Apr 24th, 5pm, Paolo Parigi presents: The Emerging Structure of an Occupational Field

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, joint with Politics, History and Society Workshop, on Tuesday, April 24th, at 5 – 6:30 PM, in classroom 305 in the Social Science Research Building (note the change in location).

Paolo Parigi

Lead Trust Analyst, Airbnb and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University

 
The Emerging Structure of a Field:
A New Methodology for Bipartite Networks
 

Discussant:

Jim Murphy, PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Chicago

Abstract: We propose a novel method to explicate an emergent structure of a field of social groups starting with a random sample of individuals. We illustrate our approach by leveraging a two mode ego-occupation network data collected on a sample of 6,000 Japanese. Results show a segregated and polarized emergent structure of the occupational field in Japan. We further tested the characteristics of the emergent structure using an agent base model simulation. We identified two key mechanisms — status and geographical homophily – that produced networks consistent with the observed field of occupations in Japan.

For accessibility or other concerns please contact the workshop coordinator at yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu

 

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Tuesday, April 17, Maoz Brown presents: The Moralization of Commercialization: Uncovering the History of Fee-Charging in the U.S. Nonprofit Human Services Sector

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, Tomorrow (Tue, April 17th), at 5 – 6:30 PM, in classroom 401 in the Social Science Research Building.

Maoz Brown

PhD Student, Sociology, University of Chicago

The Moralization of Commercialization: Uncovering the History of Fee-Charging in the U.S. Nonprofit Human Services Sector

Discussant: Simon Shachter
PhD Student, Sociology, University of Chicago

Abstract: Recent literature on commercialization in the American nonprofit sector attributes increased reliance on fee income to neoliberal policies, often depicting this trend as an invasion of market forces that debase civil society by reducing social values and interpersonal relations to commodities and transactions. My paper challenges these beliefs by presenting historical data that have been largely ignored in recent writing. Examining a series of multi-city financial reports, I demonstrate that the U.S. nonprofit human services sector increased its fee-reliance significantly before neoliberal policy changes. Drawing on social work literature, I show that the practice of fee-charging reflected an ethos of communal inclusiveness rather than mere profit-seeking. In light of this evidence, I argue that fee-charging must be understood as a longstanding and multivalent feature of the nonprofit human services sector rather than as a recent incursion of profit-driven rationalities.

 

For accessibility requests or any other concerns please contact yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu

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Tuesday, April 3rd, Daniela Russ presents: Owning energy: electricity markets and the load factor (1900-1930)

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, on Tuesday, April 3rd, at 5 – 6:30 PM, in classroom 401 in the Social Science Research Building.

Daniela Russ

PhD Student, Sociology, University of Bielfeld

Owning energy: electricity markets and the load factor (1900-1930)

Discussant: Georg Rilinger,
PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Chicago

Abstract: Electrification figures prominently in the modernist theories of the early twentieth century. While this has often been stated, it remains still unclear how and why it took on this role. This paper explores the relation between power systems and the reflection on natural forces, industrial development, and societal progress developing in the first half of the twentieth century and later growing into full-fledged theories of energetic-economic development. To understand how electric power systems took on this role, we have to pay attention to their calculability. Two dimensions of electric power systems are important in that regard: Firstly, their peculiar technological mediation means that electricity is both determinable and universal and, secondly, the permanent coupling of production and demand enables the centralization of data gathering, processing, and system adaptation. The paper traces the historical development of electric power systems from arc-lighting to national grids with an emphasis on the technological and economic data that was produced by each system, and the ‘representations’ it thus enabled. Even though the paper seeks mainly to contribute to our historical and sociological understanding of energy, it can also shed light on broader questions in economic sociology, such as the relation between ‘technologically caged’ markets and capitalization, as well as the construction of theory from markets and markets from theory.

For questions or accessibility concerns please contact the coordinator at yanivr {at} uchicago {dot}

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Tuesday, March 27, 5pm, Lotta Mayer: Paradoxical Processes: Unintended Consequences of Organizational Deviance in German Secret Services and the Extreme Right-Wing Terrorist Group NSU

Please join us for the first meeting of Spring Quarter of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, on Tuesday, March 27th, at 5 – 6:30 PM, in classroom 401 in the Social Science Research Building.

This is a joint session co-hosted by PIPES (The Program on International Politics, Economics and Security). Please note, that our full Spring Schedule will be sent out next week, prior to the meeting.

 

 Lotta Mayer

PhD Graduate, Researcher, Max Weber Institute for Sociology, University of Heidelberg

Paradoxical Processes: Unintended Consequences of Organizational Deviance inGerman Secret Services and the Extreme Right-Wing Terrorist Group NSU

 

Discussant: Georg Rilinger
PhD Candidate, Sociology, University of Chicago

Abstract: The National Socialist Underground (NSU) was an extreme right-wing clandestine terrorist group active in Germany from 1996 to 2011, committing murder in ten cases, several bombings, and a series of bank robberies. It consisted of three core members who lived together in hiding since 1997. The NSU was detected only after its two male members killed themselves in the aftermath of a bank robbery in 2011, resulting in a political scandal following the post-hoc exposition of the group. Our research project focuses on one of the central issues raised in the political and public debate: the relationship between various German secret services and the NSU. While public discourse tends to either focus on the affair as a case of incompetence on the part of the intelligence agencies or to cultivate conspiracy theories, we propose a differentiated approach focusing on unintended, self-enforcing, and in part paradoxical processes: The interplay between initial failure of authorities and the actions of NSU’s members and supporters unintendedly facilitated the NSU’s genesis, continued existence, and its capacity to act as a terrorist group. In order to explain the secret service agencies’ actions, we combine the concept of ‘organizational deviance’ with a conflict-theoretical perspective, both re-formulated in symbolic interactionist terminology. We thereby develop an analytical perspective that enables reconstructing the systematic aspects of the secret service agencies’ failure without falling victim to ‘fictions of intentionality’ and thus offers an alternative to the predominant discourses centering on incompetence and conspiracy. More generally, we seek to broaden the theoretical understanding concerning the relationship between the genesis and continued existence of criminal organizations on the one hand and partly illegal actions of legal organizations, including the authorities, on the other.

 

Accessibility concerns or other issues should be addressed to the workshop coordinator: yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu.

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Tuesday, March 6, 5pm, Molly Cunningham: Civil Service Legacies and Derivative Futures: Unsettling Accounts of Detroit’s Grand Bargain Settlement

lease join us for the last meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop for the Winter Quarter, on coming Tuesday, March 6th, at 5 – 6:30 PM in classroom 106 at SSRB (the Social Science Research Building):

Molly Cunningham

PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Civil Service Legacies and Derivative Futures:
Unsettling Accounts of Detroit’s Grand Bargain Settlement

Discussant: Kai Parker
PhD student, History, University of Chicago

Abstract: This paper examines political histories, investment logics, and accounting standards of Detroit’s legacy commitments to its civil service, as these debts are subjected to state intervention through emergency management and liquidation through chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy. When Detroit’s emergency manager filed for bankruptcy, the liquidation of these benefits held as credit by vulnerable retirees sparked controversy and anxiety; however, by the case’s close, the emergency manager had reached a negotiated settlement with retiree representatives that was celebrated in the press and dubbed “the grand bargain” – heralding new forms of corporate commitment to municipal futures, bipartisan cooperation in the name of urban revitalization, and the heroic sacrifice of long-suffering civil servants. This paper demonstrates that the heroic narrative of redemption that works to settle this legal settlement in the public imagination obscures the antiblack violence of dispossession it enacts, while inaugurating a new market reality of governing according to the demands of derivative markets and their risk-pricing models – a frontier project that harnesses affective urgency to the narrative silences of necessity.

For accessibility concerns or other questions, please contact the workshop’s coordinator at yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu.

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Tuesday, February 20, at 5 PM, Peter Fugiel Presents: Precarious Work Schedules and the Neoliberal Governance of Risk

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, next Tuesday, February 20th, at 5 – 6:30 PM in classroom 106 at SSRB (the Social Science Research Building):

Peter Fugiel

PhD Student, Soicology, University of Chicago

Precarious Work Schedules and the Neoliberal Governance of Risk

Discussant: Rishi Arora
PhD student, Sociology, University of Chicago

Abstract: Neoliberal capitalism is commonly characterized by a reallocation of risk from capital to labor. In the United States this shift has been documented with respect to employment, pensions, and health insurance. Yet there has been relatively little scholarship analyzing risk allocation with respect to work schedules. Precarious work schedules provide an interesting context in which to examine the political economy of risk governance for both theoretical and practical reasons. On a theoretical level, precarious schedules subject workers to risks of unstable, unpredictable, and unwanted work hours on a routine basis — more often than other labor market risks such as unemployment and injury which feature prominently in theories of comparative political economy. On a more practical level, there is a movement for scheduling standards which is attracting growing support from labor unions, advocates, and policymakers, having recently achieved legislative victories in San Francisco, Seattle, and Oregon. This paper lays out a framework for analyzing how precarious schedules result from a mismatch between workers’ expectations and lean staffing practices that treat labor as a cost to be contained. I propose a larger research project that builds upon this framework to explain the origins, extent, and experience of precarious schedules in the US retail sector.

For accessibility concerns or any other questions, please contact the workshop administrator at yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu.

 

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Thursday, February 8, 12:30 PM, Harold Gabel presents: echnocrats of Transport: How Anti-Politics, Expertise, and the World Bank Shaped CODATU in the 1980s

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop, which will be held in a joint session with the Urban Workshop (please note the different
time and location) – next Thursday, February 8th, at 12:30 – 2 PM in Campus North Residential Commons, Room 154 (see detailed instructions below).

Please note that there will not be a session next week on Tuesday (Feb. 6th) afternoon.

Harold Gabel

MAPSS Graduate (History), University of Chicago

Technocrats of Transport: How Anti-Politics, Expertise, and the World Bank Shaped CODATU in the 1980s

Discussant: Alejandra Azuero Quijano
PhD student, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Abstract: Since its founding in 1980, L’Association Conférences sur Développment et l’Aménagement des Transports Urbains dans les Pays en Développment (CODATU) has held biannual conferences on urban transport policy in developing nations. From its first meeting in 1981 and throughout the 1980s, much of the discourse within the organization reacted to two policy papers published by the World Bank, the first in 1975 and the second in 1986. What emerged was a debate in transnational urban transport policy between neoliberal “expertise” advanced by the World Bank and the more socially-oriented aspirations of Third World cities. This paper analyzes some of the more peculiar aspects of the World Bank’s neoliberal view of urban transport policy and considers how expertise may or may not be separated from the political.

* Campus North Residential Commons are located at the Corner of 55th and University Ave. (5500 S. University Ave.). Classroom 154 is located just south of Dollop, parallel to University Ave. The entry is accessible from the courtyard.

For accessibility concerns or any other questions, please contact the workshop coordinator at yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu

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Tuesday, January 23, 5 PM, Natalja Czarnecki presents: Something in the Way He Says ‘Babushka Production’: Managerial Experts, Sincere Regulation, and Food Safety Reform in Post-Soviet Tbilisi, Georgia

Please join us for our next meeting this coming Tuesday, January 23rd, at 5 – 6:30 PM in the Social Science Research Building, room 106:

Natalja Czarnecki

PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Something in the Way He Says ‘Babushka Production’: Managerial Experts, Sincere Regulation, and Food Safety Reform in Post-Soviet Tbilisi, Georgia

 

Discussant: Ella Butler

PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Abstract: In 2014, Georgia and the EU signed an Association Agreement, after which the Georgian National Food Agency, a department of the Ministry of Agriculture, began a process of “harmonizing” its legal food safety codes in accordance with those of the EU and of global organizations such as the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization. In this context of regulatory reform, this chapter offers an ethnographic account of the making of sincere, regulatory authority – here embodied in the figure of the “managerial expert” positioned within a state bureaucracy, the National Food Agency. The Georgian food safety manager-expert emerges as someone in a particular kind of “proximate distance” to its object of regulation, managing his/her position as oriented to both the authority of technocratic codes emanating from the EU, but also sincerely caring about his/her very familiar object of regulation, such as street food vendors and the pastoral countryside. I will discuss what these processes of gendering might tell us about the kind of moral authorities that are claimed and emergent in the politics of transnational regulatory regimes at EU and global “peripheries.”

For a copy of the paper or concerns about access please contact: yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu

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