Sociology PhDs on the Market
cv (pdf)
Dissertation Title: Gullet Politics. How Markets, Movements, and the State Organize Public Morality: Contentious Foie Gras Politics in France and the United States.
Areas of Interest: Sociology of Culture; Organizations; Economic Sociology, Consumption; Food; Social Movements; Institutions and Globalization, Social Problems, Qualitative Methodologies
Recent Publications:
Michaela DeSoucey and Isabelle Téchoueyres. ‘Virtue and Valorization: “Local Food” in the United States and France.’ In The Globalization of Food. Edited by David Inglis and Debra Gimlin. Oxford & New York: Berg Publishers. Forthcoming March 2009.
Klaus Weber, Kathryn Heinze, and Michaela DeSoucey. ‘Forage for Thought: Mobilizing Codes in the Movement for Grass-fed Meat and Dairy Products.’ Administrative Science Quarterly, accepted December 2007, forthcoming Fall 2008.
Michaela DeSoucey, Jo-Ellen Pozner, Corey Fields, Kerry Dobransky, and Gary Alan Fine. 2008. ‘Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom.’ Cultural Sociology 2:1 (p.99- 121).
Paul Hirsch and Michaela DeSoucey. 2006. ‘Organizational Restructuring: Rhetorical and Structural Implications.’ Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 32.
coreyfields2010@u.northwestern.edu
cv (pdf)
Dissertation Title: Black Elephants in the Living Room: The Complexities of Black Racial Identity and the Politics of African-American Republicans
Dissertation Summary: Departing from a social determinism that assumes a naturalized, almost essential relationship, between racial identity and political decisions, I use the case of African-American Republicans to posit a variable, historically contingent relationship between black racial identity and political behavior. The dissertation focuses on three different articulations of “race”: (1) race as a subjective sense of identity felt by political actors; (2) race as a cultural object indicative of a system of meanings and beliefs about "black people"; and (3) race as a series of performative moves – including dress, talk, and interaction. Drawing from a range of qualitative and quantitative empirical data, I show how race, in all its manifestations, can be used to support a wide range of political attitudes and behaviors. The project expands existing research on race and politics by moving beyond treating race as a static characteristic of individuals, and instead showing how the meanings attached to racial identity have implications for how political behavior is structured. Furthermore, the research examines the way political location shapes how actors understand and deploy their racial identity. The research illustrates how the recursive, dynamic, and variable processes of identity construction shape – and, in turn, are shaped by – broader political processes.
Areas of Interest: Race/identity, political sociology, culture, microsociology/social psychology
Recent Publications:
Fields, Corey D. Forthcoming (2009). “Multicultural Conservatives.” in Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Voices, and Viewpoints. Edited by Roger Chapman. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe Inc.
Fine, Gary Alan and Corey D. Fields. 2008. “Culture and Microsociology: The Anthill and the Veldt.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 619(1): 130-148.
DeSoucey, Michaela, Jo-Ellen Pozner, Corey D. Fields, Kerry Dobransky, and Gary Alan Fine. 2008 “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom.” Cultural Sociology 2(1): 99-121.
Fields, Corey D. 2007. “Sociometry, 1937.” Social Psychology Quarterly 70(4): 326-329.
Anderson, Elisabeth, Michaela DeSoucey, Corey D. Fields, and Chris Yenky, eds. 2006. Economic Sociology: Syllabi & Instructional Materials, 3rd Edition. American Sociological Association.
geoffreyharkness2009@u.northwestern.edu
cv (pdf)
Dissertation title: “True school: Situational authenticity in Chicago's hip-hop underground.”
Dissertation Summary: How do outsiders create and maintain authentic identities when they are deemed inauthentic by a group of insiders? To explore this question, I examine the underground (noncommercial) hip-hop music scene in Chicago. The insiders are young, urban, black, male rappers from the city’s urban core. The outsiders are white, female, and/or suburban rappers who want to enjoy full participation in hip hop culture, but are deemed inauthentic by the insiders. Set in one of hip hop’s cradles, Chicago offers a unique perspective that is not found in previous studies of local rap-music scenes. Blending traditional qualitative methods with visual-sociological techniques, I follow 130 rappers of various backgrounds, investigating key issues for outsiders, and the dynamic interplay between culture and authenticity. In doing so, I demonstrate how notions of “realness” and “fakeness” are generated via a rhetoric of authenticity. Exploring how this rhetoric is utilized to create, maintain, and occasionally traverse race, class, and gender-based cultural boundaries, I underscore the flexible nature of the authentic, a phenomenon I label Situational Authenticity. I conclude by proposing a Situational Model of Authenticity that explains how these socially constructed processes operate. Dr. Wendy Griswold, Chair.
Areas of interest: Sociology of Culture, Race& Ethnicty, Urban Sociology, Qualitative Methods, Visual Sociology
Journal Articles: Harkness, Geoff. “Hip-Hop Culture and America’s Most Taboo Word.” Contexts, Vol 7, No. 3, Summer, 2008, pp. 38-42.
Warren C.A.B.; Barnes-Brus T.; Burgess H.; Wiebold-Lippisch L.; Hackney J.; Harkness G.; Kennedy V.; Dingwall R.; Rosenblatt P.C.; Ryen A.; Shuy R. “After the interview.” Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 26, Number 1, Spring, 2003.
Journal Submissions: Harkness, Geoff. “Getting in, going deep, and giving back: Visual ethnography in the digital age.” Submitted to Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, September, 2008.
Harkness, Geoff. “True School: Situational Authenticity in Chicago’s Hip Hop Underground.” Submitted to Cultural Sociology. Revised and resubmitted, May, 2008.
lashawndapittman2009@u.northwestern.edu
