Q&A with Elizabeth Popp Berman, Author of Thinking Like an Economist

Interviewed by Zheng Fu on March 31, 2023 for the Spring 2023 SKAT Newsletter Elizabeth Popp Berman is the Richard H. Price Professor of Organizational Studies and (by courtesy) Sociology at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy (Princeton University Press, 2022) and Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became … Continue reading Q&A with Elizabeth Popp Berman, Author of Thinking Like an Economist

New Publications from Section Members (2022-2023)

The following are new publications submitted by ASA SKAT Section members to be included in the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 newsletters. Please feel free to reach out to us (lau1@ccny.cuny.edu) to be included on this list. See also our New Books Q&A series where we conduct interviews with recent authors. New Articles New Books Continue reading New Publications from Section Members (2022-2023)

Q&A with Oliver Rollins, author of Conviction

Interviewed by Larry Au on February 22, 2023 for the Spring 2023 SKAT Newsletter Oliver Rollins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of the Violent Brain (Stanford, 2021). He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco Q: I read in … Continue reading Q&A with Oliver Rollins, author of Conviction

Q&A with Victor Roy, author of Capitalizing on a Cure

Interviewed on February 27, 2023 by Larry Au for the Spring 2023 SKAT Newsletter Victor Roy, MD, PhD, is a family physician and sociologist, and currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University’s National Clinician Scholars Program. His work touches on the political economy of health technologies and health equity. His recent book, Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicine (University … Continue reading Q&A with Victor Roy, author of Capitalizing on a Cure

Q&A with Diane Vaughan, Author of Dead Reckoning

Dead Reckoning is an historical ethnography of the life course of the air traffic control system from system emergence through 2017. Based on archival research and fieldwork in four air traffic control facilities, the book focuses on how historical institutional conditions, assemblages of social actors, and events in the system’s external environment – political, economic, technical, cultural – impact the air traffic organization, changing it, and how in turn those changes affect not only the social, technological, and material arrangements of the workplace, but also controllers’ interpretive work, cultural understandings, and work practices. Far from a top down model, the analysis shows how controllers respond to these events, implementing repairs in response to the liabilities of technological and organizational innovation. It expands what we know about knowledge production, boundaries and boundary work, culture and cognition, expertise, and the changing nature of technical work over time. Continue reading Q&A with Diane Vaughan, Author of Dead Reckoning

Q&A with Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Author of The Quantified Scholar

Interviewed by Larry Au on November 4, 2022 for the Fall 2022 SKATOLOGY Newsletter Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is a founding faculty member of the Halicioğlu Data Science Institute and a co-founder of the Computational Social Science program, as well as the Associate Director of the Latin American Studies Program. He … Continue reading Q&A with Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, Author of The Quantified Scholar

Q&A with Janet Vertesi, Author of Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams

Professor Vertesi specializes in the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology. Her primary research site is with NASA’s robotic spacecraft teams as an ethnographer. Her books, Seeing like a Rover: Images and Interaction on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (Chicago, 2015) and Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams (Chicago, 2020) draws on her ethnographic studies of missions to Mars, Saturn, and the … Continue reading Q&A with Janet Vertesi, Author of Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams

Q&A with Kathleen (Casey) Oberlin, Author of Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life

Kathleen C. Oberlin is a researcher based in Chicago. Formerly, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Grinnell College. In Creating the Creation Museum, Kathleen C. Oberlin shows us how the largest Creationist organization, Answers in Genesis (AiG), built a museum—which has had over three million visitors—to make its movement mainstream. She takes us behind the scenes, vividly bringing the museum to … Continue reading Q&A with Kathleen (Casey) Oberlin, Author of Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life

Q&A with Jeremiah Morelock, Author of Pandemics, Authoritarian Populism, and Science Fiction

Jeremiah Morelock is an instructor of sociology at Boston College’s Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences and Woods College of Advancing Studies, and a Project Coordinator at Boston College’s Connell School of Nursing. He is the editor of Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism and How to Critique Authoritarian Populism: Methodologies of the Frankfurt School. With a focus on I Am Legend and Day of the … Continue reading Q&A with Jeremiah Morelock, Author of Pandemics, Authoritarian Populism, and Science Fiction