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2020 Section Annual Report for Marxist Sociology

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2020 Section Annual Report for Marxist Sociology 2020 Section Annual Report for Marxist Sociology This annual report covers the period of section activity from September 2019 to August 2020 and a fiscal year from January 2020 to December 2020. Section Governance Provide details of your section’s governance activity during the period between September 2019 and August 2020. Business Meeting Copy and paste below (or attach separately) the agenda and draft/approved meeting minutes from the section business meeting which include a count of members present and summary of decisions made at this meeting. ASA Marxist Sociology Business Meeting Saturday, August 8, 2020, 8:30-9:10 PST (immediately preceding Roundtables) Instructions: Use the link below to join this session live. https://oregonstate.zoom.us/j/3355407090 Password: 333909 AGENDA 1. Allison Hurst calls meeting to order. Brief statement. (8:30) a. Introductions (new council members and officers from elections) (8:32) i. Chair-Elect: Michael McCarthy; Chair: Hannah Holleman ii. Secretary: Leslie Gates; Treasurer: Lorna Zukas iii. Current Council Members: Daniel Auerbach, Michael McCarthy (leaving to new position); Charles Pinderhughes (last session), Michael Sukhov (last session), Crystal Jackson, Lorna Zukas (leaving to new position), Karen Xuan Zhang; Atef Said (beginning this year), Gretchen Purser (beginning this year) iv. Interim Council positions 2. Office and Committee Reports a. MEMBERSHIP COMMITTEE (Paul Prew) (8:38) b. TREASURER REPORT (Paul Prew) (8:41) c. MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE (Michael McCarthy) (8:44) 3. AWARDS (8:47) a. Book Award (Scott McNall): Intan Suwandi, for Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019) and Brendan McQuade for Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019.) 1 b. Article Award (Barb Brents): The Du Bois Nexus: Intersectionality, Political Economy, and Environmental Injustice in the Peruvian Guano Trade in the 1800s.,” by Brett Clark, Daniel Auerbach, and Karen Xuan Zhang, Environmental Sociology, 2018 4(1): 54-66 . c. Praxis Award (Vince Montes): Sam Friedman d. Grad Student Paper Award (Jason Mueller): David B. Feldman e. Lifetime Achievement Award (Beth Redbird): Michael Burawoy 4. Call for Volunteers (more in follow-up email) (9:05) 5. Transfer of the virtual gavel to Hannah Holleman as incoming chair (9:06) Council Meeting Copy and paste below (or attach separately) the agenda and draft/approved meeting minutes of all council meetings. Minutes must include a list of council members present and a summary of decisions made. Minutes are not a transcript of proceedings but a listing of what discussions took place and official actions taken. Date/Time: Thursday, August 6, 10amPDT Location: Zoom 1. Check in (acknowledge Pandemic) 2. Discuss Agenda for Business Meeting 3. Discuss probable impact of pandemic on next year’s conference and membership 4. Goals for next year (including Taskforce and New Directions) [open discussion here] 5. Filling two interim vacancies on council 6. Other Items? Set Fall Council date (suggestion) Marxist Section Meeting Minutes 8/6/2020 10am PDT In attendance: Allison Hurst, Hannah Holleman, Paul Prew, Daniel Auerbach, Lorna Zukas, Charles Pinderhughes, Xuan Karen Zhang, Mike McCarthy Absent: Crystal Jackson, Michael Sukhov 1. Check in (acknowledge Pandemic) 2 • What to do about two vacated council positions: Charles Pinderhughes will stay on. Allison Hurst will ask David Arditi and Elaine Hui who both ran for council to occupy a co-position. 2. Discuss Agenda for Business Meeting • Membership Committee: Paul Prew will prepare a couple of paragraphs on the state of the membership that he will share. He can’t make the meeting. • Treasurer Report: Paul will also prepare a treasurer report before the meeting to read there. • Media and Communications Committee: Mike McCarthy will talk a bit about work with the blog, including giving some metrics on the web traffic and most popular posts. • Awards: Allison Hurst said that someone will be reading something about each of the awardees [I don’t have written down who] 3. Discuss probable impact of pandemic on next year’s conference and membership • Membership 248. We did no membership recruitment this year because our numbers have no impact on number of sessions. We need to do a serious drive next year. Paul Prew will continue to do t-shirts. More thinking is necessary here. 4. Goals for next year (including Taskforce and New Directions) • Allison Hurst made two suggestions: 1. Have a meeting every quarter to keep track of who is doing what 2. Past chair, present chair, and next chair meet monthly to discuss the section and 3. Have first meeting as council in early Fall. • Paul Prew suggested past chair do the reception. • Charles Pinderhughes and Lorna Zukas suggest we should up our social media presence. Lorna suggested a Youtube channel for pedagogical videos. • Hannah Holleman would like to revise the bylaws to clarify the roles on positions and committees. Awards Provide a list of section awards and awardees conferred in the past year. Winners of Marxist Sociology Section Awards It is with great pleasure that I announce the winners of the Marxist Sociology Section Awards! 3 The Winner of the Albert Szymanski-T.R. Young Marxist Sociology Graduate Student Paper is David B, Feldman, for his article, “Beyond the Border Spectacle: Global Capital, Migrant Labor, and the Specter of Liminal Legality,” published in Critical Sociology (2019). This article a timely and original approach to understanding exploitation of migrant workers within the US political, legal, and economic system. Its critical analysis—informed my Marxist State theory—offers new insights into the regulation of a precarious pool of labor and its relationship to sectors of capital and the national security apparatus within the US. It concludes with compelling insights into how demands for migrant and immigrant rights can be embedded within ongoing, grassroots movements for liberation and equity. Honorable Mention goes to Brian Hennigan, for “From Madonna to Marx: Towards a Re-theorisation of Homelessness” (Antipode, 2018). This article offers a rethinking of homelessness, shifting the focus from the more popular approaches that focus on consumption and/or aesthetics as they pertain to the presence of homeless populations, instead directing us towards their relationship to labor and value creation. As such, the author moves beyond past debates on “lumpen” populations and the need for charity, urging us to consider the conditions necessary for organizing the homeless within a larger working class movement.” Thanks to our awards committee, Jason Mueller, Lorna Zukas, and James Parisot ****** The Winner of the Outstanding Marxist Sociology Article Award is "The Du Bois Nexus: Intersectionality, Political Economy, and Environmental Injustice in the Peruvian Guano Trade in the 1800s.,” by Brett Clark, Daniel Auerbach, and Karen Xuan Zhang, Environmental Sociology, 2018 4(1): 54-66 . This article makes an important contribution in bridging Marxist sociology with the dynamics of race, class, nation, gender, sexuality and ecological relationships using the writings of W.E.B DuBois. It provides a thoughtful historical case study combining DuBois' manure theory with Marx's metabolic rift analysis to further explain the international guano trade in the 1800s. It is a clear, and innovative historical case study, using novel data. The article is notable in pushing the canon forward in important ways Thanks to our awards committee, Bab Brents, Crystal Jackson, Michael Sukhov, and Camilla Alvarez ****** There are two winners of the Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award this year. They are Brendan McQuade, assistant professor at the University of Southern Maine, and Intan Suwandi, who will begin her career this fall at Illinois State University. Please offer them your congratulations. Their works were chosen out of eleven eligible recipients and both books are based on extensive fieldwork. A brief note about each: Brendan McQuade. Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. The U.S. Government has poured billions into a network of local, regional, and national intelligence-gathering fusion centers. Most of us have never heard of them. Personal information is vacuumed up with the intent of preventing “all crimes, all threats, and all hazards.” As McQuade demonstrates, the tracking and monitoring of individuals enabled by the institutionalization of intelligence fusion centers allows for a punitive form of decarceration, reducing prison populations without fully addressing the underlying social problems that lead to mass incarceration. Now, intelligence fusion links state and private powers in a new pacification project for the administration of surplus populations beyond incarceration, expanding the “boundaries” of a prison to the entire society. Intan Suwandi. Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019. (The book was also winner of the Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award, which honors the founders of the 4 Monthly Review.) Imperialism is alive and well, as Suwandi demonstrates in exploring the opaque world of multinational corporations and their value chains. Value chains are not just about the transfer of material goods from one area of the world to another; they are about the draining of surplus from the Global South through exploitative
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