` Social Problems and Global Issues SSSP Global Division Newsletter Summer 2012 MESSAGE FROM THE GLOBAL DIVISION CHAIR Dear Members, This year’s SSSP Annual Meeting in Denver is focused on the “Art of Activism”, providing us with an opportunity to reflect upon the many creative ways people and communities are involved with making social change. The Division’s thematic session this year, “Transnational Social movements and the Making of Social Change,” includes papers on the revolutionary potential of the Occupy movement, celebrity activism and anti-trafficking, feminism in Pakistan, and the challenges facing transnational human rights activism. We are sponsoring and co-sponsoring a total of nine sessions at this year’s meetings. Below you will find a full list of these sessions, as well as a few other events that we think will be of interest. Please come out for these sessions and encourage others to do the same, you won’t be disappointed! At the Awards Banquet, on Friday, August 17th, from 8:00-10:00 PM, the Global Division will honor the winners of this year’s prize for the best graduate student paper and the outstanding book on global issues. Congratulations to this year’s winners, and thanks to all of those who sent submissions to these awards. Both competitions have consistently grown in size, and we are very encouraged by the many fine submissions we receive. Keep a look out for the announcements for next year’s competitions, which come out early in the new year. The Division is also grateful to David Fasenfest, editor of Critical Sociology, for continuing to co-sponsor our annual award for the best graduate student paper. I would also like to sincerely thank those who served as members of these award committees for your diligent work. The competitions are a great way to encourage and support critical scholarship but they cannot happen without the efforts of many dedicated volunteers. If this is something you would be interested in doing, please attend our business meeting on Thursday August 16th from 12:30-2:10 in the Imperial Ballroom. This meeting is for anyone interested in getting more involved with the Division (including graduate students). In addition to work on the award committees, we are looking for people to serve on the Executive Committee, and to work on the newsletter, membership, and other initiatives, including new ones that members would like to propose. This is our one chance all year to get together in the same space, so if you have ideas and energy, come on by! And last but not least, please be sure to join us for food and drink at the Division Sponsored Reception on Thursday August 16th, from 6:30 - 7:30 PM in Mount Evans A & B. This is a great opportunity to meet members from our division and many others, and it’s always a good time. Warm regards, Tony Roshan Samara Contents Page Sessions for 2012 Meeting 2 Member Books 5 Member Publications 6 Announcements 6 GLOBAL DIVISION SESSIONS FOR THE 2012 CONFERENCE Session 9: Social Movements and Class 'Acts' in a Digital Age Thursday 8/16 8:30 – 10:10 AM Room: Pikes Peak (AT) Co-sponsored with the Labor Studies and Poverty, Class, and Inequality divisions Organizer, Presider and Discussant:  Shawn A. Cassiman, University of Dayton Papers: “Framing Occupy Wall Street: The Commodification of Dissent and Constraints on Making Social Change,” Brian V. Klocke, SUNY Plattsburgh “Occupy Art: Visual Messages & Social Activism,” Chelsea Starr, University of Phoenix School of Advanced Studies “Radical Democracy & Insurgent Citizenship: An Analysis of the Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People’s Movement,” Grace A. Gámez, Arizona State University “What’s the Web Got to do with it? A Digital-Spatial Public Sphere and Political Mobilization in the Arab Uprisings,” Heather Marie Brown, George Mason University Session 15: Assessing Stereotypes of Immigrants as Offenders Thursday 8/16 10:30 AM – 12:10 PM Room: Longs Peak (AT) Co-sponsored with the Crime and Juvenile Delinquency and Racial and Ethnic Minorities divisions Organizer and Presider: Peter Ibarra, University of Illinois-Chicago Discussant: Amir Marvasti, Penn State Altoona Papers: “The Impression Management Tactics of an Anti-Immigration Group,” Joshua Woods, West Virginia University “Complexities of Racialization: Contextual Hierarchies and Middle-class Latin@s,” Daniel Justino Delgado, Texas A&M University “Raising Sons as Single Mothers from Socially Marginalized Groups: A Cross-National Comparison,” Grant Tietjen and Lesa Johnson, University of Nebraska - Lincoln “Citizenship, Country of Origin, and Disparities in Sentencing Outcomes in Federal Criminal Court,” Jim Clark, Florida State University Session 37: New Research on Development and Inequality Thursday 8/16 2:30 – 4:10 PM Room: Pikes Peak (AT) Organizers: David A. Smith, University of California Irvine Bhavani Arabandi, Ithaca College Presider and Discussant: David A. Smith, University of California Irvine Papers: “‘The Real Clash of Civilizations’ Revisited: The Relationship Between Islam and Patriarchy,” Mate Pleic, University of New Mexico “Challenges to the European Project: The Role of Collective National Identity and the ‘Other’ in Shaping European Solidarity,” Colleen A. Wilson-Rood, Michigan State University “Community Context, Gender, and Health in India,” Samuel Stroope, Baylor University “The Evolution of State-Business Relations in a Developing Economy: The Case of Brazil,” Kristen Hopewell, University of Michigan Session 43: Immigrant Workers and the State Thursday 8/16 4:30 – 6:10 PM Room: Pikes Peak (AT) Co-sponsored with the Labor Studies and Racial and Ethnic Minorities divisions Organizer and Presider: Daniel Tope, Florida State University Papers: “Hotel Housekeeping and the Recession: A Boom and Bust Examination of Immigrant Workers in the Hotel and Resort Industry in Las Vegas,” Christie D. Batson and Jennifer R. Keene, University of Nevada Las Vegas “Immigration Policies and Gendered Migration of Indian Professional Families,” Pallavi Banerjee, University of Illinois at Chicago “New Destination Labor Markets: The Effects of Metropolitan Labor Markets on the Changing Geography of Immigrant Settlement,” Chris Galvan, University at Albany, SUNY “Untenable Lives: Ethnic Cleansing in Arizona,” Meghan G. McDowell, Arizona State University and Luis Fernandez, Northern Arizona University “Wage Theft on the Border,” Maria Christina Morales and Eric Murillo, University of Texas at El Paso THEMATIC Session 53: Transnational Social Movements and the Making of Social Change Friday 8/17 8:00 – 9:40 AM Room: Mount Evans B (AT) Organizer:  Tony Roshan Samara, George Mason University Presider: Moon Charania, Tulane University Papers: “A Global Opportunity Structure: The Final Stage of Globalization and the Revolutionary Potential of the Occupy Movement,” Michael Julian Deayala, Ohio University “Celebrity Activism and Symbolic Capital in Anti-trafficking Campaigns,” Nadia Shapkina, Kansas State University “Symbolic Speech, Effective Caricatures: The Disciplining of Feminist Subjectivity in Pakistan,” Moon Charania, Tulane University, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program “Transnational Human Rights Activism: Challenges and Opportunities,” Debarashmi Mitra, Delta State University Session 81: Institutional Ethnographic Approaches to Governance Friday 8/17 4:30 – 6:10 PM Room: Mt. Oxford (GH) Co-sponsored with the Institutional Ethnography division Organizers:  Lauri J. Grace, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University Lauren E. Eastwood, State University of New York, College at Plattsburgh Presider and Discussant:  Lauren E. Eastwood, State University of New York, College at Plattsburgh Papers: “‘We forget about volunteers on the frontlines’: AIDS care-workers and identity formation in South Africa,” Catherine van de Ruit, University of Pennsylvania “Educational governance and family work,” Alison I. Griffith, York University “Global governance and regimes of ‘best practice’: coordinating the work of making HIV-related laws,” Daniel Grace, University of Victoria, Department of Sociology; Simon Fraser University, Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy “In The Name of National Security: A Study of Health Examination on Migrant Workers in Taiwan,” Li-Fang Liang, Institute of Health and Welfare Policy, National Yang-Ming University Session 93: Sustainability, Ecological Justice and Globalization Saturday 8/18 8:30 – 10:10 AM Room: Mt. Oxford (GH) Co-sponsored by the Health, Health Policy, and Health Services division Organizer and Presider: Jennifer J. Reed, University of Nevada Papers: “‘Acting Globally’: Re-Locating the 2010 G8/G20 Protest in Toronto,” Benjamin Waterman, University of Waterloo “Communities and Disaster Resilience: Definitions, Perceptions, and Consequences,” Fernando I. Rivera and Marc R. Settembrino, University of Central Florida “State-Corporate Crime and the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant Plea Bargain,” Peter Shrock, Southeastern Louisiana University “The Determinants of Early Ratification of the Aarhus Convention: A Cross-National Study,” Tracy Lynn Groenewegen, University of British Columbia “The Ecological Contradictions and Cultural Crisis of the Electronic Revolution: The Alienation of Nature, Technological Development, and the Commodity Fetishism of Cell Phones,” Daniel N. Auerbach and Brett Clark, North Carolina State University NEW BOOKS PUBLISHED BY MEMBERS OF THE GLOBAL DIVISION Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective by Myra Marx Ferree (Stanford University Press, 2012) Varieties of Feminism investigates the development of German feminism by contrasting it with women's movements that arise in countries, like the United States, committed to liberalism. With both conservative Christian and social democratic principles framing feminist discourses and movement goals, which in turn shape public policy gains, Germany provides a tantalizing case study of gender politics done differently. The German feminist trajectory reflects new political opportunities created first by national reunification and later, by European Union integration, as well as by historically established assumptions about social justice, family values, and state responsibility for the common good. Tracing the opportunities, constraints, and conflicts generated by using class struggle as the framework for gender mobilization and juxtaposing this with the American liberal tradition where gender and race are more typically framed as similar—Ferree reveals how German feminists developed strategies and movement priorities quite different from those in the United States. We Are in This Dance Together: Gender, Power, and Globalization at a Mexican Garment Firm by Nancy Plankey-Videla (Rutgers University Press, 2012) We Are in This Dance Together examines Moctezuma (a pseudonym), a successful garment firm in central Mexico producing high-end suits for export from 1969 to 2002. Contrary to the image of a sweatshop operating in the global South, Moctezuma represented a high-road to development, premised on Japanese-style teamwork-based organization and a highly skilled female workforce. The case study is based on ethnographic fieldwork which included laboring as a garment worker for nine months (with permission from management, workers, and the union), as well as interviews with managers, workers, and policy-makers. The book traces the relationship between changes in the global economy, state policies, firm organization, and women’s agency at Moctezuma by contrasting work organization over three decades, in addition to labor strikes that occurred in 1972 and 2001. By examining both the objective conditions of work and the subjective experience of women workers during two strikes, Plankey-Videla found that women’s understanding of what it is to be a worker changed as the socio-political and organizational contexts shifted. The political opportunity structures available to these women differed significantly, providing distinct spaces to resist managerial dictates, mobilize against state repression, and build coalitions with other workers and social actors. The book also challenges dominant management theories that equate development with industrial upgrading (i.e., the adoption of organizational, technological, and product innovations). Plankey-Videla demonstrates how globalization processes—namely neoliberal free-trade policies and the consolidation of power in the hands of a few large retailers (i.e. Wal-Mart) and branded manufacturers (i.e. Calvin Klein)—diffuse organizational innovations in the garment industry in contradictory ways, undermining productivity and opportunity in the global South. NEW ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS PUBLISHED BY MEMBERS OF THE GLOBAL DIVISION Nicole Fox. 2011. “‘Oh, did the women suffer, they suffered so much:’Impacts of Gendered based violence on Kinship Networks in Rwanda” International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 37 (2) Nicole Fox. 2012. “‘God Must Have been Sleeping’: Faith as an Obstacleand a Resource for Rwandan Genocide Survivors” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52(1) Matthew Mahutga and David A. Smith. 2011 “Globalization: The Structure of the World-Economy and Economic Development.” Social Science Research, 40(1) Nancy Plankey-Videla. “Consent as Process: Problematizing Informed Consent in Organizational Ethnographies.” Qualitative Sociology, 35(1) Tony Roshan Samara. 2012. “Citizens in Search of a City: Towards a New Infrastructure of Political Belonging,” in Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City. Edited by Michael Peter Smith and Michael McQuarrie. Transaction Publishers. John Shandra, Louis Edgar Esparza and Bruce London. 2012. “Non-Governmental Organizations, Democracy, and Deforestation: A Cross-National Analysis” Society & Natural Resources, 25(3) ANNOUNCEMENTS Society for the Study of Social Problems 2012 General Election SSSP is looking for nominees for: * * President-Elect * Vice-President Elect * Secretary * Treasurer * Board of Directors / Student Board Representatives * Budget, Finance and Audit Committee * Editorial and Publications Committee * Committee on Committees * Membership and Outreach. If you or someone you know might be interested in serving, more information can be found at http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/1082/ Public Sociology Graduate Conference The graduate-run conference at George Mason University will be hosting its second annual Public Sociology Graduate Conference on October 20. This year’s theme will be “Borderlands in Academia, Activism, and Policy.” We invite both graduate students and faculty who are near the Washington D.C. metro area to attend this conference and engage with the students who will be presenting their work. For continuing updates, check the conference website at http://gmupublicsoci.wordpress.com/public-soci-grad-conference/ Global Division Newsletter Editor Jason Smith, PhD Student George Mason University Jsm5@gmu.edu 7