http://sociology.ucdavis.edu Listing of departmental colloquia. daily 1 2009-09-21T22:52:33Z http://sociology.ucdavis.edu/events/the-lemert-lecture-peter-bearman-columbia-university This talk considers the causes of the increased prevalence of autism using an unusually rich population level data set (covering over 8 million children born in California) that allows us to consider how individual level risk factors, genetic mechanisms, and environmental factors interact with and are amplified by social dynamics. By focusing on successive birth cohorts we show that many strongly held beliefs about risk factors, genetics, and the environment may need to be revised if we are to understand why prevalence has increased.

]]> No publisher Jacque Leaver colloquia 2013-01-11T21:40:00Z Event http://sociology.ucdavis.edu/calendar/colloquia-cecilia-ridgeway-stanford-university-1 I offer an evidence based theoretical account of how widely shared cultural beliefs about gender, race, and class intersect in interpersonal and other social relational contexts in the U. S. to create characteristic cultural “binds” and freedoms for actors in those contexts.    I treat gender, race, and class as systems of inequality that are culturally constructed as distinct but implicitly overlap through their defining beliefs which reflect the perspectives of dominant groups in society.  I cite evidence for the contextually contingent interactional “binds” and freedoms this creates for people such as Asian men, Black women and poor whites who are not prototypical of images embedded in cultural gender, race, and class beliefs.  All forms of unprototypicality create “binds,” but freedoms result from being unprototypical of disadvantaging rather than advantaging statuses.

]]> No publisher McCarthy, Bill colloquia 2013-03-24T00:10:00Z Event http://sociology.ucdavis.edu/events/nina-eliasoph-university-of-southern-california “Civic;” “transformative;” “appreciative of unique, local customs, people  and places;” “transparent;” “helpful to the needy:” we have all heard this kind of “empowerment talk” in civic associations around the world. How, in everyday life, do people make all these crisscrossed missions harmonize? Based on a nearly five year-long study of volunteers and employees in afterschool programs and youth civic engagement projects, this talk will show how people develop an "organizational style" for making it all work. Participants don't necessarily learn the lessons that the empowerment projects aim to teach, but they learn some other important lessons, nonetheless.

]]> No publisher Jacque Leaver colloquia 2013-01-11T21:35:00Z Event http://sociology.ucdavis.edu/events/shannon-gleeson-uc-santa-cruz In this talk I examine how advocates are working to enforce the rights of Latino immigrant workers. Much of the research on rights implementation tends to focus on the role of state actors and the importance of bureaucratic discretion in activating formal rights. However, rather than view rights as self-propelled imperatives pre-determined solely by the law, my analysis highlights the complexity of the enforcement process and the variety of actors implicated in struggles for immigrant workers’ rights. My work hones in on the relationship between the federal and state labor standards enforcement apparatus, as well as local government actors, civic groups, and even consular representatives who play an especially important role in enforcing the rights of foreign nationals. I draw on the experience of advocates in San Jose, CA and Houston, TX, two traditional immigrant destinations with radically different policy structures and political cultures for enforcing immigrant worker rights. In particular, I emphasize the importance of strategic alliances in contexts where the usual suspects are absent or weak, and where alternative solutions become vital.

]]> No publisher Jacque Leaver colloquia 2013-01-11T21:10:00Z Event