SSSP Global Division Newsletter Fall 2015 Dear Global Division Members, Thanks to all of you for such a warm welcome in my first few months as the Chair of the Global Division. It has been a busy fall! We have finalized our sessions for the upcoming 2016 SSSP Conference in Seattle and it is shaping up to be a wonderful program. We have timely and interesting Global Division sessions, and given the conference theme of “Globalizing Social Problems,” the call for papers is filled with panels that will be of interest to our members. Don’t forget to take a look at our list of sessions and submit your papers for presentation. SSSP memberships are based on a calendar year that runs January 1-December 31, so if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to renew your membership in the Society and the Global Division. If you can, please help to recruit new faculty and graduate students for membership as well. You already know some of the benefits: receiving the journal Social Problems; having access to award and scholarship competitions, such as the Global Division Student Paper Competition and the Global Division Outstanding Book Award; networking with other scholars who have a commitment to social justice research and action; and participation in the annual meeting that never fails to provide engaged and collegial audiences. Let’s spread the word and see if we can grow the Global Division. Please feel free to get in touch with me at slimonce@lmu.edu if you have any ideas, questions or comments about the Division or if you’d like to become more involved. Best wishes, Stephanie Limoncelli MEMBER PUBLICATIONS Paul D. Almeida. 2015. "Unintended Consequences of State-Led Development: A Theory of Mobilized Opposition to Neoliberalism." Sociology of Development 1(2). Kristen Hopewell. 2015. "Multilateral Trade Governance as Social Field: Global Civil Society and the WTO." Review of International Political Economy, Online First: DOI:10.1080/09692290.2015.1066696 Vali Mansouri and Abdallah Hendawy. 2016. “Fooled by the folol? How antagonisms and misrecognitions within social currents stunted the Egyptian Revolution.” Understanding Southern Social Movements, edited by S. Fadaee. New York: Routledge. Jason A. Smith, Mark Lloyd, and Victor Pickard (eds.). 2015. “Communication in Action: Bridging Research and Policy,” special section in the International Journal of Communication, 9. Beth Williford and Mangala Subramaniam. 2015. “Transnational Field and Frames: Organizations in Ecuador and the US.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change, 38. NEW BOOKS BY MEMBERS Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America (Springer, 2015) Edited by Paul D. Almeida and Allen Cordero The handbook covers social movement activities in Latin American countries that have had profound consequences on the political culture of the region. It examines the developments of the past twenty years, such as a renewed upswing in popular mobilization, the ending of violent conflicts and military governments, new struggles and a relatively more democratic climate. This volume partially fills the void and offers a rich resource to students, scholars and the general public in terms of understanding the politics of mass mobilization in the early twenty-first century. Hoping to Help: The Promises and Pitfalls of Global Health Volunteering (Cornell University Press, 2016) By Judith N. Lasker Short-term volunteer trips focused on health programs in poor countries have exploded in numbers and interest in the last couple of decades. Churches, universities, non-profit service organizations, profit-making “voluntourism” companies, hospitals, and large corporations all sponsor brief missions. Hoping to Help is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of global health volunteering. Based on extensive research—interviews with host country staff, sponsor organization leaders, and volunteers, as well as a national survey of sponsors and participant observation--Hoping to Help illuminates the activities and goals of sponsoring organizations and compares dominant practices to the preferences of host country staff and to nine principles for most effective volunteer trips. Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur (University of California Press, 2015) By Joachim J. Savelsberg How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields. Representing Mass Violence contributes to our understanding of how the world acknowledges and responds to violence in the Global South. Open access version of the book can be accessed here: http://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/detail/3/representing-mass-violence/ Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class, and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market (Routledge, 2015) By France Winddance Twine Through case studies, Outsourcing the Womb, Second Edition provides a critical analysis and global tour of the international surrogacy landscape in Egypt, India, China, Japan, Israel, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States. By providing a comparative analysis of countries that have very different policies, this book disentangles the complex role that race, religion, class inequality, legal regimes, and global capitalism play in the gestational surrogacy market. This book provides an intersectional frame of analysis in which multiple forms of social inequality and power differences become institutionalized and restrict the access of some individuals and families while privileging others, and concludes with a discussion of "reproductive justice" and "reproductive liberty." It is an ideal addition to courses on social problems, race, gender, and inequality. CALL FOR PAPERS INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY SPECIAL ISSUE “THE THIRD SECTOR AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC RECESSION” Deadline January 10, 2015 The special edition asks: what are the limits to the roles of third sector organizations with limited resources? Are third sector issues affected by country, institutions, policy, period, areas of activity and global economic recession? The special edition wishes to draw on examples from a range of areas of activity (such as education, welfare, employment, health and social care), and areas of activity with particular groups (such as migrants and refugees, children and older people), as well as a range of countries (including the Africas, the Americas, EU and Asia). See more at: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/authors/writing/calls.htm?id=6189#sthash.XovYBP6L.dpuf QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN SPORT, EXERCISE AND HEALTH SPECIAL ISSUE “ENGAGING THE FIELD: SPORT IN UNDER-RESOURCED, UNDERDEVELOPED AND CONFLICT REGIONS” Deadline March 31, 2016 There have been concomitant calls for increased rigor in sport for development and peace (SDP) research and cautions against neocolonial approaches that may subjugate knowledge. To address these concerns, this special issue calls for research that considers the impacts of SDP programmes as well as the role of sport as it naturally occurs in under-resourced, underdeveloped, and conflict regions. Of particular interest is research that is methodologically diverse, innovative, and engages with athletes, coaches, and community stakeholders (e.g., teachers, police officers, pastors, government leaders) to better understand the meaning they ascribe to sport, their sport experiences, and their perceptions of the role of sport in promoting (or obstructing) development and peace. Additional topics might include, but are not limited to, the use of sport in social movements, sport experiences of those connected to gender-based violence (victims and perpetrators), and the meaning and role of sport after a disaster or terrorist activity in community response and rebuilding. See more at: http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/pgas/rqrs-engaging-the-field FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES SPECIAL ISSUE “GENDERED AGEING BOIDES IN POPULAR MEDIA CULTURE” Deadline May 15, 2016 This special issue of Feminist Media Studies will explore the interconnections between gender, ageing bodies and popular (media) culture in global societies. How is ageing addressed by cultural expressions world-wide in terms of gender displays and heteronormative frames? What kind of consumerist imperatives are circulated across the globe, and what are the particularities that distinguish communities and cultures? More information on the call for papers can be found here: http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/rfms-gendered-ageing-bodies-popular-media-culture CALL FOR PROPOSALS Global Exploitation Cinemas – Bloomsbury Academic Global Exploitation Cinemas publishes original monographs and edited volumes of around 100,000 words that explore the highly dynamic area of international "exploitation" film production and consumption. Encompassing a broad range of contexts, from industry to audiences to cultural history, it considers filmic trends and traditions, the work of specific directors, producers, stars and audiences. More information can be found at http://globalexploitationcinemas.weebly.com/ CALL FOR PROPOSALS The Geopolitics of Information – University of Illinois Press The geopolitics of information has moved to the center of the encompassing and increasingly conflicted question of who will shape the global political economy, and how. The dispensation of the world’s communication systems and information resources constitutes both a domain of political-economic rivalry conducted by states and corporations, and a field of social contestation involving a wider set of social actors. This new series is broadly demarcated to foreground both interstate rivalries and societal struggles, and to encompass both emergent pressure points and environing social-historical dynamics. We are now soliciting book manuscripts in the 60,000 word range -- short, well-documented, critical studies of topical issues and trends. CALL FOR PROPOSALS Protest, Media and Culture – Rowman & Littlefield 'Protest, Media and Culture' will publish edited collections and monographs dedicated to the study and analysis of an irrepressible phenomenon: the worldwide resurgence of social, cultural, political and economic discontent. The evidence for this development is found in the constant appearance of contentious activities, which emerge from a fundamental conflict between formal authority and those forces that, for a variety of reasons, attempt to censure, oppose, alter or even destroy the perceived iniquities of the ‘dominant’ social order. The series will make particular reference to the mediated character of protest and dissent, but will also encompass theoretical, organisational and practical issues, and will include both historical and contemporary examples. More information on the series can be found at http://www.rowmaninternational.com/series/protest-media-and-culture The proposal form can be downloaded from http://www.rowmaninternational.com/working-with-authors/submitting-a-proposal THIRD WORLD THEMATICS CALL FOR SPECIAL ISSUE PROPOSALS TWT focuses on the political economy, development and cultures of those parts of the world that have experienced the most political, social and economic upheaval, and which have faced the greatest challenges of the postcolonial world under globalisations: poverty, displacement and diaspora, environmental degradation, human and civil rights abuses, war, hunger and disease. TWT serves as a signifier of oppositional emerging economies and cultures, ranging from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and even those ‘Souths’ within a larger perceived ‘North’, such as the US and South and Mediterranean Europe. The study of these otherwise disparate and discontinuous areas, known collectively as the ‘Global South’, demonstrates that as globalisation pervades the planet, the south, as a synonym for subalterity, also transcends geographical and ideological forms. TWT will publish special issues on an online only basis, offering authors the opportunity to publish their work in carefully curated issues, led by experts in the field. The editor of Third World Thematics welcomes proposals for Special Issues via completion of the form submitted through ScholarOne. General questions can be directed to the Journal Manager, Madeleine Hatfield. For full instructions, please click here. AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS VISITING FELLOWSHIPS Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology Deadline January 15, 2016 Every year, the BGHS invites doctoral researchers from other countries to work at the Graduate School for four months to promote international scientific and cultural exchange. Visiting fellows have the opportunity to use their stay at the BGHS to work intensively on their dissertation, visit degree programme courses and build contacts to our scientific community. Fellows receive a computer work station for the duration of their stipend. The grant consists of a EUR 1,200 stipend per month. This amount will be supplemented by a child allowance if applicable. Upon application, travel costs can also be covered by the Graduate School. More information can be found here: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/bghs/Ausschreibungen/visiting_fellowships.html GLOBAL DIVISION GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER COMPETITION Deadline January 31, 2016 The Global Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in cooperation with the Sage journal Critical Sociology announces its 2016 Graduate Student Paper Competition. The goal is to encourage critical scholarship in the areas of global or transnational studies and social problems. Suggested paper topics and more information can be found here: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/1711/ GLOBAL DIVISION OUTSTANDING BOOK AWARD Deadline March 1, 2016 The Global Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems is pleased to announce its 2016 Outstanding Book Award. Given the massive growth of interest and research in the areas of global studies and social problems over the last decade, the award is intended to recognize published work of exceptional quality in these areas and to encourage further critical scholarship about them. Accordingly, books on a variety of topics and themes will be considered for the award, including but not limited to the following: alternative models of globalization; global dynamics and forms of resistance to neoliberalism (including the post-Washington Consensus era in Latin America, Asia, Africa, or the Middle East); transnational social movements; human rights struggles and global activism (around gender, indigeneity, migration, peace, social justice, etc.); transnational communities and cultural politics; global cities. We are particularly interested in books that link critical politics and activism with analytical and theoretical rigor. More information can be found here: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/1711/ CATHARINE STIMPSON PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP Signs and the University of Chicago Press Deadline March 1, 2016 Named in honor of the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, the Catharine Stimpson Prize is designed to recognize excellence and innovation in the work of emerging feminist scholars. The prize is awarded biennially to the best paper in an international competition. The prize-winning paper will be published in Signs, and the author will be provided an honorarium of $1,000. More information can be found here: http://signsjournal.org/for-authors/calls-for-papers/ 2016 GLOBAL DIVISION SESSIONS The call for papers can be found at http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/655/ Session inquires should be sent to corresponding organizers Session 52 Globalization and the Environment Organizer: Clare Cannon, ccannon3@tulane.edu Co-sponsored with Environment and Technology Session 58 Gender and Globalization Organizer: Ligaya McGovern, lmcgover@iuk.edu Session 59 Trans-Pacific Pact: Critical Perspectives - THEMATIC Organizer: Ligaya McGovern, lmcgover@iuk.edu Session 60 ROUNDTABLES: Globalization, Development and Social Change Organizer: Stephanie Limoncelli, slimonce@lmu.edu Session 61 Care Work in the Global Economy - THEMATIC Organizer: Fumilayo Showers, fshowers@ccsu.edu Co-sponsored with Labor Studies Session 62 Global Poverty Organizer: Joyce Bialik, joyce.bialik@alum.wssw.yu.edu Co-sponsored with Poverty, Class, and Inequality Session 63 Global Capitalism: Race, Ethnicity and Class - THEMATIC Co-sponsored with Racial and Ethnic Minorities Organizer: hara bastes, hbastas@lagcc.cuny.edu Session 64 Globalizing Social Problems Theory - THEMATIC Organizer: Donileen R. Loseke, dloseke@usf.edu Co-sponsored with Social Problems Theory Session 65 Citizenship in Comparative Perspective Organizer: Heidy Sarabia, hsara@sas.upenn.edu Co-sponsored with Sociology and Social Welfare Session 66 Teaching Globalization - THEMATIC Organizer: Bhavani Arabandi, barabandi@ithaca.edu Co-sponsored with Teaching Social Problems BOOK REVIEW: ON THE STATE Reviewed by Vali Mansouri George Mason University This volume of collected lectures allows scholars for the first time to have a sustained engagement with Bourdieu’s thinking on the topic of the state, and proves to be an invaluable text for those who are interested in comparative historical sociology and macro transformations. Additionally, its release is timely, with recent scholarship also highlighting the relevance of Bourdieusian theory for both historical analysis (Gorski 2013), and political and public sociology (Burawoy and Von Holdt 2012; Swartz 2013). What is surprising about this volume is that opposite the common image of Bourdieu as a theorist of “reproduction,” we see him not only dealing with social change in a serious and sustained manner, but he is also well versed in the main debates of historical sociology. He builds his own perspective by engaging with influential schools of thought: the state centric scholars such as Tilly and Skocpol; as well as Marxists scholars like Althusser, Perry Anderson and Gramsci. True to his “anarchist temperament” (166), Bourdieu’s epistemological break aims to reject taken for granted understandings of the state. He advocates a radical doubt of the categories produced and guaranteed by the state to undermine the ”collective fiction” – while also critiquing economistic analyses offered by orthodox Marxists that reduce the state to merely a committee of the dominant classes, or the opposite strong assertion of autonomy that reifies the state as a unified entity “above” and “separate” from society. What struck me most was the strong affinity between his theory and that of Micheal Mann’s (1993) perspectives on the topic. While resuscitating Weberian theory of the state, Mann argues that few states rarely, if ever, are unitary actors. Bourdieu is in line with the institutionalist perspective that sees the state as overlapping networks (276) that are not always neatly aligned or organized according to coherent singular ends or a singular logic of a dominant field. Better understood “as the unified symbol of disunity”, state institutions can be in conflict and antagonistic with regards to their own interests, leading to fragmented behavior. Yet Bourdieu differs in his radical break with Max Weber in stressing the state’s drive to monopolize “legitimate” forms of symbolic violence and not solely physical violence, advancing a (expanded) Materialist theory of the symbolic (166). The primitive accumulation (with a Marxist flavor) of symbolic power was the condition for successful exercising of authority and coercion. Dominance of economic logic and interests is not a necessary given, other logics and influences can animate and compete for shaping the reason of state, be it religious establishments, legal jurists, kin-ship based patrimonial networks, or a bureaucratic apparatus. Contra the reification of the state as a unified and coherent actor, the state itself is the site of struggle. What is intriguing here is that Bourdieu suggests even the reproductive absolutist strategies of the “King’s house” to deepen and expand their grip on power, having France in mind, can ultimately change and transform the very nature of the state through the unintended consequences and the struggles that it unleashes. As the king is trying to exert more control over the polity he will need to delegate and expand his staff of ministers and jurists, who develop their own reasons, interests, and discourses for the perpetuation of the state. Through further extensions of the networks and chains of domination, the potential leaks of power increase, producing autonomous power centers that eventually compete and undercut the king, as with the outburst of the French Revolution (276). This longue durée approach is essential to his method, influenced by the Annales historical School, which stresses tracing the development and culmination of long-term cumulative processes. Although there is an absence of engagement with the transnational arena, notwithstanding Bourdieu’s limited discussion of the imperialism of the universal of statist governmentality practices, more contemporary scholars have extended these concepts in analyzing empires and colonial states (Go 2013; Steinmetz 2006). From a different angle, inspiration could be drawn from towards the end of the book, where Bourdieu argues that the involution and dissolution of state power is the best opportunity to understand its deeper secrets, since its grip on reality is weakened and relativized (359). I would argue that it is precisely here that this work holds much promise for advancing the study of revolutions, social movements, and state breakdown. Through greater attention to the relevant complexities of interests and competitions implicated in the state, we can move beyond the limits of the currently common approaches with their comparative, quasi-experimentalist, focus on the binary outcomes of success/failure (Foran 2005; Goldstone 1991; Skocpol 1979). The tracing of conflict and the struggles of actors, collectivities, and institutions -- both inside and outside the state field -- can illuminate both conditions conducive to the emergence of revolution and sensitivity to the power (re)arrangements of a newly established social order. Not content with merely explaining the occurrence of a revolution, instead we are asked to attentively uncover in what respects there are breaks, or continuities, with the past. The relative autonomy of states, is not a given but an achievement. This ”autonomy” is more successfully exercised if the sub-fields and collective actors in the larger state, act in cooperation and concert to use state capacities whether it is to repress, to co-opt (domesticate) important segments of society, and/or through social policy that can fragment and divide social classes. These strategies can converge to produce state resilience. Whereas conflict between segments of elites and sub-fields of the state produces state vulnerability when facing down uprising, as with the most recent example that readers may recall when the military (SCAF) was at odds with the Mubarak Regime, that helped precipitated the latter’s collapse in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 (Mansouri & Hendawy 2016). It might even be useful to step away from analyses of common European cases that dominate discussions in historical sociology. Efforts instead might use the fields analysis in explaining state-formation and breakdown in the “Global south”, or post-colonial polities. Removed from our natural political habitus, we could learn to see “Western” cases in a new light that doesn’t take it as the standard point of reference or model of what a “rational” state is to be. References Anderson, Perry. 2013. Lineages of the Absolutist State. New York: Verso. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2014. On the State. Cambridge: Polity Mann, Michael. 1993. The Sources of Social Power Vol 2. New York: Cambridge University Press. Michael Borawoy, and Karl Von Holdt. 2012. Conversations with Bourdieu. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Foran, John. 2005. Taking Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Go, Julian. 2013. "For a Postcolonial Sociology." Theory and Society, 42(1):25-55 Goldstone, Jack A. 1991. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gorski, Philip S. (ed.). 2013. Bourdieu and Historical Analysis. Durham: Duke University Press. Mansouri, Vali and Hendawy, Abdallah. 2016. “Fooled by the folol? How antagonisms and misrecognitions within social currents stunted the Egyptian Revolution” Understanding Southern Social Movements, edited by S. Fadaee. New York: Routledge. Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steinmetz, George. 2007. The Devil’s Handwriting. University of Chicago Press. Swartz, David. 2013. Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. On the State: Lectures at the Colle`ge de France, 1989-1992 Pierre Bourdieu Cambridge: Polity Press. 2014. 449pp. Social Problems and Global Issues Fall 2015 # Additional opportunities from SSSP The Society for the Study of Social Problems has spent considerable effort in updating the association’s website with opportunities, job postings, and other announcements. In addition, please share news of recently published books, articles and papers, award nominations and receptions, and other items of interest with SSSP. If you wish to have an announcement posted, please send an email to sssp@utk.edu Student paper competitions and outstanding scholarship awards. Deadlines vary, check each division for more details. Racial/Ethnic Minority Graduate Scholarship. Deadline February 1, 2016. Travel fund awards, including the Lee Student Support Fund, as well as the Lee Scholar Support Fund for foreign scholars. Deadline March 15, 2016 Newly formed Arlene Kaplan Daniels Paper Award for the best paper on “Women and Social Justice.” Deadline April 15, 2016. Beth B. Hess Memorial Scholarship for PhD students. Deadline April 1, 2016. Affiliated calls for papers Current job postings Connect with SSSP’s journal, Social Problems The Society for the study of Social Problems’ flagship journal, Social Problems, has launched a social media campaign to promote work published within its pages. Be sure to follow the journal on Facebook and Twitter (click the icons), as well as check out a new feature online called The Author’s Attic. The Author’s Attic offers short discussions with the authors of articles published within the journal. They can be useful for classroom purposes, or sharing with a broader public. The Author’s Attic can be found here: http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/content/authors-attic MEMBER NEWS Paul Almeida, University of California-Merced, received the 2015 Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) for his book, Mobilizing Democracy: Globalization and Citizen Protest (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Paul also received a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship from 2015 to 2017 in Honduras for his project entitled, “Nongovernmental Organizations and Community Well-Being.” Kristen Hopewell’s 2014 article in Critical Perspectives on International Business, “The Transformation of State-Business Relations in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Brazilian Agribusiness,” was awarded the Outstanding Paper Award by the journal for 2015. Newsletter Editor: Jason Smith, PhD candidate—George Mason University, jsm5@gmu.edu