Sociology’s Political, Economic, and Cultural Sociology Workshop

A general announcement/reminder that the Department of Sociology’s Political, Economic, and Cultural Sociology Workshop (PEC) will hold its big event of the year this Friday from 2:00-4:00 in the IMU Dogwood Room (flyer attached). Tak Wing Chan (Oxford), Jennifer Lena (Vanderbilt), and John Levi Martin (Chicago) will be the guests, speaking on “Cultural Sociology/Sociology of Culture: Present and Future.” All are of course invited and encouraged to attend.

A bit of background on our panelists:

Tak Wing Chan is currently Head of Department and University Lecturer in Sociology at Oxford University. He is also Director of the Oxford
Network for Social Inequality Research and a fellow of New College.
Most recently, he is editor of Social Status and Cultural Consumption (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), “Parenting Style and Youth Outcomes in the UK” (forthcoming in the European Sociological Review w/Anita Koo), and “Class and Status: The Conceptual Distinction and its Empirical Relevance” (American Sociological Review 2007, w/ John Goldthorpe).

Jennifer Lena is currently Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University. She is also Affiliated Faculty in the American Studies Program and at the Center for Ethics, and a Faculty Fellow of the Curb Center for Arts, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Most recently, she is author of “Politically-Purposed Music Genres” (forthcoming in the American Behavioral Scientist w/ Richard Peterson), “Valuing Art” (Contexts 2009, w/ Peter Levin), and “Classification as Culture:
Types and Trajectories of Music Genres” (American Sociological Review 2008, w/ Richard Peterson).

John Levi Martin is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Most recently, he is author of Social Structures (Princeton University Press 2009), “Life’s a Beach but You’re an Ant, and Other Unwelcome News for the Sociology of Culture” (forthcoming in Poetics), “Political Position and Social Knowledge” (forthcoming in Sociological Forum, w/ Matt Desmond), and “The Formation and Stabilization of Vertical Hierarchies among Adolescents: Towards a Quantitative Ethology of Dominance among Humans” (Social Psychology Quarterly 2009).