Sartre for the twenty-first century?

By virtually dominating French intellectual life (literature, philosophy, culture) during the early post-World War II period, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) embodied what Pierre Bourdieu calls a “total intellectual” – one who responds to and helps frame public debate on all the intellectual and political issues of the day. During his lifetime and even after his death in 1980, Sartre’s thinking and political engagements provoked sharp reactions, both positive and negative, in France and abroad. Marxism, decolonization struggles, and violence are three key themes on which Sartre’s public positions continue to generate considerable debate – a debate that remains relevant today.

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The crisis of neoliberalism and the future of international institutions: A comparison of the IMF and the WTO

The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same hegemonic project, their distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance.

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Bringing the body back into theory and methodology

This is a discussion of a book by Kathryn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses. Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; and a book by Judith Farquhar, Appetites. Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

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How to model an institution

Institutions are linkage mechanisms that bridge across three kinds of social divides—they link micro systems of social interaction to meso (and macro) levels of organization, they connect the symbolic with the material, and the agentic with the structural. Two key analytic principles are identified for empirical research, relationality and duality. These are linked to new research strategies for the study of institutions that draw on network analytic techniques. Two hypotheses are suggested. (1) Institutional resilience is directly correlated to the overall degree of structural linkages that bridge across domains of level, meaning, and agency. (2) Institutional change is related to over-bridging, defined as the sustained juxtaposition of multiple styles within the same institutional site. Case examples are used to test these contentions. Institutional stability is examined in the case of Indian caste systems and American academic science. Institutional change is explored in the case of the rise of the early Christian church and in the origins of rock and roll music.

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The Multiple Meanings of Work for Welfare-Reliant Women

Based on ethnographic and interview data collected at two welfare to work offices, this paper explores the various meanings that welfare-reliant women give to paid work. Although studies show that welfare-reliant women support work requirements and believe that welfare receipt should be temporary, even Progressives often fail to see the multiple meanings work has for poor women, and how similar these are to the meanings most Americans attach to work. Not only do poor women want to work for basic economic survival, but they view paid work as a means to family security, a path to fulfilling personal aspirations, and as their civic responsibility.

Theorizing the institution: foundations,duality, and data

Although a central construct for sociologists, the concept of institution continues to elude clear and full specification. One reason for this lack of clarity is that about 50 years ago empirical researchers in the field of sociology turned their gaze downward, away from macro-sociological constructs in order to focus their attention on middle-range empirical projects. It took almost 20 years for the concept of the institution to work its back onto the empirical research agenda of mainstream sociologists. The new institutional project in organizational sociology led the way. Since then, scholars in this tradition have achieved a great deal but there is still much more to accomplish. Here, future directions for research are considered by reviewing how the concept of the institution has come to be treated by mainstream philosophers, sociologists of science and technology studies, and social network theorists.

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The critique of intelligent design: Epicurus,Marx, Darwin,and Freud and the materialist defense of science

A new version of the age-old controversy between religion and science has been launched by today’s intelligent design movement. Although ostensibly concerned simply with combating Darwinism, this new creationism seeks to drive a “wedge” into the materialist view of the world, originating with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and manifested in modern times by Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Intelligent design proponents thus can be seen as challenging not only natural and physical science but social science as well. In this article, we attempt to explain the long history of this controversy, stretching over millennia, and to defend science (especially social science) against the criticisms of intelligent design proponents – by defending science’s materialist roots.

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The poverty of organizational theory: Comment on: “Bourdieu and organizational analysis”

American organizational theorists have not taken up the call to apply Bourdieu’s approach in all of its richness in part because, for better or worse, evidentiary traditions render untenable the kind of sweeping analysis that makes Bourdieu’s classics compelling. Yet many of the insights found in Bourdieu are being pursued piecemeal, in distinct paradigmatic projects that explore the character of fields, the emergence of organizational habitus, and the changing forms of capital that are key to the control of modern organizations. A number of these programs build on the same sociological classics that Bourdieu built his own theory on. These share the same lineage, even if they were not directly influenced by Bourdieu.

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Cracking the Code: Race,Class, and Access to Nightclubs in Urban America

Using ethnographic data collected in the downtown nightlife of Athens, Georgia, we explore black males’ responses to being rejected from nightclubs via dress code enforcement in predominately white settings. We contrast these responses to the general experiences of other black males who gained access. Although race is a factor in the enforcement of dress codes, we find a fluid relationship between race, class, and taste that influences black males’ responses and experiences. We illustrate how the nuanced reality of lived racial and class experiences for many young black males problematize the narrow interpretation of a black cultural essence.

Constructing Union Motherhood: Gender and Social Reproduction in the Los Angeles “Justice for Janitors” Movement

The literature recognizes the need for unions to change their strategies in order to organize women but whether these strategies reinforce or undermine gender inequality is insufficiently examined. An ethnography of the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors movement demonstrates how women can mitigate unequal gender relations tied to social reproduction through unions. Secondary documents, participant observation and in-depth interviews with Latina/o immigrant janitors and with union staff show how women janitors constructed a union motherhood that undermined the invisibility and devaluation of caregiving generally performed by women. As they moved into union leadership, women worker leaders made caregiving more visible in union practice and recognized its value in the way they framed a broader unionism for the family. Attention to how unions contend with social reproduction extends our understanding of the consequences of union renewal for gender inequality.

Overcoming path dependency: path generation in open systems

Studies on societal path dependencies tend to focus on mechanisms that anchor and stabilize national trajectories while paying less attention to transnational interactions and multilevel governance. This paper explores processes of path transformation in societies that are presumed to have the characteristics of open systems. Two pairs of case studies are presented and compared. The first illustrates institutional change through collision, when a national path meets with another. The second describes the emergence of transnational institutional paths and the impact of that process on national institutions and their (potential) transformation. The results indicate that path transformation often stems from a gradual succession and combination of incremental steps and junctures – change is gradual but consequential. They also point to increasing co-evolutionary interaction between national path transformation and transnational path creation. This implies a need for analytical tools that are adapted to the analysis of multi-level, nested processes of institutionalization and de-institutionalization. The paper suggests that the concept of path generation allows for a better specification of the conditions for change in existing societal paths and for the emergence of new paths in the case of open systems than the concept of path dependency.

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Who Are We? Genealogists Negotiating Ethno-Racial Identities

This paper analyzes how ethno-racial standpoints influence the ways that genealogists negotiate and narrate biological and/or social interpretations of family and social history. A constructivist methodological approach grounds the analysis of three family genealogists who all have African and European lineages, but differ in their current ethno-racial identities. These case studies serve as exemplars of how individuals negotiate the racial formation processes of past and present. I suggest that there is reflexive and political potential in bio-based genealogy to transform our current racial “common sense.” The practice of genealogy reveals tacit social and biological assumptions that can serve as points of leverage for progressive social change, and yet vary by standpoint. In the context of the iconic gene we must be vigilant about the threat of genetic essentialism, yet the threat is mitigated by the simultaneous democratization of our knowledge and control over origin stories.

Contingent Government Workers and Labor Solidarity: The Case of Contract Welfare-to-Work Staff and Their Clients

Contemporary US labor solidarity faces new opportunities and challenges in the midst of global economic and governmental restructuring. Indicative of these changes the 1996 welfare reform has created a new brand of contingent government contract workers to implement welfare-to-work while simultaneously fostering contingent work among welfare clients. In this paper I use ethnographic data from a major city in New York State to explore the relative positioning of these labor groups and I ask whether contingent government workers could mediate between organized labor and welfare recipients, thereby facilitating political collaboration. I conclude by identifying considerable structural and interpersonal barriers to solidarity including lack of contingent worker consciousness, difference in “skill” levels, antagonistic relationships with clients and a tendency to interpret client hardships in terms of personal defects. I contrast these findings with instances where labor unions have become involved in welfare issues and propose steps toward a new paradigm for labor solidarity.

Bourdieu and organizational analysis

Despite some promising steps in the right direction, organizational analysis has yet to exploit fully the theoretical and empirical possibilities inherent in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. While certain concepts associated with his thought, such as field and capital, are already widely known in the organizational literature, the specific ways in which these terms are being used provide ample evidence that the full significance of his relational mode of thought has yet to be sufficiently apprehended. Moreover, the almost complete inattention to habitus, the third of Bourdieu’s major concepts, without which the concepts of field and capital (at least as he deployed them) make no sense, further attests to the misappropriation of his ideas and to the lack of appreciation of their potential usefulness. It is our aim in this paper, by contrast, to set forth a more informed and comprehensive account of what a relational – and, in particular, a Bourdieu-inspired – agenda for organizational research might look like. Accordingly, we examine the implications of his theoretical framework for interorganizational relations, as well as for organizations themselves analyzed as fields. The primary advantage of such an approach, we argue, is the central place accorded therein to the social conditions under which inter- and intraorganizational power relations are produced, reproduced, and contested. Emirbayer and Johnson are equal co-authors of this article

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“Me and the Law is Not Friends”: How Former Prisoners Make Sense of Reentry

This article examines how former prisoners of color conceptualize their political, social, and economic futures and how these conceptualizations relate to the racialized social structural obstacles encountered upon reentry and decisions to re-engage criminal labor. I find that, presented with similar post-prison challenges, excarcerated men take several approaches when reentering society. I argue that the differences among their approaches lie in their varying interpretations of how they can act as individuals against and within their social structural limitations. Their decisions to rejoin or forfeit participation in criminal economies are thus shaped by experiences confronting the limitations of material conditions but also emerge from their critiques of racialized structures.

Race and the NFL Draft: Views from the Auction Block

Previous research suggests that minorities are more likely to perceive racially-based discrimination in a variety of settings than are whites, in large part because of the ways their personal experiences with racism shape the lens they use to view the world. We examine a labor market that is typically considered an exception to patterns of racism in employment, the industry of professional football. We interview athletes who attempted to gain employment in the National Football League, a labor market where access to valued positions is heavily restricted by industry practices. Findings from field research and semi-structured interviews indicate that minority workers experience symbolic discrimination during the hiring process. Differential treatment of players reflects stereotypes about minority families and masculinity. Although minority and white players describe much of the actual content of their labor market experiences in similar fashion, their perceptions of these experiences differ sharply, with minority athletes identifying far more negative repercussions.

Modeling firms in the global economy

I examine the apparent deverticalization of firms in the world economy and their adoption of relational contracting and modularization, necessitated by rapid product change, cheap and rapid transport, and new technologies. I argue that relational contracting is superseded by modularization when possible in the interest of more control over suppliers, and modularization in turn leads to consolidation, when possible, through buying up suppliers or making them captives. The result is increased concentration of economic power in the world economy, and examples of this are presented.

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The social order of markets

In this article I develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets. The initial premise is that markets are highly demanding arenas of social interaction, which can only operate if three inevitable coordination problems are resolved. I define these coordination problems as the value problem, the problem of competition and the cooperation problem. I argue that these problems can only be resolved based on stable reciprocal expectations on the part of market actors, which have their basis in the socio-structural, institutional and cultural embedding of markets. The sociology of markets aims to investigate how market action is structured by these macrostructures and to examine their dynamic processes of change. While the focus of economic sociology has been primarily on the stability of markets and the reproduction of firms, the conceptualization developed here brings change and profit motives more forcefully into the analysis. It also differs from the focus of the new economic sociology on the supply side of markets, by emphasizing the role of demand for the order of markets, especially in the discussion of the problems of valuation and cooperation.

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An odd and inseparable couple: Emotion and rationality in partner selection

The dichotomy between emotion and rationality has been one of the most enduring of sociological theory. This article attempts to bypass this dichotomy by examining how emotion and rationality are conjoined in the practice of the choice of a mate. We posit the fundamental role of culture in determining the nature of this intertwinement. We explore the culturally embedded intertwining of emotion and rationality through the notion of modal configuration. Modal configuration includes five key features: reflexivity, techniques, modal emphasis, modal overlap, and modal sequencing. We apply this framework to the topic of partner selection. Comparing primary and secondary sources on pre-modern partner selection and on internet dating, we show that emotion and rationality were intertwined in both periods but that what differs between them is precisely the emotion-rationality modality.

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Family Responsibilities,Productivity, and Earnings: A Study of Gender Differences Among Canadian Lawyers

This study examines whether men and women invest in different determinants of productivity and whether these investments affect productivity and salary in different ways. Hypotheses are tested from human and social capital theories that include more direct measures for family responsibilities and family-friendly firm arguments. Data from 670 law firm lawyers were used given they report a standardized measure of productivity in billable hours. Despite men investing more in their careers and women investing more in their families, both report similar productivity and their productivity is affected similarly by these factors. In addition, equally productive men and women are paid the same. The findings further our understanding of productivity and salary and the relevance of family responsibilities and family-friendly firms.