American Communities and the Public Good

Do American individuals have the moral stature, American communities the capacity to think beyond their own interests, and American political and social structures the wherewithal to nurture public-minded discussion and policy? Three scholars who have engaged these issues both inside sociology and in the wider public discourse will reflect on where we stand today.

Organizer: Michael Schudson, University of California, San Diego
Panel: Theda Skocpol, Harvard University
Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University
Robert Bellah, University of California, Berkeley
Discussion: Michael Schudson, University of California, San Diego

Black Popular Culture

The panelists will address a wide range of issues concerning the state and study of black popular culture. Among the topics to be discussed includes the conditions of black cultural production, content trends and policy related matters regarding racial and ethnic diversity in U.S. television; black popular culture and everyday life; the global resonance of black popular culture; and the creation of the Hip Hop archives at Harvard University. The audience will be encouraged to participate in the discussion.

Organizer: S. Craig Watkins, University of Texas, Austin
Panel: Herman Gray, University of California, Santa Cruz
Darnell Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles
Nicole Fleetwood, University of California, Davis
Eithne Quinn, The University of Manchester, UK
Marcyliena Morgan, Harvard University

Body Politics: Where the Public and the Private Meet

Regulating bodies constitutes one site where public ideologies and social institutions concerning race, gender and other forms of inequality are made real. People's bodies are also sites of private individual agency, places where individuals construct their own realities in response to the demands of social institutions in the public sphere.

Organizer: Patricia Hill Collins, University of Cincinnati
Panel: Oyeronke Oyewumi, State University of New York, Stony Brook:
Rana Emerson, University of Texas, Austin
Juan Battle, Hunter College & City University of New York Graduate Center

Collaborating on a Public Issue: The Case of Family Leave

This session will look at the Labor Project for Working Families and specifically, the case of family leave in California as a public issue that transcends disciplinary boundaries and divergent publics. How issues like family leave are framed, reframed, and legitimized is an ongoing political and sociological process related to questions of both inequality and social justice.

Organizer: Phyllis Moen, University of Minnesota
Panel: Ruth Milkman, University of California, Los Angeles, and ILE
Eileen Applebaum, Rutgers University
Netsy Firestein, Labor Project for Working Families
Joan C. Williams, American University

Conscience: Sociological Reconstruction and Deconstruction

What is "conscience" at the beginning of the third millennium? Where did it come from? Where is it going? What role has sociology played in defining it over the past century? And what can be said about sociology-as-conscience vis-à-vis sociology-as-science in both historical and contemporary perspective?

Organizer: William H. Swatos, Jr., Association for the Sociology of Religion
Panel: Robert N. Bellah, University of California, Berkeley
Anthony J. Blasi, Tennessee State University
John H. Simpson, University of Toronto
Discussion: Edward Tiryakian, Duke University

Institutional Identities and the Public Realm

Individual identities traditionally have been viewed as forming within close relationships, called the “private realm.” Today, individual identity has moved decidedly into the “public realm.” Presenters will consider issues that arise in identity construction when institutions deploy the identities and related discourses they need to do their work.

Organizer: James Holstein, Marquette University
Presider: Jaber F. Gubrium, University of Missouri, Columbia
Panel: Robert M. Emerson, University of California, Los Angeles
Amir Marvasti, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona
Donileen R. Loseke, University of South Florida
Dorothy E. Smith, University of Toronto

Life Courses in the Globalization Process: Six Years of International Comparative Research

Globalization generates uncertainty, yet individuals still commit to careers, educational paths, and family. How? Do patterns of adaptation diffuse among modern societies, or do institutional differences such as welfare regimes, educational systems, and family traditions preserve national differences? We present core findings from the six-year GLOBALIFE Project on life courses in over 15 OECD-type countries under globalization.

Organizer: Heather Hofmeister, Otto Freidrich University, Bamberg
Panel: Detlev Lueck, University of Bamberg, Germany
Dana Hamplová, University of Bamberg and Charles University, Czech Republic
Daniela Grunow, University of Bamberg, Germany
Dirk Hofaeker and Sandra Buchholz, University of Bamberg, Germany
Discussion: Hans-Peter Blossfeld, University of Bielefeld, Germany

Medicalized Masculinities: History and Culture

Until recently, research on medicalization has almost exclusively focused on female bodies. Partly inspired by the introduction of new sexual technologies, however, sociology is recognizing that men may no longer be exempt from medical control. This panel explores the social construction and regulation of masculinity by medicine in the West.

Organizer: Dana Rosenfeld, Colorado College; and Christopher Faircloth, North Florida-South Georgia VA Medical Center
Panel: Alan Petersen and Samantha Regan De Bere, University of Plymouth
Meika Loe, Colgate University
Lisa Jean Moore, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
Marisa M. Smith, VA San Diego Healthcare System

Privatization of the State

The privatization of public goods stands to transform social institutions in fundamental ways. Panelists will draw on their own work around a given social institution to consider the ways that the process of privatization is shaping a critical public good and the ways that process has implications for citizenship and inequality in American society.

Organizer: Doug Guthrie, New York University
Panel: Richard Arum, New York University
Jeff Manza, Northwestern University
Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University

Public vs. Private Solutions to Work-Family Issues

This thematic session will explore the advantages and disadvantages of public provision of programs to address work-family issues. Each panelist will be asked to reflect on both signs of progress as well as barriers to overcome before public solutions to "private" work-family dilemmas become commonplace. Audience discussion follows.

Organizer: Jennifer Glass, University of Iowa
Panel: Ann Orloff, Northwestern University
Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women’s Policy Research
Sandra Hofferth, University of Maryland, College Park
Erin Kelly, University of Minnesota

Regulating the Corporation?

The globalization of labor, product, capital, and regulatory markets create challenges for regulating the contemporary corporation. This panel explores what recent work in economic sociology tells us about what corporate regulation can and should do in light of the evident failures of the de-regulatory Washington Consensus model.

Organizer: Gerald Davis, University of Michigan
Panel: Frank Dobbin, Harvard University
Jerry Davis, University of Michigan
Lauren Edelman, University of California, Berkeley
Neil Fligstein, University of California, Berkeley
Discussion: Mark Granovetter, Stanford University

Religious Discourse in Liberal Societies: Thriving, Dying, or Transforming?

Critics have claimed that the public square has become “naked” in recent years due to the exclusion of religious voices in the name of reaching consensus on difficult topics. Is this really an accurate description of the public sphere? If so, how does this exclusion occur?

Organizer: John Evans, University of California, San Diego
Panel: Paul Lichterman, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Richard Madsen, University of California, San Diego
Rhys H. Williams, University of Cincinnati
Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The Corpse in Contemporary Culture: Identifying, Recoding, and Transacting the Dead Body in the 21st Century

Panelists will discuss their own research and debate the social meanings of the corpse in a social world shaped by new technologies of the body, terrorism, war, the global marketplace, entertainment, and a mass media engrossed with the problem of death and voyeuristic exploitation and proper “uses” of the corpse.

Organizer: Jacque Lynn Foltyn, National University
Panel: Meira Weis, Hebrew University, Israel
KevinO'Neill, University of Redlands
William Bogard, Whitman College
Efrat Tseelon, University College Dublin

University, Inc.: The Corporatization of Academic Life

The corporatization of the university apparently is proceeding apace. The importation of business models and market approaches into higher education governance and research culture threaten the valued ability to engage in unfettered inquiry, free access and open forums for deliberation which historically have been definitive of university life.

Organizer: Daniel Cook, University of Illinois, Urbana
Panel: Garry Rhoades, University of Arizona
Jason Owen-Smith,University of Michigan
Cary Nelson, University of Illinois
Stanley Aronowitz, City University of New York Graduate Center

What's the Problem? Is Privatization the Answer?

The theme of privatization dominates current discussions about social security and health care, not only in the United States but in other nations as well. The papers in this session discuss the social construction of privatization debates and consider the distributional and redistributional consequences of recent policy trends.

Organizer: Jill Quadagno, Florida State University
Panel: Daniel Beland, University of Calgary
Debra Street, Florida State University
Madonna Harrington Meyer, Syracuse University
John Williamson and Catherine Sigworth, Boston College