Tag Archives: Annual Meeting

Inequality and death in LA

Pamela J. Prickett
University of Amsterdam
CUSS Newsletter Summer 2022, Vol. 35, No. 2

“I think of the view from a favorite arroyo in the late afternoon, the east slope still bathed in sunlight, the far slope already full of dark shade and lengthening shadows. A cool breeze, as one can look across the plains, out over miles of homes and trees, and hear the faraway hum of traffic on the high-ways and see the golden light filtering through the mist-laden air.”

-Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

Much has changed about the views across Southern California in the time since McWilliams wrote these words in 1946, but the golden light remains. Sunsets in Southern California are unforgettable. Layers of tangerine, fuchsia, and violet light the sky. The sun may rise in the east, where ASA more often meets, but it sets in the west, and in this way SoCal does not disappoint. For those of you embarking on Los Angeles for this year’s annual meeting, do yourself a favor and try to make it to a hilltop or beachside to take in the cornucopia of colors at dusk (just don’t skip the CUSS reception on Sunday).

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Conference Feature: The Creation of an Elite Civil Society: Civil Society Organization Formation in Los Angeles, 1880-1900

by Simon Yamawaki Shachter, University of Chicago

CUSS Newsletter Summer 2022, Vol. 35, No. 2

On the United State’s West Coast, in the second half of the 19th century, four small towns grew into large cities: Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; and Los Angeles, California. Despite sharing similar political, economic, and demographic environments, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco developed notably pluralistic and prolific civil societies while Los Angeles’s became relatively smaller and more elite. Through a historical analysis of Los Angeles’s initial growth, I ask the question, why did Los Angeles develop the unique civil society that we still see today?

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Spotlight on Annual Meeting Location: Los Angeles, the Showplace Global City and its Creative Destructive Impulses

By Jan Lin, Occidental College

CUSS Newsletter Summer 2022, Vol. 35, No. 2

The area of Los Angeles that is made up of the Los Angeles Convention Center, its adjacent Crypto.com Arena (previously Staples Center), and LA Live is a vibrant tourism, sports, and entertainment showplace that exports “showtime” NBA basketball and Hollywood film and music culture to the U.S. and the rest of the world. Culture industries are leading sectors in Los Angeles just as finance/Wall Street is a leading sector in New York City. Luxury hotels and condominium towers have sprouted in the neighborhood in the last 15 years, some involving transnational Chinese investor visas or corporate capital including the JW Marriott hotel, the 4-towered Metropolis complex, and the 3-towered Oceanwide Plaza. Further north on Figueroa Street is the Wilshire Grand Center, which was financed by Hanjin/Korean Airlines and in 2017 took claim as the tallest building (including its spire) west of Chicago. Look at the top at night for the neon red and blue yin-yang Korean Air logo which alternates with the “I” brand logo of the on-site InterContinental Hotel.

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CUSS Sessions at ASA 2022

Queer Placemaking Beyond the Gayborhood

Monday, August 8, 2022

10:00 – 11:30 am

Co-Organizers:

Greggor Mattson, Oberlin College (gmattson@oberlin.edu)

Mahesh Somashekhar, University of Illinois-Chicago (msoma@uic.edu)

This panel explores strategies of placemaking and community by LGBTQ+ populations beyond the metronormative and post-gay subcultures and representations within iconic gay neighborhoods.  We invite submissions that center the spatial expressions and experiences of LGBTQ+ people across various geographic contexts, including, but not limited to, suburbs, rural areas, “ordinary cities,” online and virtual spaces, and geographies hostile to LGBTQ+ rights.  We also welcome submissions that explore how marginalized LGBTQ+ communities might refashion and reimagine spaces and places within iconic gay neighborhoods.  We especially encourage submissions that focus on contexts outside central cities and the Global North, that deploy intersectional and antiracist approaches, and those that center on the agency of marginalized populations. 

Presider: Mahesh Somashekhar, University of Illinois-Chicago

Panelists:

“Queer Latinx Political-Creatives in Los Angeles: A Spectrum of Space-Making Strategies”

Jessennya Hernandez, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign

“Density, Diversity, Culture: How Place Characteristics Shape Individual Sense of Community for LGBTQ People”

Connor Craig Gilroy, University of Washington

“Rethinking Queer Spaces: Making of a Subversively Queer Space in a South Korean Choir”

Jiwon Yun, Yale University

“Flirting with Non-Existence: Hidden Currencies of Gay Expatriate Nightlife in Dubai”

Ryan Centner, London School of Economics

Urban Futures: Cities after COVID-19

Monday, August 8, 2022

2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Co-Organizers:

Krista E. Paulsen, Boise State University (kristapaulsen@boisestate.edu)

Youbin Kang, University of Wisconsin-Madison (ykang62@wisc.edu)

This panel engages how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the future of cities.  We invite submissions that consider how the pandemic reshapes community and urban citizenship, population density and distribution, transportation and infrastructure, work, technology, urban cultures, leisure and urban nightlife, spatial justice, and urban movements.  We also welcome submissions that highlight how the pandemic exposes new urban problems and inequalities confronting our cities.  We especially encourage submissions that focus on contexts outside central cities and the Global North, that deploy intersectional and antiracist approaches, and those that center on the agency of marginalized populations. 

Presider: Krista E. Paulsen, Boise State University

Presenters:

“Digital Urban Governance: Data Work in Crisis Response”

Yan Long, University of California-Berkeley

Wei Willa Luo, Stanford University

“Creation after Disaster: LGBT+ Placemaking in Mexico City During COVID-19”

Christina Marie Chica, University of California, Los Angeles

“From #CancelRent to #SocialHousing: The Politics of Radical Demands in US Cities After COVID-19”

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, New York University

Howard Jacob Carlson, Brown University

“Informal Livelihoods or Ineffective Cash Transfer Programs: Explaining COVID-19-Contagion Rates in Lima”

Lissette Aliaga Linares, University of Nebraska at Omaha

“Social Engagement and Happiness during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Return to Gemeinschaft?”

Alonso Aravena, Baylor university

Homelessness, Unsheltered Populations, and Housing Precarity

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

8:00 am – 9:30 am

Co-Organizers:

Christine Jang-Trettien, Princeton University (cjj3@princeton.edu)

Kesha S. Moore, Thurgood Marshall Institute (kmoore@naacpldf.org)

This panel explores the various ecosystems of homelessness and housing insecurity.  We invite submissions that consider how the pandemic and the ongoing housing crisis have expanded or complicated our understanding of homelessness and those who fit that category.  Topics include, but are not limited to, (re)conceptualizing homelessness, unsheltered populations, and housing precarity, community, government, and media responses to homelessness and housing insecurity, policies around containment and displacement, criminalization and policing of homeless and housing insecure populations, and people’s efforts to mobilize on their own behalf. We especially encourage submissions that focus on contexts outside central cities and the Global North, that deploy intersectional and antiracist approaches, and those that center on the agency of marginalized populations. 

Presider: Kesha S. Moore, Thurgood Marshall Institute

Presentations:

“Housing Instability and Adult Wellbeing”

Hope Harvey, University of Kentucky

Brielle Bryan, Rice University

“Pandemic Poverty Governance: Neoliberalism Under Crisis”

Devin Michael Collins, University of Washington

Katherine Beckett, University of Washington

Marco Brydolf-Horwitz, University of Washington

“Resisting and Reclaiming: Housing Occupations by Homeless Mothers in Three U.S. Cities”

Claire W. Herbert, University of Oregon

Amanda Vel Ricketts

“‘We’ll Make it Work’: Navigating Housing Instability Following Romantic Partner Incarceration”

Angie Belen Monreal, University of California, Irvine

Kristin Turney, University of California, Irvine

Steven Edward Schmidt, University of California, Irvine

Migrations: Forced, Temporary, and Voluntary

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

10:00 am – 11:30 am

Co-Organizers:

Teresa Irene Gonzales, University of Massachusetts-Lowell (teresa_gonzales@uml.edu)

Cheryl Llewellyn, University of Massachusetts-Lowell (cheryl.llewellyn@gmail.com)

This panel investigates the various approaches to studying migration in the twenty-first century.  We invite submissions that consider the impact of such factors as the pandemic, environmental disasters, ​violence, and the ongoing housing crisis in cities on the voluntary, forced, or temporary geographical movement of populations.  Topics might include, but are not limited to, the ecosystems of immigration, forms of out-migration driven by COVID-19 to lower density areas, Black, Latinx, and other communities of color out-migration from the central cities to lower-income suburbs or rural areas, and political refugees.  Papers may also consider the implications of out-migration from cities, how patterns of migration force a reimagining of spaces and places, and the placemaking strategies of migrant communities arising out of these patterns.  We especially encourage submissions that focus on contexts outside the Global North, that deploy intersectional and antiracist approaches, and those that center on the agency of marginalized populations. 

Presider: Cheryl Llewellyn, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Presenters:

“Precarious Migrant Workers in Limbo Between Migration, Labor, and Criminal Law”

Kurt Kuehne, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Return Migration, Reintegration, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan”

Saeed Ahmad, Utah State University

Erin Trouth Hoffman, Utah State University

“The Institutional Mechanisms of Minority Displacement: The Southeastern Perspective”

Yael Shmaryahu-Yeshurun, University of California San Diego

“The sakan shababiyy, or the world improvised: displacement and masculine domestic space in Lebanon”

Samuel Dinger, New York University

“Turkish Emigration as a Response to the Incremental Degradation of Democracy”

Dugyu Alpan, Stony Brook University

Unlearning Core Concepts in Urban/Community Sociology

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Co-Organizers:

Zachary Levenson, University of North Carolina, Greensboro (zachary.levenson@uncg.edu)

Demar Lewis, Yale University (demar.lewis@yale.edu)

This session explores how growing scholarly attention to decolonizing sociology calls for new perspectives that question, challenge, and unsettle foundational concepts, frameworks, and debates within Urban and Community Sociology.  We invite submissions that draw on various socio-spatial contexts from diverse geographic locations to offer a critical and reflexive exploration of the field’s epistemic and methodological limitations and suggest new approaches for investigating a range of topics, including (but not limited to) the city/suburb/rural divide, community, urbanism, segregation, local community membership, gentrification and renewal, insecurity (housing, food), displacement and dispossession, and local activism.  We especially encourage submissions that focus on contexts outside the Global North, that deploy intersectional and antiracist approaches, and those that center on the agency of marginalized populations. 

Presider: Zachary Levenson, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

Presenters:

“Flourishing in the Black Metropolis: Toward a Positive Sociology of Race”

Demetrius Miles Murphy, University of Southern California

“Producing and Emplacing Difference: Property Regulation, Spatialization, and Urban Fragmentation in Mexico City”

Sarah Elizabeth Farr, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“White Spacemaking: Race and Urban Change”

Shani Adia Evans, Rice University

“Securityscapes of Colonial Nairobi”

Amanda Cristina Ball, Brown University

CUSS Refereed Roundtables

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Co-Organizers

Paige Ambord, University of Notre Dame (paige.ambord@gmail.com

Grigoris Argeros, Eastern Michigan University (gargeros@emich.edu)

Table 1: Gentrification

Table 2: Affordable Housing

Table 3: Policing and Safety

Table 4: Displacement

Table 5: Cities and COVID-19

Table 6: Responding to COVID-19

Table 7: Cities and Rental Platforms

Table 8: Marginalized Community

Table 9: Infrastructure

Table 10: Residential Mobility and Instability

Table 11: Residential Segregation 1

Table 12: Residential Segregation 2

Table 13: Sports and Cultural Developments

Table 14: Mobilization and Collective Action

Table 15: Money and Resources

Table 16: Informal Housing and Economy

Table 17: Culture and Placemaking

Table 18: Other Urban Issues

Community and Urban Sociology Business Meeting

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

3:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Conference Feature: The Armenian Ethnic Enclave of L.A.

Inna Mirzoyan
Michigan State University
CUSS Newsletter Summer 2022, Vol. 35, No. 2

During one of my first weeks as a 2021 Fulbright researcher in Yerevan, Armenia, I explored the capital city’s oldest district, Kond. The Kond district and its ruins have been revitalized with street art and graffiti to attract locals and tourists alike. Immediately, the multiple references to Los Angeles stood out to me. Specifically, one large wall that I photographed reflected the transnational experience of the Armenian Diaspora with large text that read “Yerevan to L.A.” and “Little Armenia.” Six months later, in 2022, I traveled for my second phase of fieldwork in L.A. and saw a similar global conversation happening between diasporans and locals.

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CUSS 2022 Meeting Sessions

Dear CUSS Members:

The ASA Annual Meeting submission portal is now open for the 2022 meetings in Los Angeles (deadline for submissions: February 9). Please consider submitting your papers to CUSS Section sessions! This year we will have five open panels (plus a roundtable session).  Below, please find the panels topics, descriptions, and organizers for this year’s CUSS Sessions.   You are welcome to contact the organizers or me (tgreene@bowdoin.edu) with questions about the panel.  

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2021 ASA Annual Meeting: Community and Urban Sociology Section (CUSS) Sessions

Submit your paper for the 2021 ASA Annual Meeting!

Racial Equity, Repair, and the Global Movement for Black Lives

Session Organizer/Chair: Monica Bell, Yale University

In the seven years since George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin, activists and organizers have taken to the streets to build a global movement for Black lives, making demands of their cities and communities to dismantle racism in the criminal legal system and invest in structures that support Black futures. Most recently, the uprisings of 2020 have unfolded amidst the health inequities magnified by COVID-19, highlighted racialized police violence, and a global concern over anti-blackness. This session seeks paper submissions that broadly attend to the linkages between this global movement for Black lives and the ways it has been situated and experienced locally in cities, suburbs, and rural communities. Papers in this session may address questions about the range of demands that activists are making (from prison and police reform to abolition); the range of tactics used within the social movements; the influence of contemporary queer and intersectional organizing; coalition building with Latinx, indigenous, and immigrant social movements; and the continuously changing and colliding notions of the city’s racial landscapes in relationship to protest and racial discourse. 

Pandemic and the Modern Metropolis

Session Organizer/Chair: Neil Brenner, University of Chicago

The COVID19 pandemic has changed the structure and organization of urban life, globally. As cities grappled with whether and how to enforce new safety measures, from physical distancing to quarantine, urban sociologists have been attentive to questions about how social life is changing, and with what consequences. What unique impact has COVID19 had on urban places? And will urban life ever be the same? Papers in this session will answer questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted social life and inequality in the city: from issues related to density and population; to housing and the looming eviction crisis; surveillance and social unrest; the use or misuse of public space; food and work (in)security, mobilities, and vulnerabilities; and the newly emerging (or disappearing) formations of urban community and social life.  

Community, Policy and the Politicization of Space 

Session Organizer/Chair: Claudia Lopez, California State University – Long Beach

In the summer of 2020, President Trump announced that he would send a “surge” of federal law enforcement officers to U.S. cities that he deemed to be riddled with disorder and lawlessness. He warned that nearby suburban enclaves could become overrun with crime if they supported the inclusion of, for example, low-income housing. These comments highlight ongoing questions about landscape hierarchies and spatial inequality as zoning and land-use regulations that continue to fuel racial/ethnic and economic disparities across multiple global contexts and scales. This session welcomes papers that investigate issues related to rural-urban-suburban divides; global migration, political segregation; and spatial conflict across regions.

A Critical Lens on Urban Sociology

Session Organizer/Chair: Orly Clerge, University of California, Davis

This session invites papers that broadly theorize about the origins and expansions of urban sociology as a discipline, and questions about who has benefited or lost. Papers may theorize or answer the following: What would decoloniality mean as an approach to urban sociology? How has urban sociology, as a tool, served the interests of white supremacy, patriarchy, empire, or capitalism? What is the composition of urban sociology’s “workforce,” and who earns credit and prestige? How can urban sociologists rethink curriculum, canon, epistemology, and method? What other origin stories in urban sociology remain concealed or obscured? What urban sociological approaches or schools of thought have caused harm for the communities they study? And within the field of urban sociology, what could it look like to redistribute resources or repair harm?  

CUSS Digest (August 2020)

CUSS Digest Banner

Dear all,

Please find our August digest below.  Contents include:

  1. Community and Urban Sociology Section Newsletter
  2. Virtual Engagement Event
  3. Faculty Position
  4. New Book Announcement

This is my final digest as the chair of the section. It has been a pleasure and honor to serve the section in this role. I look forward to the great work that incoming chair Derek Hyra and the other section officers, council, and committee members will accomplish in the year ahead.

All the best,

Japonica

Japonica Brown-Saracino
Professor of Sociology & WGS

Boston University
Chair, ASA Community and Urban Sociology Section

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