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Publication The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (2001) by Karl Polayni(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Meier, BrianA list of the most seminal works in political economy of the twentieth century would have to include Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Known for its seething portrayal of self-regulated market society as a “stark utopia” (Polanyi 2001:3), The Great Transformation confronts the concept of market society and reveals its historical tendencies and struggles. Polanyi eloquently attacks the idea of a purely self-regulated market society and shows that its history has been one of constant struggles for balance between personal gain and societal well-being.Publication Polayni’s Double Movement: A Critical Reappraisal(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Maertens, EppoSocial scientists have been paying increasing attention to the works of Karl Polanyi. Of particular interest has been his claim that the (re)structuring of the economy based on the ideals of the self-regulating market inevitably leads society to reassert itself against the commodification of land, labour and money. Referred to as the “double movement,” this idea has been used by many scholars to challenge the underlying logic of free-market principles and to explain popular resistance to reforms based on it. There are two aspects of Polanyi’s double movement. The first refers to the push for free market reforms by various groups in society. The second refers to the counter-movements that he argues necessarily and spontaneously mobilize against it. Many who draw on Polanyi focus on the second aspect and how it might apply to contemporary debates. Less attention has been paid to the contemporary applicability of the first aspect. In this paper I argue that this is an area that deserves further attention, both from those who wish to apply his ideas as well as from those who wish to challenge them.Publication An Intersectional Analysis of Visual Media: A Case Study of Diesel Advertisements(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Barnum, Anthony J.; Zajicek, Anna M.This study is intended to advance the application of an intersectional approach that focuses on the simultaneous operation of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality to the analysis of visual media, such as advertisements. Despite the growing advocacy to systematically include intersectionality in our analyses of people’s experiences and identities, on the one hand, and their images/representations, on the other, sociologists still tend to analyze only one of these identities at a time. In this article, we argue that the application of the intersectional approach leads to more complex and adequate understandings of how identities and power relations are constructed in visual media. Towards this end, we conduct an intersectional analysis of Diesel advertisements using the concepts of racialized gender and gendered race, and demonstrate the advantages of an intersectional analysis. In doing so, we hope to provide an illustration of an intersectional analysis of visual media, such as advertisements, which could inform the work of others interested in conducting similar analyses.Publication Kansas Populist Newspaper Editorial Response to the Homestead and Pullman Strikes: An Application of Sewell’s Theory of Structure(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Carruthers, BruceScholars disagree on the reasons the Populist and industrial labor movements failed to achieve a political coalition. Some attribute the cause to a backward-looking Populist ideology that searched for solutions in an imaginary yeoman republic.Populists neither understood nor had sympathy with the problems facing late nineteenth-century industrial workers. Essentially, Populists engaged in status politics. Others argue that Populism was a progressive movement that accepted industrialization but sought to bring it under government control through a political coalition of the producer class consisting of farmers, workers, and small businessmen. I argue in this paper that the editors of Populist newspapers in Kansas attempted to promote a coalition by utilizing the labor theory of value to educate farmers that their fate was linked to that of workers. I employ Sewell’s theory of structure, specifically his axiom on the transposability of schemas, to illustrate the editors’ transposition of the labor theory of value into a schema that defined the 1892 Homestead and 1894 Pullman Strikes as contests between the producer class (including farmers) and monopoly capital. I further argue that in addition to accounting for routine change, Sewell’s framework is useful in examining how groups attempt to make sense of altered social contexts resulting from large-scale social dislocations. I reviewed Populist newspaper editorials on the strikes from communities throughout Kansas. In all, over 200 newspaper editions were examined. Spatial dispersion of sources and the two-year interval between strikes served as a check on regional and chronological variations.Publication Flexible Acculturation(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Lee, Hsiang-Chieh“Flexibility” has become an important concept in studies of globalization and transnationalism. Most academic discussions fall into the literature of global capitalist restructuring: e.g., Piore and Sabel’s (1984) notion of flexible specialization and David Harvey’s concept (1991) of flexible accumulation. These discussions are centered on economic production and market logics. Theoretical discussions of flexibility about other regimes of power — such as cultural reproduction, the nation-state and family — are relatively insufficient. In this paper, I explore the concept of “flexible acculturation,” first proposed by Jan Nederveen-Pieterse (2007), to show a cultural aspect of transnational flexibility. I situate my discussion in the literature of transmigration studies and define flexible acculturation as having four important virtues: (1) it has diverse social players, rather than just political and economic elites; (2) it refers to interactions, not just differences; (3) it involves multiple processes; and (4) it is not just about agency but also about social regulations. These definitions help to explain why flexible acculturation is different from other concepts that have been proposed. I further argue that definitions of important social actors are contingent on a specific set of flexible acculturation processes. Social actors discussed in this paper include governments, the public, transmigrants, and women.Publication Interview with Troy Duster, New York University(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Duster, TroyPublication Deciphering the Global: Its Spaces, Scales and Subjects(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01) Sassen, SaskiaPublication Social Thought and Research, Volume 29 (2008): Front Matter(Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, 2008-01-01)