Hello Labor Section colleagues,

I am very pleased to report that the Labor and Labor Movements Section has received funding for a scholarly exchange with the China Association of Work and Labor of the Chinese Sociological Association, our Chinese counterparts.  I wish I could take credit for raising the funds, but in fact the $100k grant from Ford Foundation-China was obtained by Katie Quan of the Berkeley Labor Center (in consultation with our section's Council).  She has co-founded a Berkeley-Sun Yat Sen University Joint Center for Labor Research, and is vitally interested in promoting learning and collaboration between researchers in the two countries (see http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/global/ ).

$100,000 may sound like a lot of money, but in fact it gets chewed up fairly quickly in US-China travel.  Still, this presents us with very exciting opportunities.

Here's the plan:
* 3 trips:
- Group of US sociologists visits China, December 2012-January 2013 (4 each time, in addition to Katie Quan of the Berkeley Labor Center)

- Group of Chinese sociologists visits ASA @ NYC and participates in a Labor & Labor Movements mini-conference on global labor issues, August 2013

- Group of US sociologists visits China, December 2013-January 2014

In each case, the visitors will give presentations and meet with sociologists and labor activists.  The goal over the three meetings, beyond getting to know each other and each other's work, is to identify some areas and forms of collaboration that can be ongoing.

* For the first US trip, the lineup in addition to Katie Quan is me, Steve Lopez, whichever of Steve McKay or Ralph Armbruster is elected Chair-Elect, and Jennifer Chun.  This is the current chair, chair-elect, future chair-elect, and in Jennifer's case, someone who has conducted US-Asia comparative research and has played an active role in the section and in our counterpart, the RC44 section, in the International Sociological Association.

* For the second US trip, past chair Carolina Bank Munoz, who will not be able to join the first trip (she will be in Chile, and the cost and time involved in travel make it impractical), will take part.  We have not decided who else should take part, and I think it makes sense to defer that until the first visit has taken place.  I suspect we will want some overlap and some new people.

We will discuss this further at the Section meeting in Denver.  In the meantime I welcome any suggestions for how to make the most of this opportunity.

Best,
Chris

Hello Everybody;

I’m Justin Lini, coordinator for sections here at the American Sociological Association. I’m writing to inform you about your section’s brand new discussion listserv! This discussion listserv is open to all section members and is an open forum for any topics related to your work and scholarship. As a discussion list, any participant is welcome to join the conversation once they have signed on.

If you are interested in joining send the following message to [email protected]

Subscribe LABOR-DISCUSSION
(and leave everything else such as subjects and signatures blank)
Once your message is received and processed, you will be asked to confirm your subscription via a link. Afterwards  you should receive a welcome message informing you you’re now on the list.
If you decide that you like the list, but can’t keep up with the daily flow of email, you can set up a weekly digest using the following instructions.
Send the following message to [email protected]

Set LABOR-DISCUSSION NOHTML MIME DIGEST

(as before, leave everything else such as subjects and signatures blank)

If the listserv received your command it will send you a confirmation message.

Last but not least, here’s how to send a message to the list. Once you’re signed up, you can communicate to the list by sending an email message to [email protected]

That should be enough to get you started. If you’re lost or are interested in other options please check out our page on listservs on the ASA Website: http://www.asanet.org/about/sections/listservs.cfm. If you have any additional questions or would like assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Justin Lini MA
Program Coordinator, Governance and Information Systems
American Sociological Association
(202) 383-9005 x 330 - [email protected]

--------
Hello Labor and Labor Movements Section of ASA,

This new listserv is an unmoderated list, which means that any member can send a message.  The Council's intention in having two lists is to channel two different types of messages:

1) The announcement list, which the Chair moderates, will continue to send information on Section and ASA business, RFPs/calls for papers/conference announcements, and other messages the chair judges core to the mission of the Section.

2) The discussion list, which is open to all, will be a forum for online petitions and campaigns, discussion of current events, publicizing one's newest blog or publication, sharing interesting articles or video clips, and so on.  This will probably generate a higher volume of emails, most of them related to more public sociology functions rather than academics.  Importantly, there is a "weekly digest" option (see below) that allows you to choose to get each week's emails packaged in a single weekly digest, to cut down on the number of emails.

I urge all members of the section to join the discussion list (I've already done so!).  Give it a try, if it's too much you can fall back to the Digest level, and if that's still too much you can drop out.  But I think it would be good to for as many as possible to participate in this discussion channel that will be a new dimension of the life of the Section.

Best,
Chris

THE RUTGERS JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY: Emerging Areas in Sociological Inquiry

CALL FOR PAPERS, 2012

The Rutgers Journal of Sociology: Emerging Areas in Sociological Inquiry provides a forum for graduate students and junior scholars to present well-researched and theoretically compelling review articles on an annual topic in sociology. Each volume features comprehensive commentary on emerging areas of sociological interest. These are critical evaluations of current research synthesized into cohesive articles about the state of the art in the discipline. Works that highlight the cutting edge of the field, in terms of theoretical, methodological, or topical areas, are privileged.

RJS invites submissions for its third annual edition: Inequalities Reinterpreted.                             

*Papers and abstracts must be submitted by September 15th, 2012.

We are seeking reviews by authors who take a fresh approach to inequality.  Areas of interest include:
-Blending different sociological and/or interdisciplinary paradigms of inequality

-New perspectives on social hierarchies, stratification and mobility
-How a particular concept in the sociology of inequality has developed over time

-New understandings of global inequality

We also seek reviews showing how social actors are redefining inequality or experiencing inequality in a new way. Areas of interest include:
-Political contestations over inequalities

-Emerging lay discourses of inequality

-New forms of collective resistance to inequalities

-Media representations of inequality

-New frames, contexts, forums, and performances of inequality

-Inequalities, publics, and counterpublics

Guidelines: We accept original reviews of relevant research. We do not accept empirical research papers. Papers must not be under review or elsewhere published at the time of submission and should be no more than 10,000 words, including references, notes, tables, figures, acknowledgements and all cover pages. The first page should contain a title, author’s affiliation, a running head and approximate word count. The second page should contain the title, an abstract of no more than 250 words and should not contain the names of the authors. Papers should be double-spaced, using Times New Roman font size 12, with 1.25” margins on all sides. All references should be in ASA Style. All documents should be in Microsoft Word and submitted as email attachments to [email protected]. For further guidelines, see our guide for contributors at http://sociology.rutgers.edu/RJS.html.