I am happy to forward a thoughtful reminder, with permission from its authors.

As BLM protests are ongoing in the United States and around the world, many of us in sociology are looking at these protests not only as opportunities to push for social change, but also as opportunities to better understand how social movements work. Given the emergent nature of these protests, it is tempting to rely on students to collect data at these protests.

We should be careful not to ask students to put their bodies at risk for the sake of a faculty member's research. The risk for these students is two-fold: the risk of COVID transmission and the risk of police brutality at the protests. Police use of force, chemical weapons, and tactics like kettling and arrests are still common, and their deployment is unpredictable. For students of color, the risks of suffering targeted police violence are even greater.

While IRBs are in place to ensure ethical treatment of research subjects, we don’t have the same guidelines for ethical treatment of student researchers. The risks and costs we ask students to bear must be proportional to the benefits they receive in terms of payment or academic compensation, such as co-authorship. Graduate students may feel pressured to do this kind of research to maintain good relationships with their faculty advisors and mentors. We need to remain aware of the power relationships in our graduate training programs. Let’s not add our research projects to the list of structural inequalities our students face. Our students deserve better.

​

Lefeng (Frank) Lin, a member of our section, is guest-editing a special issue on Chinese labor and work for the Journal of Chinese Sociology. He asked that we circulate this call, and encourages LLM members to submit relevant work. 

Please note that the deadline is July 31, 2020.

Lefeng writes:
Labor relations in transitional China have been a core issue in contemporary Chinese and global sociology. Since the early 2000s, sociologists around the world have studied Chinese working conditions and labor process, workers’ organizations and culture, and labor-rights protection when China was becoming the world factory. Recently, however, significant changes have taken place in both Chinese and international political economy, such as industrial upgrading and restructuring, technological innovation, and the seeming de-globalization, all of which are leading to a new chapter for studying China’s work and labor. In response to those new structural changes, the Journal of Chinese Sociology (JCS), sponsored by the Institute of Sociology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is hoping  sociologists and social scientists at home and abroad will submit their papers for consideration.

Theme: China's Work and Labor in the Era of Industrial Transition and Globalization Crisis

We are looking for papers on the following topics (including but not limited to):

1. Employment and labor issues caused by industrial relocation to other countries and Chinese inland
2. Manufacturing employment and labor issues raised by technological changes such as artificial intelligence, robot, and the Internet
3. Organization and labor of traditional, emerging, and atypical service jobs against the background of the digital economy
4. Work and labor issues closely related to minority groups, international migrants, and gender in China
5. Employment and labor issues in Chinese rural and urbanized rural areas
6. The responses of human resources/labor market organizations to the labor demand caused by technological changes and industrial restructuring
7. The role and behavior of the local government in regulating labor relations, such as job upgrading and creation, employment outsourcing, labor legislation and inspection, and labor-rights protection
8. Participation of mass organizations, social organizations, and workers in labor relations governance in the new context of industrial upgrading
9. Problems in the social reproduction of labor caused by changes in employment and work, such as family and housing, education and upbringing, mental and physical health, social interaction and networking, and subcultural formation
10. Scholars who are interested in submitting articles need to send the title and abstract (both Chinese and English are acceptable, less than 1500 words) to meixiao@cass.org.cn before July 31, 2020.

The Journal of Chinese Sociology (JCS) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal sponsored by the Institute of Sociology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and published by the world-renowned publisher Springer Nature. As Chinese mainland's first English-language journal in sociology, JCS strives to build a first-rate international platform for academic exchange and collaboration between Chinese sociologist and their oversea peers.

By May, 2020, the Journal had published 117 articles. It has attracted a truly international community of authors and readers. Researchers from more than 20 countries around the world, including China, the US, Canada, UK, Czech Republic, Poland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Mexico, etc., submitted their works to JCS. The number of downloads of published articles increased from 1404 in 2014 to 98,838 in 2019.Here is the link:
https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/call-for-papers--china-s-work-and-labor-in-the-era-of-industrial

Best,
Frank

Lefeng (Frank) Lin, Ph.D.
Lecturer, Department of China Studies
​Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Pronouns: He/Him/His

The  LLM section’s July newsletter  will feature a forum on the labor movement during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We are still looking for short pieces (around 800 words long) on any of the following topics:

• How unions of frontline workers in healthcare, transportation, food service and processing, etc. have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic
  
• Mobilization and collective action during the pandemic
  
• The future of the labor movement post-COVID-19 and the challenges facing unions ahead

We welcome contributions from union organizers and rank-and-file union members as well as from ASA members.

​If you would like to contribute to this forum, or know someone who would be interested, please email the newsletter editor,  Joey van der Naald (jvandernaald@gradcenter.cuny.edu) by July 10.