Sociology Department News

Rafi Grosglik co-authors article on food, identity, therapeutic culture, and capitalism
Although there is burgeoning research on the impact of therapeutic culture in the construction of the individual Self, the ways in which emotional discourse and therapeutic style shape the collective Self have been overlooked. Focusing on the popular reality-television cooking show MasterChef Israel, this article explores the emergence of gastro-emotivism – an interlacing of food with emotions and therapy and a materialization of emotions in the form of food. In MasterChef Israel, gastro-emotivism is used to articulate emotional-therapeutic selves as well as collective belongings and social categories. While recent literature understood the appearance of therapeutic culture in popular media as geared to reshape the individual neoliberal Self, we suggest that gastro-emotivism indicates the expansion of the emotional therapeutic framework in the depiction and construction of collective identities and identifications. We elaborate on the global phenomena of gastro-emotivism and explain its particular Israeli appearance. Emerging from this account is the proliferation of emotional-therapeutic discourse in the Israeli public sphere and its predominance in the ways in which Israelis ‘cook, taste and feel’ their collective affiliations.

Ming-Cheng Lo co-authors article published in Theory and Society
Typhoon Morakot, the deadliest typhoon in recorded history to strike Taiwan, caused catastrophic destruction in the summer of 2009. Amidst the wreckage of their villages, survivors faced the challenge of consolidating communal visions for reconstruction. The grassroots voices of Morakot’s survivors, however, were stifled by heavy-handed state agendas. Some villages succeeded in resisting top-down agendas, eventually consolidating their own visions, but most did not. How can we explain these differences? Our article addresses this question through a three-village comparison.

David Kyle interviewed on CNN International by Rosemary Church about U.S.-Mexico Wall and migration crisis

Alana Haynes Stein & Nadia Smiecinska discuss how nations use a "citizen-consumer" discourse at the 2015 World Expo on food security in blog post for the ASA Consumers & Consumption Section

Professor Stephanie Mudge wins two major American Sociological Association awards and receives an honorable mention for another
Professor Mudge's book, Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press 2018) won the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Political Sociology section book award, the Barrington-Moore Book Award from the ASA Historical-Comparative section, and an honorable mention for the Viviana Zelizer Award for the ASA, Economic Sociology section book award.

Caitlin Patler Wins Pacific Sociological Association Award
UC Davis Sociology Assistant Professor Caitlin Patler wins Sociological Perspectives Best Article Award.
Assistant Professor Patler's research on DACA wins the American Sociological Association's Latina/o Sociology Section Distinguished Contribution to Research Article Award.
Ethan J. Evans, PhD MSW has been appointed editor of the column, National Health Line in Health & Social Work.
Ryan Finnigan's AJS article with David Brady and Sabine Hubgen was named the winner of the 2018 Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Section Outstanding Article Award.
DACA Uncertainty May Undermine its Positive Impact on Wellbeing By Caitlin Patler, Erin Hamilton and Robin Savinar, UC Davis
Caitlin Patler, Assistant Professor of sociology, has been selected as a 2018 National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.
Kristin McCarty selected as a Graduate Writing Fellow for Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) 2018-2019.
Climate Information? Embedding Climate Futures within the Temporalities of California Water Management.
New Article by Baker, Zeke, Julia Ekstrom and Louise Bedsworth
Meteorological Frontiers: Climate Knowledge, the West, and Statecraft in the US, 1800-1850.
New Article by Zeke Baker