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Abstract: Vulnerable populations may be hard-to-reach, but so too are state actors. Classic strategies of accessing the hard-to-reach, devised in reference to the vulnerable, do not translate well to state actors because their inaccessibility lies in their institutional power, rather than their social precarity. This article analyzes the substantive implications and practical adaptations that follow. Drawing on experiences of being denied access to America’s largest police department, I argue that by selectively granting and withholding access to external researchers, state institutions can control claims-making about the intentions of the state and its actors. Such politics of access position state organizations to shape an evidence base that justifies organizational changes in ways that advance institutional interests. This article identifies different forms of denials (denials-by-default, curable, silent, and unwritten) and practical strategies for accessing various types of public records (published, requestable, and digital), and thus problematizes whether the consequences of organizational change are as “unintended” as they are often claimed to be. PubDate: 2025-06-03
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Abstract: Many experts are increasingly being tasked with bridging or reconciling different forms of value. How do experts handle valuations that conflict with their own' Drawing on in-depth interviews with Mexican historic heritage officials and secondary sources, we analyze the case of state historic preservation experts in Mexico who managed the restoration of over two thousand churches and chapels damaged by two earthquakes in 2017. Communities that used the temples valued the heritage primarily for its religious and everyday social significance, while insurance representatives saw it in economic terms, and preservation officials valued it for its historic significance, respect for original construction, and technical qualities. In this context, preservation experts sought to align these conflicting values, reducing the value dissonances and precariously making them compatible. In this aligning, they mobilized their authority differently with various actors. With local communities, they downplayed their expert authority, emphasizing dialogue and empathy, even as congregations sometimes jeopardized preservation efforts with unauthorized repairs. Preservation officials aligned their valuation of heritage with economic value more reluctantly. When dealing with insurance adjusters, preservation officials wielded their technical expertise to advocate for their vision of restoration funding. However, the practical challenges of damage evaluation and the complexity of heritage monuments facilitated aligning valuations with insurance. This article contributes to the intersections of the sociologies of valuation, expertise, and money. PubDate: 2025-05-06
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Abstract: In my response to the three critics of “In Praise of ‘Thick Construction’,” I draw attention to the philosophical foundation of neo-Bourdieusian ethnography in the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, as reworked in Pierre Bourdieu’s The Craft of Sociology ([1968] 1990). I characterize ethnography as embodied and embedded social inquiry which requires a triple historicization of the agents observed, the social world in which they evolve, and the categories and techniques used by the analyst. I insist that, while theory-driven, thick construction aims at the production of new objects and not returning to theory in a solipsistic movement. Historical readings, stepping in and out of the field site, drawing diagrams, and keeping a meta-diary are four techniques promoting the reflexive construction of the object. Being epistemologically vigilant does not hinder but fosters rich and trusting relationships with protagonists in the field. But reflexivity can only be achieved collectively by a scientific field in which mutual critics are objective allies in the joint imagination, production, and validation of sociological knowledge. PubDate: 2025-05-03
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Abstract: Gender occupational minorities are individuals who deviate from gender-based occupational norms in their career choices: women in masculinized occupations and men in feminized occupations. Despite extensive research on some aspects of their experiences, few studies explore how men in feminized occupations and women in masculinized occupations define career success. The present qualitative analysis investigates two highly skilled groups of occupations who were chosen based on Bourdieu's (1998) practical principles of gender occupational segregation: IT/new technologies for women and childcare/education for men. I analyzed the interviewees’ definitions of career success and their experiences in achieving (or not achieving) career success within their occupational trajectories. Furthermore, my investigation delved into the factors influencing chances of achieving career success, particularly emphasizing the role of gender. PubDate: 2025-05-01
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Abstract: Building on my book The Poverty of the Ethnography of Poverty ([2023] 2025), I make the case for “thick construction” as a rationalist approach to framing and conducting ethnography. Infused by Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological epistemology, thick construction is a “construction squared,” that is, a scientific (analytic) construction of an ordinary (folk) construction. Anchored by the concept of social space, thick construction aims to dodge the danger of “ethnographism,” the tendency to want to describe, interpret, and explain a phenomenon based solely on the elements discerned through fieldwork. It allows us to avoid committing one or another of the five organic fallacies of participant observation: interactionism, inductivism, populism, presentism, and the hermeneutic drift. I diagram how thick description, grounded theory, the extended-case method, abductive theorizing, and thick construction configure the duet of theory and observation. Eschewing the false opposition between concept and percept, thick construction aims to build heuristics for fabricating new objects. In this approach, contrary to conventional views, theory is not the haughty master but the humble servant of empirical research as approximation of the real. PubDate: 2025-05-01
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Abstract: Wacquant’s critique of ethnographic reductionism is trenchant and insightful, but it presents two major problems for practicing fieldworkers. First, his philosophy of social science focused on “conquering” facts is ill suited to the empathic competencies needed for ethnography—that is, the methodology is problematic as method. Second, Wacquant’s a-social, rationalist vision is at odds with what the sociology of science tells us about knowledge production. Turning to the pragmatist tradition and reflecting on my own research experience, I show the benefits of viewing ethnographic facts as less conquered in combat than co-constructed in community. Collaborating with the community under study and the scientific community of inquiry can help researchers conduct better fieldwork, lean on others’ creativity, and ultimately reach Wacquant’s desired end goal of “thick construction.” PubDate: 2025-04-30
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Abstract: Analytical theory should serve as both the point of departure and the target of reconstruction in any ethnographic project. Without reflexively engaging social science that bridges microprocesses to macroforces, ethnographers risk uncritically reproducing the folk theories of those they study. A central objective of sociology should be to either elaborate on or break from folk theory in explicit conversation with analytical theory. Grounded theory fails us in this regard, and to a lesser extent so too does abductive analysis. Theory-driven ethnography is the only answer. So-called thick construction offers a worthwhile model because it is a variant of this broader approach. However, its deep-rooted commitments to a theory of Bourdieusian social space should give us pause. Our baseline commitment should not be to Bourdieu specifically but instead to the broader sociological promise: the craft of linking personal troubles to public issues through and with analytical theory. PubDate: 2025-04-24
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Abstract: With “In Praise of ‘Thick Construction,’” Loïc Wacquant offers a welcome manifesto for ethnography infused with Bourdieusian epistemology. Continuing in that spirit, I elaborate the need (and offer practical tips) for epistemological vigilance—that is, to reflexively interrogate one’s own thinking—in the face of prenotions that threaten the thick construction of ethnographic objects. To illustrate the allure of prenotions and analytical struggles against them, I offer brief notes on some practical avenues to foster epistemological reflexivity: recognition, purposive reading, curious skepticism, patience, and intellectual record-keeping. PubDate: 2025-04-21
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Abstract: Prior studies of postindustrial societies have shown that despite declines in some gendered expectations, the view that women should not work when their children are young persists. Yet there is insufficient research on how individuals arrive at and make sense of negative views of maternal employment in the context of increasing gender egalitarianism. South Korea is a compelling case of this seeming paradox. Drawing on 63 in-depth interviews, this study identifies the cognitive and psychological processes among both women and men that contribute to the gender norms surrounding maternal employment. Analysis reveals that the use of knowledge-based narratives reinforces negative views of maternal employment, including the belief that mothers should not work when a child under three is at home. In addition, there are two components of such a knowledge-based narrative that are tacitly assumed: a zero-risk mindset that prioritizes child welfare absolutely, and the temporal trap which emphasizes the life-long impact of maternal employment on a child’s life. In the end, this study identifies both the process in which individuals construct knowledge-based narratives and the elements within the narrative that reproduce existing intensive motherhood ideologies that culturally challenge maternal employment. PubDate: 2025-03-27
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Abstract: Numerous studies have focused on how states, bureaucracies, and social movements make race. Less explored, however, are the intrastate bureaucratic jurisdictional struggles to determine the official ethnoracial categorization of populations. Drawing on 19 interviews with government officials and Indigenous leaders as well as a content analysis of regulation and news, I examine the implementation of the Law of Prior Consultation in Peru. This law is unique because it establishes “objective” and “subjective” criteria that allow the state to determine who should be considered Indigenous in Peru. I show that official indigeneity arises from competition between government agencies. Officials from these agencies seek to demonstrate who has the stewardship to define who should be considered Indigenous by interpreting and reinterpreting the law’s criteria. My research also highlights the dynamics of resistance/accommodation between Indigenous organizations and official indigeneity. PubDate: 2025-03-15
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Abstract: While studies often explore the intended and unintended consequences of technologies, few have theorized how and why they change. One crucial transformation in quantitative technologies is the shift from evaluative accountability to predictive algorithms, such as in schools that use dropout prediction systems. Using the case of ninth-grade early warning indicators, I argue that the transformation of quantification resulted from interorganizational learning, or the acquisition of new knowledge through the interaction of different organizations. In particular, I show how technology changes gradually from organization-level evaluation to individual-based prediction to systems-focused improvement. Pivotal to such changes were new forms of knowledge that emerged (1) as “instructing” organizations directed changes and “receiving” organizations resisted them; (2) as organizations in various fields reciprocally collaborated; and (3) as similar organizations practiced networked learning. Although studies have traditionally highlighted the “discipline” of technologies, I illustrate the power of organizational agents to resist, adapt, and change them—with implications for the study of quantification, work, institutional change, and education. PubDate: 2025-03-05
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Abstract: Previous research and policy implementation on absentee fatherhood maintains an overly narrow conception of absence based solely on residency. This paper argues that absence is a variegated experience for many that is inadequately captured through the resident/non-resident binary. Qualitative interviews with 26 men on their experiences growing up with non-residential fathers revealed four ideal-typical patterns of residential absence. The four ideal-types of absence are Consistent, Inconsistent, Extended, and Absolute. This research demonstrates how these four types of absence are each uniquely consequential for how these men make sense of their fathers and conceptualize fatherhood. The paper concludes with policy and research considerations for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. PubDate: 2025-02-18
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Abstract: This paper examines how graduate students and professors talk about the funding they receive from libertarian-leaning organizations. Building from cultural economic sociologists’ insights on relational work, we analyze the meaning of money—in this case, politically controversial donations and grants—from the perspective of scholars who are supported by these types of funds. We integrate concepts from the organizational management literature on stigmatized job tasks to examine the discursive strategies scholars use to “normalize” the “contestable currency” they receive. Our theoretical synthesis allows for a nuanced understanding of how ideologically-based funding in higher education precipitates complex negotiations about the meaning of quality scholarship in higher education today. PubDate: 2025-02-04
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Abstract: How do workers come to know what their bosses need and want' This paper shows how laborers in patrimonial work environments learn to serve their bosses through bottom-up observation, rather than top-down instruction. The author uses the case of assistants in Hollywood to introduce the concept of sousveillance work, which is the labor of monitoring, anticipating, and fulfilling a boss’s mutable needs and wants. Drawing on 60 + interviews with professionals in Hollywood, the author reveals how sousveillance work helps assistants manage-up and mitigate volatility wrought by their patrimonial superiors. The concept of sousveillance work adds to research on labor and uncertainty in creative industries, and also helps to reveal how patrimonial systems are sustained in contemporary work environments. PubDate: 2025-01-29
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Abstract: Using 122 interviews, this study examines how students at one elite U.S. university conceptualized the impacts of extracurricular participation during college. Scholars have argued that activities can yield valuable forms of capital for students at the primary, secondary, and college levels, yet these processes remain undertheorized. Applying Bourdieusian field theory, I found that respondents perceived three structural parallels between their student organizations and actual workplace contexts. Through clubs, students socialized one another to adopt new relational orientations that anticipated future careers navigating institutional hierarchies. Despite their university’s supposedly endless resources for activities, students paradoxically restricted one another’s access to clubs through elaborate recruitment practices that mirrored job hiring. Within clubs, respondents described learning to manage one another and relate in a detached manner as colleagues, rather than friends. While past research has explored how extracurricular activities shape individual outcomes, this study reveals how students themselves perceived the impacts of club involvement, specifically in an elite institutional context. Respondents’ experiences suggest that extracurricular activities may represent a key site of “status degradation ceremonies” that ultimately enhance elite institutions’ consecrating function. PubDate: 2025-01-28
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Abstract: The perspectives of skilled experts who help learners develop and improve bodily skills has not often been examined in sociology. In this paper, I focus on the role of selective sensory engagement with moving bodies as an important way of knowing through which skilled experts assess and intervene upon the skill acquisition of learners. I bring together literature on body pedagogics with literature on sociology of the senses to understand how embodied, sensorial knowledge is an inter-corporeal and intersubjective resource for the transmission of bodily skills. I use interviews with barbell coaches and yoga teachers in the United States to understand the processes by which these skilled experts construct ‘good form’ and its normative limits and I outline three interrelated processes of sensorial knowing through which barbell coaches and yoga teachers help their paying clients achieve ‘good form’ when learning to engage in these fitness cultures. I argue that that the use and training of the senses in body pedagogics is an understudied but essential way of knowing to understand the transmission and embodiment of culture. PubDate: 2025-01-15
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Abstract: How do sociologists operationalize “romance,” specifically the seriousness or casualness of the romantic relationships of the participants they study' How do research participants themselves understand and define romantic connections in everyday life' Using the case of 80 South Asian Muslim Canadian interviewees and how they used relationship labels like “casual” and “serious” when describing their romantic experiences, this article problematizes the concept of a romantic partnership and bridges sociological conversations about emotions, dating, marriage, and larger discussions about religion, race, gender, and immigration in high-demand religious cultures. Contrary to popular definitions of casual and serious relationships, rather than on sexual intimacy, my participants defined the casualness or seriousness of their relationship based on the marriageability of their partner. Their assessment of a partner’s marriageability rested on the partner’s social compatibility and/or their emotional attachment with the partner. Factors indicating marriageability included race/ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status that many participants perceived to be in tension with emotions. On the one hand, emotional connections brought people from different races and faiths together, motivating participants to overcome external hurdles from family and internal biases. On the other hand, people ended relationships with out-group partners despite being in loving relationships for years because they deemed them to be socially incompatible for marriage. However, emotions are hard to control. Sometimes, the relationship deemed to be the most socially compatible was unsuccessful because of a lack of emotional connection. Instead, the relationship with an out-group partner initially deemed incompatible ended up being emotionally significant and meaningful. PubDate: 2025-01-14
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Abstract: This paper is the first ethnographic study focusing on Asian American women’s experiences in electoral politics. It has three important contributions to the literature on Asian Americans’ panethnicity and political engagement. First, I illuminate the specific gendered and racialized position Asian American women occupy in the US formal political process today. I argue that, despite the ethnic differences or their long tenure in politics, the sexism within their panethnic or ethnic communities combined with racism from the non-Asian populations lead to their “doubly marginalized” position in politics. Second, I highlight the different stereotypes of East/Southeast Asian women and South Asian women operating in politics, offering a nuanced analysis of the racism targeting various Asian ethnicities, particularly those of women. Last, I expand the literature on panethnicity by demonstrating the emergence of a “gendered” Asian American panethnicity among Asian American women, which is less frequently discussed in the literature. Despite coming from different ethnic backgrounds, the similar experiences of sexism and racism among Asian American women enable their specific gendered panethnic solidarity, leading to their support of other Asian American women in politics. PubDate: 2024-12-02
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Abstract: Environmental social scientists have demonstrated that one path to caring for nature is spending time appreciating it. This paper asks why spending time in nature leads to this care and proposes connections between knowledge and emotion and the extension of the self as a mechanism for this link. It develops a general theory of care based on these connections between knowledge and emotion and extension of the self. The data come from a five-year ethnography at a nature centre in Toronto, Ontario, involving 50 interviews and over 500 hours in the field. I find that people care because connections between knowledge and emotion create opportunities for the extension of the self. Specifically, nature knowledge parses out pieces of nature – such as protected areas and species – and emotions make these pieces emotionally vibrant. This emotional resonance based on specialized knowledge, in turn, creates opportunities for people to extend their sense of self to emotionally resonant parts of nature. Once people understand parts of nature as an extension of the self, threats to nature can galvanize care, to preserve what has become part of the self. PubDate: 2024-11-08
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Abstract: Scholars of civic and political participation have been puzzled by questions of disengagement among socially, economically, and politically marginalized groups. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with long-time Black residents of San Francisco’s historic Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, this analysis examines the factors that influence the civic participation choices of residents. By employing conceptual tools from previous studies of civic participation, this article demonstrates how local opportunities and constraints influence civic attitudes and behaviors. The narratives offered by residents in this study reveal that civic participation is not a fixed practice but instead a dynamic process of adapting political attitudes and behaviors to evolving environmental conditions. These findings present a micro-level account of the effects of political exclusion and disadvantage on civic engagement practices and hold important implications for our approaches to broadly mobilizing perceivably disengaged populaces. PubDate: 2024-11-04
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