The winner of the 2020 Robert E. Park Award is Sites Unseen: Uncovering Hidden Hazards in American Cities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation by Scott Frickel & James R. Elliott. It is part of the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology. Below is a discussion with the winners on industrial waste and its legacy in the urban landscape.
Read moreH. Jacob Carlson, a postdoctoral scholar at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University, was the winner of the 2020 Graduate Student Paper Award. Jake’s innovative research agenda leverages the urban and political sociological traditions to address new questions about democracy, housing, and changing cities. We reached out to ask him to discuss his research, and we’re including his responses below. Thanks to Jake for participating in our interview series!
Read moreBarrett Lee
Pennsylvania State University
2021 Winter, Vol. 34, No.1
Being named the 2020 recipient of the Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement has been both gratifying and humbling, given the distinguished honorees who preceded me. I was taken by surprise when Kevin Gotham (the Lynd committee chair) first passed along the news last spring. That initial reaction quickly gave way to an appreciation of the award as a collective rather than solo accomplishment. From my undergraduate days to the present, I’ve had the good fortune to learn from and work with many talented and inspiring students, mentors, colleagues, and collaborators.
Below are our section’s 2021 award committee calls. Please note we have a new award this year, the Publicly-Engaged Scholar Award. I thank all of the award committee chairs and members for their willingness to serve as well as council member Jean Beaman for organizing these committees. You all are publishing great work and I am excited to see who gets recognized next year.
All submissions must be received by March 1, 2021 and award winners will be notified by June 30, 2021.
Best,
Derek Hyra
Section Chair
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Dear all,
I am thinking of everyone and looking forward to coming together – virtually – in August with those who are able to participate in the remote ASA conference. It is a crucial moment for urbanists to be in conversation with one another as our current context brings to light and exacerbates longstanding inequalities and injustice. Racist state violence, police brutality, and protest suppression are pressing urban concerns that should be central to conversations within our subfield. I will be in touch in coming weeks about plans for virtual section activities during the conference, and welcome emails (my address is below) from section members about how, as a section, we can elevate these concerns and conversations within and beyond our scholarship and meetings.
Below, you will find our June Digest. Contents include:
A) Section Election Results
B) Section Award Winners
Best,
Japonica
Read moreZachary Hyde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia, was the winner of the 2019 Graduate Student Paper Award. Zach’s innovative research agenda brings work in relational economic sociology to bear on longstanding questions in urban sociology. We reached out to ask him to discuss his research, and we’re including his responses below. Thanks to Zach for participating in our interview series!
What were the main findings of your paper?
My paper “Giving Back to Get Ahead” focuses on the popular urban policy of density bonusing, where private development companies provide affordable housing and other social services in exchange for extra density. The main finding of the paper is that density bonusing forms a paradox, whereby “giving back” social services simultaneously increases developer profits. Through contributing services developers enhance their symbolic capital via gift-giving, which can be traded in for economic advantages in future dealings with local governments.
Read moreThe CUSS newsletter team reached out to the 2019 Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award Winner, Harvey Molotch, to reflect on his career and his trajectory as an urban sociologist. Dr. Molotch is Professor Emeritus at NYU and UC Santa Barbara and is a prominent figure in urban sociology and our section. We’re including his responses below:
What initially brought you to urban sociology?
I’ve always had a thing for land and buildings. Children play with blocks; I kept at it. When growing up in Baltimore I liked watching things go up, including houses and especially movie theaters. From family scuttlebutt I learned that a part of making things happen was connections – that’s what gets zoning, building permits, and even permission to have a neon sign. Don’t be shocked, dear reader, but there were bribes.
When I got to urban social science, my Baltimore was not in it. Crime was certainly there but largely sequestered as criminology. Urban science was about concentric circles, demography, and exotic street corner life. I yearned for the developers, the fixers, and the crooks – and their linkages with the more ordinary folks trying to make their way through the thicket. A lot of my life has been to follow up on that.
Read moreAnne Shlay
Georgia State University
2020 Winter, Vol 33, No 1
At 20, I fell in love with the Russians, namely Russian literature. The passion of Bolshevik poets whose public readings of their work drew the masses excited me. I cherished the Russian literary thaw that produced the novels of post Stalinist writers and was heart-broken when they were silenced after the fall of Khrushchev. I studied the Russian language in the hope that I could read Dr. Zhivago in the original. Yet the inspiration of what became my life’s work came from Dostoyevsky, a writer from the 19th century.
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Please find the Community and Urban Sociology Section January Digest below. Items include:
A. Call for Nominations for CUSS Positions
Section leadership is a great way to get involved in shaping the section’s makeup and direction. The nominations committee is accepting nominations (including self-nominations) for the following positions:
1 Chair (2 candidates, 1-year term)
1 Secretary/treasurer (2 candidates, 3-year term)
2 Council members (4 candidates, 3-year term)
1 Student representation (2 candidates, 1-year term)
2 Publications committee members (4 candidates, 3-year term)
Membership committee chair (2 candidates, 3-year term)
If interested in nominating others or yourself to any of these positions, please contact Zaire Dinzey at zdinzey@lcs.rutgers.edu. Thanks.
B. Call for Submissions, Section Awards
Please see below for calls for four section awards, including updated submission instructions.Community and Urban Sociology Section’s Robert E. Park Book Award
The Park Award (formerly the Park Book Award) goes to the author(s) of the best book published in the past two years (2018 and 2019). To nominate a book for this award: 1) By March 1 send an email nominating the book to Committee Co-Chair Evelyn Perry (perrye@rhodes.edu); and 2) When you nominate the book, you will receive an email with committee members’ addresses and additional instructions for the publisher. Using those addresses and instructions, books should arrive to committee members by April 1.
Bruce Haynes (UC Davis) – Co-Chair
bdhaynes@ucdavis.edu
Evelyn Perry (Rhodes College) — Co-Chair
perrye@rhodes.edu
Esther Sullivan (University of Colorado, Denver)
ESTHER.SULLIVAN@UCDENVER.EDU
Max Besbris (Rice University)
mb89@rice.edu
Junia Howell (University of Pittsburgh)
juniahowell@pitt.edu
Community and Urban Sociology Section’s Jane Addams Article Award
The Jane Addams Award (formerly the Park Article Award) goes to authors of the best scholarly article in community and urban sociology published in the past two years (2018 or 2019). Please send electronic copies of the paper via email to all four members of the committee by April 1, 2020. Email addresses are listed below.
Andrew Papachristos (Northwestern University) – Chair
avp@northwestern.edu
Sara Bastomski (Urban Institute)
SBastomski@urban.org
Meaghan Stiman (College of William & Mary)
mlstiman@wm.edu
Ana Villarreal (Boston University)
anav@bu.edu
Community and Urban Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award
The CUSS Student Paper Award goes to the student author of the paper the award committee regards as the best graduate student paper in community and urban sociology. Please send electronic copies to all three members of the committee by April 1, 2020. Email addresses are listed below.
Anna Rhodes (Rice University) – Chair
anna.rhodes@rice.edu
Zachary Hyde (University of British Columbia)
Zachary.hyde@alumni.ubc.ca
Watoii Rabii (Oakland University)
wrabii@oakland.edu
Community and Urban Sociology Section’s Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement
The Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes distinguished career achievement in community and urban sociology. Nominations are due by April 1, 2020. Please send nominations to all five members of the committee. Email addresses are below.
Kevin Gotham (Tulane University) – Chair
kgotham@tulane.edu
Sarah Mayorga-Gallo (UMASS Boston)
Sarah.MayorgaGallo@umb.edu
Kristin Perkins (Georgetown University)
Kristin.perkins@georgetown.edu
Jaleh Jalili (Oberlin College)
jjalili@oberlin.edu
John Eason (University of Wisconsin)
jeason2@wisc.edu
C. Section Sessions at ASA 2020
Thanks to our Conference Planning Committee (Jean Beaman, Maggie Kusenbach and Jessica Simes) for selecting four terrific sessions for the 2020 ASA Conference: “Power, Inequality and Resistance at Work”. All sessions are open. See the ASA website for submission deadlines and instructions.
Session 1: Cities and Big Data
Session Organizers: Daniel Silver and Fernando Calderón Figueroa
Session 2: Work, Community, and City
Session Organizer: Rachael Woldoff
Session 3: Theorizing the Renters and Rental Housing in the United States
Session Organizers: Christine Jang, Robin Bartram, and Steven Schmidt
Session 4: New forms of precarious urban labor
Session Organizers: Alexandrea Ravenelle and Sofya Aptekar
Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
Session Organizers: Jennifer Candipan and Alfredo Huante
D. News and Announcements
Orly Clergé announces the publication of her book: The New Noir: Race, Identity, and Diaspora in Black Suburbia (UC Press, October 2019).
Community and Urban Sociology 