Community Research and Development Division Spring 2022 Newsletter Message from the Chair……………………………………………………………………………………………...….….….……...…..…2 2022 Annual Meeting Program Theme……………………………………………………..…………………..…….….......….……4 CRD’s 2022 Conference Sessions………………………………………………...……………………….……….….…...…...….….…6 Community Research Paper Award Winner………………….……………………………………….…….…….…..……………..6 SSSP CRD Member Accomplishments………………………………………………………………………..….……………………....7 Message from the Chair By Thomas Piρeros Shields CRD Section Chair Message Dear Community Research and Development (CRD) Division Members, As we emerge from the past two years of social isolation combined with our collective and individual traumas, we might recognize that we are not returning to public spaces unchanged. The other night, a long-time colleague with over 20 years teaching experience told me that this has been the most difficult academic year in his career. As I listened to him, I considered how many of my students—as well as many of my colleagues—have shared their struggles with health and mental health crises this year. I have sat with students who cried in my office, in the hallways or after class. I saw high performing and responsible students suddenly stop coming to class or turning in assignments. And despite the efforts of health and mental health professionals, people are suffering, including many of us. Furthermore, although COVID-19 has been a collective trauma, it has not been experienced the same way by everyone, with some people bearing considerably more burden than others based on social positions related to health, race, gender, sexuality, ability, neuro-normativity or legal status. After two years of not meeting in person, the 2022 SSSP annual meeting will be held in person August 5-7th in Los Angeles, CA. While I am excited to see old colleagues and meet new ones, I do not expect that we will all experience this as a “return” to the pre-pandemic conference experience, nor will we really see a ‘post-pandemic’ world for quite some time. SSSP remains attentive to health concerns related to COVID-19 (see more information here: https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/866/2022_Annual_Meeting/). Furthermore, many of us may still be healing from wounds, both visible and invisible. At the same time, I am hopeful to create spaces where we might re-connect through communities of support and trust, as well as common inquiry. I discover my courage at the prospect of building community with all of you and look forward to learning from the collective knowledge that will be assembled in Los Angeles. In particular, the expertise of the Community Research and Development division serves to inform this moment of healing by holding discussions about scholarly work that connects us to social justice work in communities. We can look forward to a rich agenda. Our CRD Section annual meeting will be held in person on Friday, August 5th at 4:30-6:10pm, and is scheduled to meet in the Bunker Hill room (but double-check in the event of a room change). I am planning a full agenda for that meeting and I hope you can all attend. Specifically, we will: ? Consider re-writing the mission statement of our division; ? Receive the names of candidates to serve as chair elect (election to be conducted in Fall and term as chair to begin in June 2023); ? Form and selecting chairs for both the graduate student and community paper awards committees; ? Develop a preliminary list of the panel topics for the 2023 SSSP conference which will be held in Philadelphia, PA. Also, the Division-sponsored reception will be held on Saturday, August 6 from 7:15pm-8:15pm (immediately following the Awards Ceremony). Prior to the conference, our division is again sponsoring the post-conference one-day workshop on Community-Based Participatory Action Research on Monday, August 8th, led by Jessica Lucero, Felicia Sullivan, Sarah Stanlick, and Charlotte Ryan. This interactive workshop is for researchers who use or are interested in community-based participatory action research. Please pre-register since space will be limited. Our division will be sponsoring or co-sponsoring a full slate of ten panels this year. I want to thank all of the members who organized these sessions. We expect that the program and schedule of these sessions will be posted soon, but please see the list of scheduled sessions in this newsletter. In particular, we are co-sponsoring the Activist Cafι: Community Activists and Scholars in Dialogue with the Division on Conflict, Social Action, and Change. This session will create a space to focus attention on existing networks and organizations that promote university engagement in communities. We will host representatives from Urban Research Based Action Network (URBAN), Scholar Strategy Network and MetroLabs. Can we begin a discussion that explores ways to better contribute to university and community social change in the future? Finally, I want to congratulate Suzan M. Walters, Rebecca Bolinski, Ellen Almirol, Stacy Grundy, Scott Fletcher, John Schneider, Samuel R. Friedman, Lawrence J Ouellet, Danielle C. Ompad, Wiley Jenkins, and Mai T. Pho, co-authors of the Community Partner Paper Award competition winner for their article, “Structural and Community Changes during COVID-19 and Their Effects on Overdose Precursors among Rural People Who Use Drugs: A Mixed-Methods Analysis.” Also, an honorable mention was received by Andrea N. Polonijo, Karine Dubι, Jerome T. Galea, Karah Yeona Greene, Jeff Taylor, Christopher Christensen, and Brandon Brown for their co-authored article, “Attitudes Toward Payment for Research Participation: Results from a U.S. Survey of People Living with HIV.” Also, thank you to the selection committee: led by Matthew McLeskey (chair), Michael Johnston, Annette Mackay, Debarashmi Mitra and Felicia Sullivan. 2022 Annual Meeting Program Theme (Register here) Noreen M. Sugrue, SSSP President The Sociological Reimagination: From Moments to Momentum In 2001, Robert Perrucci articulated a vision of SSSP and its membership whereby both become consequential actors in public discussions and policy debates. Two decades later, the work and activism of SSSP and its members is needed more than ever. Our entry into a post-pandemic world provides us with an opportunity to recalibrate our priorities as scholars, policy analysts, teachers, and activists. We are being given an opportunity to embrace this period, with a clear sense of needed pathways toward change. Addressing and redressing today’s problems requires the full and central participation of SSSP members. SSSP scholars, be they in the academy, government, or the private sector, are uniquely qualified to play a formative role in defining, designing, and implementing the policies required for a new beginning, a new hope, and a new and fairer social order. In his widely acclaimed book Capitalism in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty contends that in order to address one of this century’s greatest threats - growing inequality – more than economists are required at the “solutions table”. This expanded solutions table is necessary if policy solutions to inequalities, inequalities, and injustices are to be based on a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social world in all its dimensions. And who better to provide such descriptions and prescriptive policy actions than sociologists, especially those of us in SSSP? However, we also must recognize that as sociologists we will not be spontaneously invited to the solutions table. In order to secure a seat at that table, we must deploy our research findings along salient avenues of public discussion and debate. We are called to translate our research findings into concrete prescriptions for change, and thereby infuse the public process with the results of our research. But sitting at the solutions table is one thing; we also must ensure that we have a suitable microphone in order to amplify our voice. Our unique voice can illuminate the issues and problems, as well as provide solutions aimed at both rectifying problems and guiding the reimagination of how a more equitable social order can be achieved. We seek our seat and our microphone not for our own careers but rather for the sake of the country and the world. In many ways, the 2022 meeting is a new beginning. COVID recently has dominated the social landscape, but we now hope to enter a post-pandemic world. It is a world in which a virus exacerbated and exposed the issues and problems that we all know need to be fixed. It is a world in which some communities are far more broken than before the pandemic, and where the endemic inequities and injustices have been laid bare for all to see. Recently, we have experienced moments that vividly illustrated the inequities and injustices we know all too well. The examples also are all too familiar: COVID, gun violence, attacks on the rights of women and LGBTQIA persons, anti-Semitism, structural racism, inhumane treatment of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, as well as inequitable access to health care, poverty, the killings of George Floyd, Adam Toledo, and countless other Blacks and Latinos at the hands of law enforcement, and climate change, in addition to the ever growing inter- and intra- country inequities. Our experiences with these moments and our entry into the post-pandemic world provide us with an opportunity to recalibrate our priorities as scholars, policy analysts, teachers, and activists. As we enter this period, there is a clear sense that this is the time for change. There is a willingness on the part of many, particularly younger people, to realign our priorities and social structures, re-prioritize how we spend resources, re-define what it means to identify a society as just, re-distribute goods and services with a commitment to equity, and re-evaluate our programs and policies through an intersectional lens. I invite each of you to join us in Los Angeles – the city of angels – in order to further a dialogue aimed at social change and action rooted in data and theory. The 2022 meeting also provides opportunities to define, energize, and commit to concrete social actions and policy work. It is the time to turn the multiple moments on our social landscape into momentum – momentum for social justice, momentum for change, momentum for SSSP scholars to move from analysis to action, and momentum to make SSSP not simply the Society for the Study of Social Problems, but also into a society that designs solutions. Noreen M. Sugrue, SSSP President  The Latino Policy Forum and The Council for International Neonatal Nurses Artwork created by Veronica I. Giraldo-Puente 2022 Annual Meeting Planning Committee Jackie Krasas, Chair, Lehigh University Heather M. Dalmage, Roosevelt University Community Research Paper Award Winner The Community Research and Development Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems is pleased to announce Suzan M. Walters, Rebecca Bolinski, Ellen Almirol, Stacy Grundy, Scott Fletcher, John Schneider, Samuel R. Friedman, Lawrence J Ouellet, Danielle C. Ompad, Wiley Jenkins, and Mai T. Pho as the 2022 Community Paper Award Competition winners. Their co-authored article, “Structural and Community Changes during COVID-19 and Their Effects on Overdose Precursors among Rural People Who Use Drugs: A Mixed-Methods Analysis.” The paper was written collaboratively with The Community Action Place, an organization using evidence-based prevention intervention for people who use drugs, based in Murphysboro, IL. Using survey and interview methods administered to people who use drugs, the study team uncovered how the pandemic impacted community well-being and the subsequent impact on individual mental health and drug use. The paper concluded with numerous intervention strategy suggestions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on people who use drugs. The paper was noted by the award committee for its mixed-method design, how the authors collaborated with Community Action Place through each part of the research process, and how their project resulted in increased trust between the organization and research participants resulting in their willingness to participate in other research opportunities. The award committee would also like to award Andrea N. Polonijo, Karine Dubι, Jerome T. Galea, Karah Yeona Greene, Jeff Taylor, Christopher Christensen, and Brandon Brown an honorable mention for her co-authored article, “Attitudes Toward Payment for Research Participation: Results from a U.S. Survey of People Living with HIV.” Polonijo and co-authors collaborated with HIV + Aging Research Project – Palm Springs, a community-based coalition of healthcare providers and people living with HIV, to further understand diverse approaches to payment to achieve equity in HIV research participation. Community Research and Development Sessions Division Sponsored or Co-Sponsored Sessions, 2022 Annual Meeting, August 5-7 SSSP will be holding its 72nd Annual Meeting in-person in Los Angeles at the Omni Hotel at California Park Plaza from August 5 through 7, 2022. Below is a list of the sessions CRD is sponsoring or co-sponsoring! Session Title Sponsors (s) Organizer(s) CRITICAL DIALOGUE: (Mis)Trust and Community Development in a Time of Racial Reckoning -THEMATIC CRD Teresa Irene Gonzales (UMass Lowell) Gentrification, Community Change, and Displacement: Implications for Policy and Practice -THEMATIC CRD Diana Cordova-Cobo (Teachers College, Columbia) (Re)imagining Immigrants Activism and Participation in Politics -THEMATIC CRD Olanike Ojelabi (UMass Boston) Pathways to Re-entry: Employment CRD; Crimes and Juvenile Delinquency; Labor Studies Michelle Estes (Oklahoma State University) CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Researchers with Lived Experience and Participants as Research Partners -THEMATIC CRD & Drinking and Drugs Alex S. Bennet and David Frank (NYU) CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Rural Crime, Drug Use, and Justice CRD; Drinking and Drugs; Law and Society Michael Branch (Syracuse University) CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Social Infrastructure and Race in a Changing Climate CRD; Environment and Technology; Sociology and Social Welfare Clare Cannon (UC Davis) and Greer Ayanna Hamilton (Boston University) The Impending Mortgage Crisis and Racial Inequalities in Housing CRD & Poverty, Class, and Inequality Kenya L. Goods (Howard University) and Fitore Hyseni (Syracuse University) Community Cultural Work: Sites of Contention and Community Building-THEMATIC CRD; Sport, Leisure, and the Body; Youth, Aging, and the Life Course Michael O. Johnson (William Penn University) Activist Cafι: Community Activists and Scholars in Dialogue CRD & Conflict, Social Action, and Change Kimberly Lucas (MetroLab Network) SSSP CRD Member Accomplishments 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 Peter Kent-Stoll at pkentstoll@umass.edu for inclusion in the next division newsletter. Society for the Study of Social Problems Community and Research Development Division https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageId/1329/m/464 Spring 2022 Newsletter