Annual Report for the Sociology of Culture Section

For membership year 2016-17 Prepared by Jennifer C. Lena, Past Chair of the Section. October, 2017

Section Governance

Section Election Results:

Chair-Elect (one-year term begins in 2018) Omar Lizardo (Notre Dame)

Council Members (three year terms begin in 2017) Patricia Banks (Mt. Holyoke College) Ming-Cheng Lo (UC Davis)

Chief Operating Officer (three year term begins in 2017) Ruth “Ruthie” Braunstein (University of Connecticut)

Student Representative (two-year term begins in 2017) Ande Reisman (University of Washington) Business Meeting; August 13, 2017, 130pm-2:10pm

Agenda: 1. Welcome and thank you 2. Report from COO 3. Announcing new newsletter editors! 4. Memorial for Vera Zolberg, co-founder of the section 5. Presentation of Awards 6. Volunteers for Nominations Committee 7. Next Year’s ASA 8. Announcements

Minutes: Prepared by Allison Pugh, COO

Jennifer Lena called the meeting to order at 1:36 p.m.

Jennifer Lena welcomed newly elected section leadership, including: new council members Ming- Cheng Lo (UC Davis) and Patricia A. Banks (Mount Holyoke College); the new student representative, Ande Reisman (Univ. of Washington); the new Chief Operating Officer (COO), Ruth Braunstein (Univ. of Connecticut), and the new Chair, Omar Lizardo (Univ. of Notre Dame).

She also thanked outgoing section leadership for their service, including the outgoing student representative, Hannah Wohl (Northwestern Univ.); outgoing council members Shyon Baumann (Univ. of Toronto) and Lauren Rivera (Northwestern Univ.); and the COO Allison Pugh (Univ. of Virginia).

Jennifer Lena also thanked the 2016-17 nomination committee, including: Matthew Norton (Univ. of Oregon); Clayton Childress (Univ. of Toronto); Hillary Angelo (UCSC); Hannah Wohl; Sarah Tomczuk (Univ. of Washington); and Claudio Benzecry (Northwestern) (ex officio).

Allison Pugh reported on the section’s membership and financial status:

Membership: The culture section was the second largest section of ASA, with 1007 members at last count (8/3/17). The total was a bit down from last year, but by going over 1000, the section once again earned 6 sessions for next year. The section also had the third largest number of student members.

Financial Status: Once all the income and expenses shake out, the culture section carried a balance of almost $10,000. The section currently had $13,762 in the bank, but this did not yet reflect annual meeting expenses. Last year, the section took in almost $400 more than it spent; this year, because of the caterer’s mix-up regarding the council meeting breakfast, the section would also take in about $400 more than it spent.

The bulk of the section’s income came from the section budget allocation from ASA, which gave $3,158 this year; the rest came from dues, which gave $500 by the end of May, but by the end of the year usually came out to about $1,200. Total annual income was thus around $4300.

The section would spend $3142 [LATER CORRECTED TO $2,000 USD] this year on the reception, which was co-sponsored with the Sociology of Development section, the section on Global and Transnational Sociology and the journal Cultural Sociology. The section had also planned to spend about $375 on the council meeting food (which was half last year’s total), but ended up spending $0.

Other annual meeting expenses came from the awards the section distributes. In addition to the $300 that the section granted the graduate student award recipient, the section also spent $145 on plaques this year. The section awarded six plaques, including three section awards, one with co- winners, and two with honorable mentions. Outside the annual meeting, the section also spends $500 to support those who produce the website.

Allison Pugh concluded by noting that the section’s $10,000 carryover balance was highly unusual, and recommended that the section do something ambitious with the money, that will also in some way give back to the members.

David Schwartz (Boston Univ.) stood to commemorate Vera Zolberg, who was active in co-founding the section, serving as its second chair, and who passed away November 15, 2016. He recounted her biography and her importance to the section and the sociology of culture. Section members shared a moment of silence in memoriam.

Jennifer Lena observed that the team in charge of the newsletter and website is changing. She thanked the outgoing editor, Alexandra Kowalski (Central European Univ), with assistant Katherine Pullen (Vanderbilt Univ). She also commended the efforts of those looking for the new newsletter team, including Lauren Rivera; Gemma Mangione (Northwestern Univ.); Andy Perrin (UNC); Hannah Wohl; and Francesco Duina (Bates College and UBC). The new newsletter/website team includes: Hillary Angelo, Diane Graizbord (Univ. Georgia), and Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz (Northwestern), with assistance from Dustin Stoltz (Notre Dame). Lena reminded the section that the newsletter and website thrives or dies on the basis of member participation, and called for members to send in items of note.

Jennifer Lena called for the award committee chairs to come forward and present the section awards. She noted that the council had voted in 2016 to institute two book awards, of equal merit, and increased the book award committee members to five.

Patricia Banks, chair of the committee to select the winners of the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, thanked the committee members for their service, including Caroline Lee (Lafayette College), Marcus Hunter ((UCLA), Ben Carrington (UT Austin), and Zandria Robinson (Rhodes College). She reported that the committee was unanimous in choosing the two co-winners: Michaela DeSoucey for Contested Tastes. Foie Gras and the Politics of Food (2017, Princeton University Press), and Nicole Gonzalez van Cleve for Crook County. Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court (2016, Stanford University Press).

Paul Lichterman (USC), chair of the Clifford Geertz award for the best article, thanked his committee members Corey Fields (Stanford), Christina Simko (Williams), Andrea Voyer (Univ. of Connecticut), and Richard Wood (Univ. of New Mexico). The committee received 56 submissions for the prize, reflecting the vitality of the section. The committee awarded an honorable mention to Chana Teeger, in absentia, for her 2015 article “'Both Sides of the Story': History Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” published in American Sociological Review (Vol. 80 (6): 1175-1200). The Clifford Geertz prize was awarded to Daniel Winchester for his 2016 article “A Hunger for God: Embodied Metaphor as Cultural Cognition,” published in Social Forces (Vol. 95 (2): 585-606).

Jeff Guhin (UCLA), chair of the committee to select the Richard A. Peterson Award for Best Student Paper, thanked his fellow committee members for their service. They included: Fabien Accominotti (London School of Economics), Phillipa K Chong (McMaster University); Casey Oberlin (Grinnell College); and Mark C. Pachucki (University of Massachusetts, Amherst). The committee received 26 submissions, and awarded the honorable mention to M.B. Fallin Hunzaker (Duke PhD, now NYU), in absentia, for her paper “Cultural Sentiments and Schema- Consistency Bias in Information Transmission.” The committee conferred the Richard A. Peterson Award upon Matthew Clair (Harvard), in absentia, for his paper “Resources, Navigation, and Punishment in the Criminal Courts.”

Jennifer Lena then asked section members for nominations to serve on the 2017-2018 nominating committee. This year the committee will recruit and nominate for the following positions:

Chair-elect Two council members One graduate student representative

The following were nominated/volunteered to join the nominations committee: Shai Dromi (Harvard) Alvaro Santana-Acuña (Whitman College) Jeff Guhin Mary Ellen Konieczny (Notre Dame) Stephen Ostertag (Tulane) Andrea Voyer

Jennifer Lena noted that Chair-elect Lizardo was organizing section sessions for the 2018 ASA program, and urged section members to send their suggestions to him directly. She also commended the section’s graduate student council representatives for the 2017 graduate student panel on Turning the Dissertation into a Book. She encouraged graduate student members to send ideas about possible content for the 2018 graduate panel to the current student representatives, Gemma Mangione and Ande Reisman.

Jennifer Lena concluded her portion of the business meeting by introducing the incoming Chair Ron Jacobs (Univ. Albany), commending the 2017 slate of section sessions that he designed, and turning the gavel over to him.

Ron Jacobs acknowledged outgoing council leadership for their service, and called the meeting to a close at 2:10 p.m. ______

Section Council Meeting

Meeting Minutes: August 13, 2017 Prepared by Allison Pugh, COO

Jennifer Lena called the meeting to order at 7:05 a.m. The council approved the 2016 minutes. Attending were Elizabeth Armstrong (Michigan); student representatives Gemma Mangione (Columbia) and Hannah Wohl (Northwestern – now Columbia); Ron Jacobs (Univ. Albany); Aneesh Aneesh (Univ. Wisconsin); Francesco Duina (Bates College & UBC); Terry McDonnell (Notre Dame); Allison Pugh (Univ. Virginia) and Jennifer Lena (Columbia). Dan Hirschman (Brown) was there as an invited guest. No breakfast was served, despite Jennifer Lena ordering it in advance.

Dan Hirschman presented the SocArXiv initiative to the council. The initiative is a non-profit open- access repository for working papers and pre-publication versions of published papers, hosted at the University of Maryland and administered half by sociologists, half by librarians. He urged the council to consider integrating SocArXiv into the section awards process, and presented two different versions by which the council might do this. One version would be that the submitters would be required to post their papers on the site. A “soft” version would be simply to encourage, but not require, posting award submissions to the site.

Dan Hirschman observed that SocArXiv would pay $400 towards meeting expenses to the winner of a section award in which posting to the site was required, and would pay $250 towards meeting expenses to the winner of a section award in which posting to the site was recommended but not required. He noted that this was unlikely to be a recurring promotion.

Elizabeth Armstrong noted that if posting were required, the site could become the central hub for the administration of the awards, and thus simplify committee access to papers. Dan Hirschman observed that graduate students incurred the most risk because of their more precarious career position, but that SocArXiv believed the risk of backlash for provocative work was small. They maintained that if a paper is ready to be sanctified by a section award, then it is ready to appear in public, he said. The site also minimized the “scooping” risk because having a semi-official version out there was a defense against that. The concern that posting it to the site corrupts the blind peer review process was mitigated by the fact that peer review is not actually very blind in practice, Dan Hirschman suggested. Elizabeth Armstrong noted that there was another risk, of the paper being not as good as its author initially thought; Dan Hirschman noted that authors can take the paper down anytime, including after a prize has been awarded. Finally, he observed that capacity was not a problem, because the site was a partner of the nonprofit Center for Open Science, and hosted on the back-end by the Open Science Framework, which has a large capacity. Dan Hirschman then departed the council meeting.

The council then discussed the proposal. Some declared themselves uncomfortable with the stronger option, because requiring a member to submit a paper to a platform not formally affiliated with ASA seemed overly coercive. Some candidates might self-select out of submitting under the coercive option, because they might be possessive about work about which they feel more vulnerable. Hannah Wohl noted that the committee could adopt the soft version this year and revisit the issue in 2018. Jennifer Lena noted that if we did adopt the soft version, it would not change our review procedures; we would still use some sort of drop-box procedure.

The council voted to adopt the “soft” version, encouraging but not requiring open-access for its award submissions. Award language found on Dan Hirschman’s Scatterplot blog reads as follows:

“We encourage authors to make a non-paywalled version of their paper accessible to readers. If your paper is not already available somewhere on the internet, we recommend uploading a preprint of the published article to SocArXiv, an open-access repository for working papers and pre-publication versions of published papers.”

Jennifer Lena reported on the awards committees, noting that the council had adopted two book awards last year, and that Lauren Rivera had designed new review procedures in light of her own research.

Regarding the newsletter team transition, Jennifer Lena reported that the new team included: Hillary Angelo, Diane Graizbord (Univ. Georgia), and Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz (Northwestern), with assistance from Dustin Stoltz (Notre Dame). She declared her thanks to those who served on search team, and noted that it was a longer process than was hoped. She observed that in our 2016 council meeting, the past-Chair was assigned to supervise the website and newsletter team, but that the past-Chair did not end up playing that role. There were difficulties this year getting the newsletters published and the website updated. Jennifer Lena observed that we pay for the technical assistance of laying out the newsletter and updating the website. She opened up a discussion about how and whether the newsletter/website team should be supervised in particular, and about the section’s communications efforts more generally.

It was noted that it was difficult to control people volunteering, and that some people would always be better than others. Perhaps the best oversight process would involve the incoming chair, rather than outgoing, because that person is more invested in the future, and it allows chair-elect and newsletter editor team to get to know each other. Council members observed that historically the website was not tremendously active, and was instead more of a storage house, with only one very active year in the last twelve. Jennifer Lena noted that it was possible that in creating a website that is essentially a file cabinet, the section was effectively discouraging people from engaging on that site, sending the message that it can be neglected, where as a thriving website would promote responsibility from all parties. One member noted that a website is not the best format for constant activity, and that social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter are better suited for those tasks. Jennifer Lena observed that the advantage of the website is that login credentials can be shared and any one person can update it. Francesco Duina advocated for simplicity of communication, with less duplication and only 1-2 channels requiring section management. Jennifer Lena expressed the hope that the recently updated ASA website might signal that the association was modernizing, and that the ASA section website might be able to serve the section membership. She summarized the discussion by saying that the council recommended that, if there was to be oversight of the newsletter/website team, that the Chair-elect provide it.

Jennifer Lena noted that there was an enormous amount of ability in council; council members were used once in the beginning of their terms and once at the end. There was greater potential for using the council more effectively in the future, she noted.

Allison Pugh reported on the section’s membership and financial status:

Membership: The culture section is the second largest section of ASA, with 1007 members at last count (8/3/17). The total is a bit down from last year, but by going over 1000, the section once again earned 6 sessions for next year. The section also has the third largest number of student members.

Financial Status: Once all the income and expenses shake out, the culture section carries a balance of almost $10,000. The section currently has $13,762 in the bank, but this does not yet reflect annual meeting expenses. Last year, the section took in almost $400 more than it spent.

The bulk of the section’s income comes from the section budget allocation from ASA, which gave $3,158 this year; the rest comes from dues, which has given $500 by the end of May, but by the end of the year usually comes out to about $1,200. Total annual income is thus around $4300.

The section will spend $3142 [LATER CORRECTED TO $2,000 USD] this year on the reception, which is co-sponsored with the Sociology of Development section, the section on Global and Transnational Sociology and the journal Cultural Sociology. The section also planned to spend about $375 on the council meeting food (which is half last year’s total).

Other annual meeting expenses comes from the awards the section distributes. In addition to the $300 that the section grants the graduate student award recipient, the section also spent $145 on plaques this year. The section awarded six plaques, including three section awards, one with co- winners, and two with honorable mentions. Outside the annual meeting, the section also spends $500 to support those who produce the website.

Allison Pugh concluded by noting that the section’s $10,000 carryover balance was highly unusual, and recommended that the section do something ambitious with the money, that would also in some way give back to the members. Council suggested that the chair-elect raise the issue at the business meeting, and to form a small group to collect suggestions. The timeline for the poll would be early September, if people sent in their suggestions, they could get it down to 3-5 ideas through some soft coding.

Jennifer Lena raised the issue of forming a reception committee to take on the duties or organizing that event. The council discussed the issue and agreed the committee should be an ad hoc committee, with local representation, but could codify their procedures so that every chair would not have re-learn the process.

Jennifer Lena introduced the proposal from ASA that the section nominate a “Public Engagement Liaison,” who would serve a two-year term linking section members to the ASA communications staff. The council suggested that that person should have/maintain a confidential Google doc of section members, their contact info, and their areas of expertise/research. Francesco Duina nominated Amin Ghaziani (UBC). Terry McDonnell nominated Dustin Kidd (Temple). Elizabeth Armstrong nominated Abigail Saguy (UCLA). Council agreed that the best person would be on the East Coast, in keeping with the high proportion of media located in that time zone. Jennifer Lena resolved to contact Dustin Kidd [who later accepted].

Francesco Duina said that organizing the roundtables this year was extremely difficult, in part due to the ASA’s clunky electronic paper administration system. Jennifer Lena observed that while the section normally called for a volunteer to organize the roundtables for next year at the council meeting, Chair-elect Omar Lizardo would secure a volunteer to organize them for 2018.

Jennifer Lena called the meeting to a close at 8:22 a.m. ______

State of the Section Budget

The Sociology of Culture Section remains one of the largest sections in the ASA. While we’ve once had the largest membership, we have been the second largest section for two years now, with 1,007 members at last count (8/3/17).

The Section operated within its budget for the year. Indeed, as the Report below demonstrates (prepared by Allison Pugh), the Culture Section is in healthy financial status – with a $10,000+ carrying balance.

______

Sociology of Culture Report for Current Year

Expenditures Annual Meeting Amount Code Notes Reception $2,000.00 37300 co-sponsored with GTS, Development and the Journal Cultural Sociology Other Meeting 37310 No council bfast this year Expenses due to site's snafu Misc 37320 Other 37370 Total $2,000.00 n/a Awards Amount Code Notes Student Awards $300.00 37360 Award Plaques $147.26 37360 Misc $47.37 37360 Mailing two plaques to absent awardees Other 37360 Total $494.63 n/a Communications Amount Code Notes Website 37330 Misc $500.00 37370 Grad student assistance for newsletter/website Other 37370 Total $500.00 n/a Miscellaneous Amount Code Notes Membership 37370 Gift Memberships may not be funded from allocated funds. Funds must be raised for this purpose. Misc 37370 Other 37370 Total $0.00 n/a Summary Amount Notes Total $2,994.63 Expenditures Current Year's $3,654.00 Income Carryover $9,991.00 From Net Assets, Beginning Balance Balance in Q1 End of Year $10,650.37 Balance

Income

Source Amount Calculated Description Section $3,158.00 Allocation Fill this in using the "Section Budget Allocation" from the "Year to Date" Column

Description Levied Dues $496.00 Fill this in using the "Dues Income" from the "Year to Date" Column. Your section may not collect excess dues. Dues income accrues on a monthly basis, so this number will change over time.

Description Contributions n/a These are funds raised from members.

Description Royalties n/a Royalties donated by members or generated through other activities.

Description Outside n/a Contributions Funds donated from individuals/entities outside the section.

Total $3,654.00 n/a

Sociology of Culture Budget for Next Year Budgeted Expenditures Annual Meeting

Amount Code Notes Reception $3,000.00 37300 Other Meeting $700.00 37310 council breakfast Expenses Misc 37320 Other 37370 Awards Total $3,700.00 n/a

Amount Code Notes Student Awards $300.00 37360 Award Plaques $150.00 37360 Misc 37360 Other 37360 Communications Total $450.00 n/a

Amount Code Notes Website $500.00 37330 Misc 37370 Other 37370 Miscellaneous Total $500.00 n/a

Amount Code Notes Membership 37370 Gift Memberships may not be funded from allocated funds. Funds must be raised for this purpose. Misc 37370 Other 37370 Summary Total $0.00 n/a

Amount Notes Budgeted $4,650.00 Expenditures Estimated $4,442.00 Income Carryover $10,650.37 Brought over from current Balance year's report Est. End of Year $10,442.37 Balance

Estimated Income

Description Source Amount Calculated Section $3,158.00 (Members*2)+A 1079 Allocation "A" is determined by the overall membership size: Sections with fewer than 200 members receive a base allocation of $500. Sections with less than 300 members but more than 200 members receive a Description base allocation of: (# of section members minus 100) multiplied by $5. Sections with more than 300 members receive a base allocation of $1,000. In addition the section receives two dollars from dues of each member. To calculate this amount enter your section's membership in the red box above. Use end of year membership numbers for the previous year. This membership report is issued during the first week of October. Levied Dues $1,284.00 Special 642 369 68 Any dues raised by the sections in excess of the base rate go directly to the section's coffers. The base rate is $10 for regular members, $5 Description for students and $10 for associate (low income) members. Subscription Fees for Section Journals are not added here. To calculate this, add regular members to the light shaded box, student members to the middle shaded box, and low income members to the dark shaded box on the left hand side. Contributions n/a These are funds raised from members.

Description Royalties n/a Royalties donated by members or generated through other activities.

Description Outside n/a Contributions Funds donated from individuals/entities outside the section.

Description Miscellaneous n/a Income Anything not captured above. Please replace this text with a description Description Miscellaneous n/a Income Anything not captured above. Please replace this text with a description

Total $4,442.00 n/a ______

The Previous Year

Overview

The size of the Culture Section is matched by the vitality of its session programming, the strong submissions to all three of our award committees (i.e., best book, best article, best graduate student article/chapter), and its relation to regular session programming.

As is the custom in the Culture Section, the Chair-Elect (Ron Jacobs) was in charge of organizing the section sessions, and he did a very good job, which attracted engaged audiences and members of other sections.

We had a very active group of culture sessions for this year’s conference. In total, we were able to organize or co-organize nine sessions. This included a mini-session graduate professional workshop, which preceded the section business meeting; and a full-length roundtable session, with 15 concurrent panels. Two of the sessions were co-sponsored, with the other sections (Religion, and Global) using their allotments to support the sessions. There were a total of four open-submission sessions. There were five invited panels, which included both of the co-sponsored sessions as well as the graduate professional workshop. All of the sessions were well-attended. The largest session was the invited panel on the Presidential Election, which was standing-room only.

A full list of the sessions is included below:

Saturday, August 13, 8:30 am. History in Cultural Explanation. Organizer Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame. Attendance approximately 30 people

Saturday, August 13, 10:30 am. Culture Section Refereed Roundtables. Organizers Brian McKernan, The Sage Colleges; Hannah Wohl, Northwestern University. 15 concurrent sessions. Total attendance approximately 100 people.

Sunday, August 13, 12:30 pm. Graduate Student Professional Workshop on Turning a Dissertation into a Book. Invited Panel. Organizers Hannah Wohl, Northwestern University; Gemma Mangione, Columbia University. Total attendance approximately 30 people.

Sunday, August 13, 2:30 pm. Invited Panel. Culture and the 2016 Presidential Election. Organizer Ronald Jacobs, University at Albany. Total attendance approximately 150 people.

Monday, August 14, 8:30 am. Gender, Culture, Media. Organizer Andrea Press, University of Virginia. Total attendance approximately 30 people.

Monday, August 14, 10:30 am. Invited Panel. Public Cultural Sociology. Organizer David Smilde, Tulane University. Total attendance approximately 60 people.

Monday, August 14, 2:30 pm. The Mediation of Cultural Conflict. Organizer Matthias Revers, University of Frankfurt. Total attendance approximately 30 people.

Monday, August 14, 4:30 pm. Invited Panel, Co-sponsored with the Section on Global and Transnational Sociology. Organizers Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College; Ronald Jacobs, University at Albany. Total attendance approximately 50 people.

Tuesday, August 15, 12:30 pm. Invited panel, Co-sponsored with the Section on Sociology of Religion. Organizer Jeffrey Guhin, UCLA. Total attendance approximately 30 people.

In addition to this programming, we also had a well-attended graduate student professionalization workshop, “From Dissertation to Book: On the Publishing Process,” with panelists Jennifer C. Lena (Columbia University), Michaela DeSoucey (North Carolina State University), Terence McDonnell (Notre Dame), and Columbia University Press editor Eric Schwartz.

The lively exchange evident at the annual meeting sessions was also on display in terms of the award committees. Committee chairs all reported that they had a large number of nominations that highlighted the breadth, depth, and excellence of research in the Sociology of Culture. Indeed, while all of the award winners were well-deserving, the competition for these awards was particularly strong this year, according to the committee chairs.

Finally, the centrality of the Culture Section remains in evidence in terms of sessions that it co- sponsored with other sections (including a panel on Culture, Cultural Institutions, and Reimagining a Global World with the Section on Global and Transnational Sociology this year), and the numerous regular sessions that are related to cultural sociology—such as those dealing with popular culture, media, reception, and methods/measurement. ______

Recruiting and Retention Efforts

Given that the Sociology of Culture section has been such a large section for so long, we no longer have a membership committee devoted to securing new section members (as we did in the 1990’s). Instead, we have relied upon the natural growth of the topic matter to draw in members, which makes sense given the sizable number of graduate students who continually replenish section membership numbers. At last report, we were the section with the 3rd largest number of student members.

Instead, we focus on communicating with members via the revamped Culture Section website and newsletter. ______

Communications Strategy

While the Culture Section continues to make use of the section listserv, the bulk of the section communication has migrated to the Culture Section website and newsletter, both of which can be found at http://asaculturesection.org.

Alexandra Kowalski, Hillary Angelo, and editorial assistant Katherine Pullen have worked hard to make this a “one-stop” location for communication with members, with a newsletter, notes on recent publications, and announcements for various competitions, grant application deadlines, and publication opportunities.

In recognition of a term of service, and a decline in the provision of required services, Alexandra and Katherine end their term as editors this year. We organized a Selection and Recruitment Committee made of Council members Lauren Rivera, Gemma Mangione, Andy Perrin, Hannah Wohl, and chaired by Francesco Duina. Out of the applications, they selected a new team made of Hillary Angelo, Diana Graizbord, Michael Muniz, and Dustin Stoltz.

We look forward to the many innovations the new team has in mind.

The Coming Year

Program Chair-Elect Omar Lizardo is putting together a stimulating program for the coming ASA meeting in Philadelphia.

The overall theme this year is to showcase the relevance of cultural analysis across emerging fields of inquiry and thematic concerns in the discipline at large, while also addressing analytic and empirical issues of fundamental substantive and theoretical interest to cultural sociologists.

Furthering the first mandate, Marion Fourcade (UC Berkeley) and Kieran Healy (Duke University) will co-organize an open-submission panel on "Emerging Economies of Moral Judgment" In their description: Recent research on markets and stratification has emphasized the increasingly intensive use of automated methods of rating and scoring across a range of market and non-market settings, often as a means of allocating people to "classification situations" that materially affect their life- chances. These tools measure positions in markets or other allocative settings, and are used to distribute the availability of various opportunities, or the prices attached to them. In other words, they function as new forms of capital. Finally, the individualizing character of these methods creates a distinctive tendency not just to abstractly categorize but also morally evaluate those measured, and morally justify the observed outcomes. Originally developed within the credit market, and operationalized through credit scores, these tools are taking hold across institutional settings such as education, healthcare, legal services, criminal justice, and various service industries. We invite papers exploring, theoretically or empirically, the nature and effects of these economies of moral judgment, whether considered at work in particular settings, assessed across countries or contexts, or compared as methods with characteristic methods and effects.

In addition, Lynette Shaw (University of Michigan) will organize an open-submission panel on "Computational Social Science, Culture, and Cultural Analysis " as she describes it: Revolutionary advances in computational methods, developments in social simulation, and the growing abundance of digital data now available on individuals’ discourse, behaviors, and interactions have led to the emergence of a new “computational social science.” This session focuses on the intersection of this burgeoning area with the sociological study of culture. In addition to papers presenting innovative empirical applications of these new data and methods to cultural research, this session also welcomes theoretical and metatheoretical work that considers how computational social science might enable sociologists to theorize and measure cultural phenomenon in new ways and the contributions established work in the sociology of culture may have to make to computational social science.

Finally, Daniel Winchester (Purdue University) will organize an open-submission panel entitled "Session Title: Meaning-Making through the Lens of Cultural Cognition." In Winchester's words: Taking inspiration from a number of different theoretical perspectives many contemporary sociologists have conceptualized and analyzed culture as a process of meaning-making. Such analyses generally focus on how particular cultural objects, practices, ideas, schemas, etc. are made meaningful to social actors over time and in and through social relationships and interactions. But meaning-making analyses also entail (often implicit) assumptions about human cognition – i.e., about how actors are cognitively accessing, organizing, and enacting cultural meaning(s). This session solicits papers that seek to highlight the cognitive processes underlying and involved in processes of meaning-making, broadly defined. Priority will be given to papers that are grounded in empirical analyses of meaning- making and demonstrate how attention to cognitive processes strengthens sociological explanations of meaning-making in action. “Cognition” is defined broadly to include papers that focus on cognitive processes ranging from abstract conceptualization and self-reflexivity to more concrete modes of bodily perception and sensation.

Furthering the second mandate, we will have a couple of open-submission panels dealing with thorny theoretical problems in the study of culture. The first, organized by Stephen Vaisey (Duke University) deal with the connection between "Cultural Sociology and the Study of Beliefs, Preferences, and Choices." As Vaisey describes it: Although cultural sociologists rarely use words like "choice" and "decision" they regularly study how society influences choice-related concepts like beliefs (e.g., frames and scripts) and preferences (e.g., musical tastes). This session will be devoted to a discussion of how cultural sociologists can deal more productively with the concept of "choice" and how it relates to ideas from other areas of inquiry that study decisions explicitly (inclusive of, but not limited to, behavioral economics). Participants are invited to submit empirical or theoretical papers investigating the interplay between choices, preferences, decisions and the traditional constructs of interest to cultural sociologists.

Iddo Tavory (New York University) will organize an open-submission panel on dedicated to the issue of the many meanings of our central concept entitled "Culture in the Plural." In Tavory's words: Different theorizations of culture have converged on the insight that the cultural elements of which it is made do not constitute a seamless whole. Whether aspects of the web of meaning we construct cohere, and whether seemingly coherent bundles of meanings are internally organized according to some predictable rules of thumb, is an unsettled question. Whereas terms such as "repertoire" or "toolkit" are agnostic as to the question internal coherence, notions such as "regimes of worth," "cultural models," or "institutional logics" strongly argue for such internal ordering. The section invites submissions from scholars working on the question of the constituents and coherence (or lack thereof) of culture--both theoretically and empirically.

Finally, our referred roundtable session will be co-organized by Dustin Stoltz and Marshall Taylor (University of Notre Dame).

We will again offer a professionalization workshop for early career scholars. This year's panel, co- organized by Gemma Mangione (Teachers College, Columbia University) and Andrea Reisman (University of Washington) will consist of an invited panel dedicated to "Bringing Cultural Sociology to the Public.” As they describe it: Discussions of 'cultural divides' in Trump's America are gaining more traction in the media and in the public sphere, presenting an opportunity and need for cultural sociologists to effectively communicate their sociological perspective beyond the academy. Cultural sociologists are uniquely poised to weigh in on a variety of conversations relating to current events, wherein culture can be otherwise treated as a divisive force or used in caricatured explanations of social difference. Communicating to a broad public accessible, yet nuanced, explanations of how culture operates is a critical skill for cultural sociologists. This panel aims to prepare cultural sociologists, especially young scholars, to do so and to more generally increase sociology's visibility in public discourse. Both these goals are in line with ASA's mission to enhance public sociology.

Elections and Nominations

As mentioned above, per section custom, we invited nominations for the Nominations Committee during the course of our Culture Section Business Meeting.

The following cultural sociologists will be responsible for putting together our slate of members to be voted upon for the coming academic year:

Matthew Norton, University of Oregon (past-committee chair) ______

Section on Sociology of Culture

Note:Report All shaded for areas2017 are self calculating. This budget template only covers activity for your section's primary account. Any restricted accounts and endowments must be monitored and reported on separately. Please use the Notes field to provide information on miscellaneous or other expenditures. For more information please contact Mark Fernando at [email protected] Expenditures Annual Meeting Amount Code Notes Reception $2,000.00 37300 co-sponsored with Soc of Development & Other Meeting Expenses 37310 Global/Transnational Sociology & Misc 37320 Cultural Sociology Other 37370 Total $2,000.00 n/a

Awards Amount Code Notes Student Awards$300.00 37360 1 award @ $300 Award Plaques$147.26 37360 6 plaques (3 awards, 1 w/ co-winners; 2 hon Misc $47.37 37360 Packaging/mailing plaques Other 37360 Total $494.63 n/a

Communications Amount Code Notes Website $500.00 37330 Support for those who produce website Misc 37370 Other 37370 Total $500.00 n/a

Miscellaneous Amount Code Notes Gift Memberships may not be funded from Membership 37370 allocated funds. Funds must be raised for this purpose. Misc 37370 Other 37370 Total $0.00 n/a

Summary Amount Notes Total Expenditures$2,994.63 Current Year's Income$4,000.00 Carryover Balance $9,991.00 From Net Assets, Beginning Balance in Q1 End of Year Balance$10,996.37 Income Source Amount Calculated Section Allocation$3,158.00 Description Fill this in using the "Section Budget Allocation" from the "Year to Date" Column

Levied Dues $842.00 Special Description Fill this in using the "Dues Income" from the "Year to Date" Column. Your section may not collect excess dues. Dues income accrues on a monthly basis, so this number will change over time.

Contributi $0.00 n/a Description Theseons are funds raised from members.

Royalties $0.00 n/a Description Royalties donated by members or generated through other activities.

Outside Contributions$0.00 n/a Description Funds donated from individuals/entities outside the section.

Miscellaneous Income$0.00 n/a Description Anything not captured above. Please replace this text with a description

Miscellaneous Income n/a Description Anything not captured above. Please replace this text with a description

Total $4,000.00 n/a Section on Sociology of CultureBudget for 2018 Use this sheet to assist with planning for the next year. All operating budgets must be approved by the section council. Note: All green shaded areas are self calculating. This budget template only covers activity for your section's primary account. Any restricted accounts and endowments must be monitored and reported on separately. Please use the Notes field to provide information on miscellaneous or other expenditures. For more information please contact the Section Coordinator, Justin Lini ([email protected]) Budgeted Expenditures Annual Meeting Amount Code Notes Reception $3,000.00 37300 Est. based on 2017 budget Other Meeting$700.00 Expenses 37310 Est. based on 2017 budget Misc 37320 Other 37370 Total $3,700.00 n/a

Awards Amount Code Notes Student Awards$300.00 37360 1 award @ $300 Award Plaques$150.00 37360 Est. based on 2017 budget Misc 37360 Other 37360 Total $450.00 n/a

Communications Amount Code Notes Website $500.00 37330 Support for those who produce website Misc 37370 Other 37370 Total $500.00 n/a

Miscellaneous Amount Code Notes Gift Memberships may not be funded from Membership 37370 allocated funds. Funds must be raised for this purpose. Misc 37370 Other 37370 Total $0.00 n/a

Summary Amount Notes Budgeted Expenditures$4,650.00 Estimated Income $4,328.00 Carryover Balance$10,996.37 Brought over from current year's report Est. End of Year Balance$10,674.37 Estimated Income Source Amount Calculated Section Allocation$3,056.00 (Members*2)+A 1028 Description "A" is determined by the overall membership size: Sections with fewer than 200 members receive a base allocation of $500. Sections with less than 300 members but more than 200 members receive a base allocation of: (# of section members minus 100) multiplied by $5. Sections with more than 300 members receive a base allocation of $1,000. In addition the section receives two dollars from dues of each member. To calculate this amount enter your section's membership in the shaded box on the left. See your monthly membership report update for these numbers. Levied Dues $1,272.00 Special 636 323 69 Description Any dues raised by the sections in excess of the base rate go directly to the section's coffers. The base rate is $10 for regular members, $5 for students and $10 for associate (low income) members. Subscription Fees for Section Journals are not added here. To calculate this, add regular members to the light shaded box, student members to the middle shaded box, and low income members to the dark shaded box on the left hand side. See your monthly Contributimembership report update forn/a these numbers. Description Theseons are funds raised from members.

Royalties n/a Description Royalties donated by members or generated through other activities.

Outside Contributions n/a Description Funds donated from individuals/entities outside the section.

Miscellaneous Income n/a Description Anything not captured above. Please replace this text with a description

Miscellaneous Income n/a Description Anything not captured above. Please replace this text with a description

Total $4,328.00 n/a