaque of recognition at the Community Research and Development Division business meeting.

Fall Member Spotlight
Jennifer Gaddis
Assistant Professor, Civil Society and Community Studies
School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

What are your current or upcoming projects? What about them so far has most excited or surprised you?
I am working on some popular writing and doing a lot of radio/podcasts related to my first book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs, in order to try to maximize the reach and impact of the book’s core message. I’ve also begun pilot fieldwork for my second book-length project, which draws on research in China, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, India, and Finland to examine how civil society activism, corporate interests, and national policy priorities shape the social justice and ecological goals of government-sponsored school lunch programs. I also co-lead two community-based research projects that involve graduate students in the Civil Society and Community Research PhD program at UW-Madison. The first project in South Madison, Wisconsin, examines food justice and culinary agency among an inter-generational group of parents, children, and youth. The second is a partnership with Native students and faculty in my department that is designed to enhance Indigenous food sovereignty on the Fort Peck reservation in Montana, document oral histories of food sovereignty activists, and create an interactive digital map of Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives and trade networks across Turtle Island (North America). It’s all exciting! I’m constantly inspired by the work different folks are doing to build fair, sustainable, healthy, and meaningful community food systems.

My understanding is that your first book emerged from your dissertation research. What advice do you have for graduate students and other early career scholars about producing activist and public facing scholarship at that stage in their careers? 
It was really helpful to get feedback on my early ideas and arguments at academic conferences, public presentations to community partners, and even during job talks. I conducted two years of additional research for the book beyond my dissertation—adding a significant historical component and several comparative field sites—and remained in close contact with the community partners who were at the core of the original ethnographic and participatory action research that informed my dissertation. 

I felt very strongly about writing for an academic-trade crossover audience, but had to make sure the book remained scholarly enough to earn me tenure at a major research university. This was, at times, a difficult balancing act, but I learned a lot from reading the finished work of other scholar-activists. 

I recommend that early career scholars pay attention to which presses are publishing books and articles from “engaged” scholars they admire, and then try to cultivate relationships with the editors to learn more about the press/journal. I also recommend consulting the resources on public scholarship that the Scholar Strategy Network, Center for Engaged Scholarship, and National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity have put together.

How do you see themes of social justice and community action developing over the course of your career so far, both in terms of the topics you focus on, and your approach to research? 
I began my research on school lunch interested primarily in farm-to-school programs, but as I began to interact more with food chain workers (and especially K-12 kitchen and cafeteria workers), my research became much more focused on social justice and economic alternatives to capitalism. I learned about emancipatory social science through one of my mentors, the late Erik Olin Wright, and that research framework has really guided a lot of my recent work. 

This past semester I’ve been taking steps into a new phase of my career—one in which I see my identity as a public scholar really starting to take off—by writing op-eds, talking to policymakers, doing direct outreach to community organizations working on school food reform, and establishing a social media presence on Twitter. It’s a lot of work, but I’m committed to using the platform that I have as a professor and author to push for non-reformist reforms that will benefit children, food chain workers, communities, and the environment. I actually created a curriculum guide and a community reading guide to go with my new book to help people understand ways that they can take direct action at the local, state, and federal levels. Collective action is key.

What would you say your path has been like to becoming a professor? 
I was incredibly fortunate because I got a tenure track job straight out of graduate school. My first few years of graduate school were incredibly challenging—I knew I didn’t want to be an engineer anymore, but really didn’t have much background in the humanities or social sciences. I started my PhD program at age 23 in a pretty competitive environment, which wasn’t really the best for my mental health. I made it through, but imposter syndrome remains an ongoing  struggle. I’m five years into the tenure track now and I’m finally beginning to feel like I am really establishing myself as a professor and carving out the niche I want to occupy with my scholarship, activism, and teaching. Now I’m getting to pass on lessons learned to the brand-new assistant professors in my department, and that’s really fun.

The name of your department---“Civil Society and Community Studies” in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is somewhat unusual. How do you describe it to people who are unfamiliar with it, and what appeals to you about the department?
I tell people that we have amazing students (especially graduate students) who share a strong commitment to social justice and often come to graduate school with really rich experiences with and connections to community organizations. The thing that most attracted me to the department were words in the job advertisement like “action-oriented,” “interdisciplinary,” “participatory action research,” “systems thinking,” and “community-based research.” I felt like some of the participatory research I’d been doing with a labor union on the side of my dissertation project at Yale were things that my current department at UW-Madison would actively support and encourage. The work of our faculty and students cuts across a wide range of issue areas, but what unites us is our passion for social justice, our respect for community wisdom, and our orientation to research as a force for positive social change. 

As a relatively recent SSSP and CRD division member, what have you found most useful about your membership and participation so far?
As a scholar whose work is situated at the intersection of critical food studies, American studies, environmental sociology, feminist political economy, and children’s geographies,  I’ve always had a hard time knowing where I “fit.” At the last SSSP conference (my first), I was really delighted to meet so many people who are doing critical, engaged research in sociology and related fields. I’ll definitely be back! I am particularly excited about CRD, and SSSP more generally, as a space for the graduate students in my department to begin sharing their research and connecting with other academics who share their orientation to community-based research and teaching. I am really looking forward to the 2020 conference and love that the theme specifically foregrounds hope and encourages us to “dream transformation.”

SSSP CRD Member Accomplishments:

Greg Squires recently published two articles that should be of special interest to CRD Division members: 
Ryan, Charlotte and Gregory D. Squires. 2019. “Social Movement Research With Whom: The Potential Contribution of Community-based Research Methods,” Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change, 43: 185-211. 
Gregory D. Squires. 2019. “Trump administration takes giant step backward on racial equality.” Bank Think. American Banker, August 23, 2019.

Jeff Timberlake, Erynn Masi de Casanova, Elaina Johns-Wolfe, and Madeline Flores (University of Cincinnati) organized an impressive conference, Quantitative Approaches to Measuring Gentrification in the United States, at the University of Cincinnati’s Kunz Center for Social Research in October 2019. Presenters included John R. Logan (Brown University), Richard W. Martin (University of Georgia), Jackelyn Hwang (Stanford University), Kasey Zapatka (City University of New York-Graduate Center), Brendan Beck (University of Florida), Mahesh Somashekar (University of Illinois-Chicago), Judith R. Halasz (State University of New York-New Paltz), Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana (State University of New York-Albany), H. Jacob Carlson (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Revel Sims (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Joseph Gibbons (San Diego State University) with leading qualitative gentrification scholars Japonica Brown-Saracino (Boston University) and Derek Hyra (American University) as discussants. 

Please share news of publications, dissertations, job changes, upcoming conferences, and other relevant updates with your CRD Division colleagues. Send information about recent news to halaszj@newpaltz.edu for inclusion in the next division newsletter.


Special Calls, Invitations, and Announcements

The Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) is soliciting applications for the position of Editor of the Society’s flagship journal, Social Problems.  
The Editor’s three-year term will begin with the operation of the new editorial office at mid-year 2021.  The new editor will be responsible for editing and promoting Volumes 69-71 (years 2021-2024).  We seek a diverse pool of editorial candidates with distinguished scholarly records, previous editorial experience (e.g., service as journal editor or associate editor, editor of scholarly editions, etc.), strong organizational and management skills, and the ability to work and communicate well with others, including with scholars in academic and non-academic settings.  A familiarity with and commitment to Social Problems and the SSSP are essential.  Applicants must be members or become members of the SSSP by the time of their application and continue to be a member during their tenure as editor.
Please direct all inquiries, nominations, expressions of interest, and application materials to Dr. Shirley A. Jackson, Chair, SSSP Editorial and Publications Committee, at shja2@pdx.edu.  
For a full description of the position and application process, visit: https://www.sssp1.org/file/Announcements/Editor_Social_Problems.pdf.  Deadline for applications is January 15, 2020.


Call for Submissions to a Special Issue of Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the May 4, 1970 shooting by the Ohio National Guard of Kent State students during a demonstration against the US wars in Vietnam and Cambodia and the occupation of the Kent State campus by the Ohio National Guard in Kent, OH, USA. Documenting violence, delivering accountability, and providing evidence-based insight into the causes, consequences, and ways forward are critical steps in peacebuilding following violent conflicts on campus and in communities. As the Kent State experience demonstrates, memorializing, commemorating, and understanding are equally important responses—particularly when the violence has been nation-states using violence against their own citizens. Scholarship on memorialization, peace activism, state responses, and peacebuilding have blossomed in recent decades. This volume seeks to further this key work. Paper Submissions Due by January 15th, 2020. Any questions can be directed to Volume 45’s Guest Editor, Johanna Solomon at jsolom14@kent.edu or Series Editor, Lisa Leitz at rsmcc@chapman.edu

Would you like to contribute to the CRD Division newsletter? We are looking for interviews with scholars, practitioners, or community activists working on community-related issues and short essays on timely community-related research. Interested? Please email Judy Halasz at halaszj@newpaltz.edu.  


Society for the Study of Social Problems ?Community and Research Development Division
https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageId/1329/m/464 ?Fall 2019 Newsletter