Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC) UC Berkeley

All ISSI events are free and open to the public.

For wheelchair access to the Duster Conference Room (2420 Bowditch St.) or Wildavsky Conference Room (2538 Channing Way), please call (510) 642-0813 one day before the scheduled event.

For more information, please contact:
Usree Bhattacharya, ISSI Seminar Series Coordinator
Tel.: (510) 642-0813, Email: isscucb AT gmail.com

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September 2009

>	Wednesday, Sept. 9	12:00-1:30 pm
	Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements: Book Colloquium Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism Cihan Tugal, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley with Ali Eshraghi, Journalist and RPGP Visiting Fellow -IIS Conference Room, 223 Moses Hall Co-sponsored with the Religion, Politics, and Globalization Program.
>	Tuesday, Sept. 15	3:00-4:30 pm
	Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements: *2009-2010 Undergraduate Mini-grant Proposal Writing Workshop* Leah Carroll, Haas Scholars Program Coordinator A proposal-writing workshop for undergraduates interested in applying for a Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements will be offered by Leah Carroll, Haas Scholars Program Coordinator, and Dr. Christine Trost, Program Director, Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements. For more information, click here. -Duster Conference Room, 2420 Bowditch Street
>	Thursday, Sept. 17	3:30-5:00 pm
	Center on Culture, Immigration, and Youth Violence Prevention Speaker Series: *"...a family injunction": Gang Injunctions and the Policing of Black Youth in the Western Addition* Nikki Jones, Assistant Professor, Sociology, UC Santa Barbara *Gang Prevention and Intervention: Alternative Strategies* Orlando Ramos, Principal, Lee Mathson Middle School, San Jose - Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way

October 2009

>	Thursday, Oct. 1	12:00-1:30 pm
	Center for the Study of Social Change Speaker Series: From Dirty Work to Dead End Jobs: Workplace Restructuring and its Impact on High school Educated African American Women Workers Katrinell Davis, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Vermont with Steven Pitts, Labor Specialist, Center for Labor Research & Education, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley as respondent Much of the literature regarding the employability of African American women focuses on how demographic factors like single parenthood and low levels of education limit their employment options. At this colloquium, University of Vermont Sociology Professor Katrinell Davis engages this literature by discussing the role that state action and workplace restructuring play in shaping the structure of job opportunities available to high school educated African American women employed as department store workers and transit operators in the San Francisco area. With this case study research, Davis uncovers how their progress in the workplace over the past two decades has been affected by changes in the jobs they work, as well as normative shifts in administrative practices like the increasing use of drug tests and background assessments. Lastly, Davis situates their persistent struggles with mobility within a broader socioeconomic context by addressing why all roads in these jobs generally lead to the same dead-end destination. -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
>	Thursday, Oct. 8	3:30-5:30 pm
	Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements: Book Colloquium Blood and Politics: New Developments in the Rise of (White) Nationalism in the US, UK and other parts of Europe Leonard Zeskind, President, Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, and Nick Lowles, Editor, Searchlight Magazine Race and nationalism are back on the political agenda. Zeskind and Lowles will examine these issues in the U.S. and Europe, focusing on both the most recent developments and the social movements that brought us to this point. -Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall Copies of Leonard Zeskind's book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream (2009), will be available for sale and signing at the event.
>	Wednesday, October 14	4:00-5:30pm
	ISSI Fall 2009 Colloquia Series: Broken Laws, Unprotected workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's Cities Ruth Milkman, Professor of Sociology, UCLA and the CUNY Graduate Center, & Associate Director of the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at CUNY This report, co-authored by Prof. Milkman, exposes a world of work in which the core protections that many Americans take for granted—the right to be paid at least the minimum wage, the right to be paid for overtime hours, the right to take meal breaks, access to workers’ compensation when injured, and the right to advocate for better working conditions—are failing significant numbers of workers. The sheer breadth of the problem, spanning key industries in the economy, as well as its profound impact on workers, entailing significant economic hardship, demands urgent attention. In 2008, a landmark survey of 4,387 workers was conducted in low-wage industries in the three largest U.S. cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. The researchers used an innovative, rigorous methodology that allowed them to reach vulnerable workers who are often missed in standard surveys, such as unauthorized immigrants and those paid in cash. Their goal was to obtain accurate and statistically representative estimates of the prevalence of workplace violations. All findings are adjusted to be representative of front-line workers (i.e. excluding managers, professional or technical workers) in low wage industries in the three cities—a population of about 1.64 million workers, or 15 percent of the combined workforce of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. -IRLE conference room, 2521 Channing Way Co-sponsored with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
>	Wednesday, Oct. 21	12:00-1:30 pm
	Center for the Study of Social Change Speaker Series: CalWORKs and the Support of Not Qualified Immigrant Families in Stanislaus County: Public Policy Questions amidst a Case Study of Child Well-Being & Access and Barriers to Aid The 1996 federal welfare reform act severely limited immigrant access to cash welfare benefits. Although California utilized state funds to preserve benefits for nearly all documented immigrants, undocumented individuals remained excluded from participation in CalWORKs, the state’s cash welfare program. However, these “not qualified immigrants” may receive CalWORKs cash assistance for some of their citizen children. While not qualified immigrants constitute 18% of the total CalWORKs caseload, it is estimated that a minority of eligible children are “taken-up” as cases, and very little is known about barriers to CalWORKs access for these families and about the well-being of family members in families receiving and not receiving the assistance for their citizen children. This presentation addresses these questions using data from a case study of not qualified immigrant families, advocates, staff of community agencies, caseworkers and other county welfare officials in Stanislaus County, California. The results suggest the need for a mix of policy and administrative initiatives to reduce gaps in coverage for immigrant children at the very time that efforts to cut benefits available for these children are increasing. Richard Speiglman, Senior Research Analyst, Child & Family Policy Institute of California with Julian Chow, Associate Professor, School of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley as respondent -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
>	Friday, Oct. 30 & Saturday, Oct. 31	Time: TBA
	The Center for Urban Ethnography presents: Children in Crisis: An International Conference This conference, sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Center for Urban Ethnography, will bring together researchers from around the world to share their findings on the difficult circumstances in which many children live and offer insights into what can be done about these situations. This interdisciplinary conference will illuminate the lives of children at war, displaced children, street kids, children in dire poverty, and children grappling with crippling disparities through first-person observational accounts. The investigators who will present at the conference have lived alongside these children and immersed themselves in the difficulties that constitute their everyday lives. The conference hopes to illuminate what childhood is like for those youth caught in a constant state of crisis, and offer potential policy solutions to the problems these children face. Visit the conference website here: http://cue.berkeley.edu/conference.html Friday, October 30, 2009 8:30am Doors Open 9:00-9:30am Welcome and Introductory Remarks Conference Organizer, Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost and Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley 9:30am-12:00pm Panel 1: “Gender, Identity and Resilience” Chair: Deborah Lustig, PhD, Research Associate, Training Coordinator,“Center on Culture, Immigration, and Youth Violence Prevention” Panelists: Dawn Chatty, University Reader in Anthropology and Forced Migration, University of Oxford, UK “Refugees in the Middle East: Identity Politics among Sahrawi, Palestinian and Afghani Youth” Philip Kilbride, Professor of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College “Longitudinal repeated ethnography in Kenya: theoretical implications for a universal, gendered, cultural understanding of children in harsh circumstances” Discussants: Manata Hashemi, Doctoral Student, Sociology, UC Berkeley Maia Sieverding, Doctoral Student, Sociology, UC Berkeley 12:00-1:30pm Lunch Break 1:30-4:00pm Panel 2: “Violence, Morality and Survival” Chair: Michel Laguerre, Professor and Director, Berkeley Center for Globalization and Information Technology Panelists: Gina Crivello, PhD, Researcher, “Young Lives” study, and Jo Boyden, PhD, Director, “Young Lives Research Centre,” Department of International Development, University of Oxford, UK “Situating risk in children's social and moral worlds: Young Lives research in Ethiopia and Peru” J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Muhlenberg College “No Balm in Gilead: Childhood, Suffering, and Survival in Haiti” Discussants: Jennifer Randles, Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, UC Berkeley Corey M. Abramson, Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, UC Berkeley * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Saturday, October 31, 2009 8:30am Doors Open 9:00am-12:30pm Panel 3: “Structure, Mobility and Health” Chair: Barrie Thorne, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley Panelists: Javier Auyero, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology, University of Texas-Austin “Children at Toxic Risk: Experience and Denial” Lewis Aptekar, Professor of Counselor Education, San Jose State University “‘Street children’”, “‘AIDS orphans’” and “‘Unprotected minors’”: What you read is not what you see. Lessons from ethnographic research and humanitarian assistance” Prudence Carter, Associate Professor in the School of Education and (by courtesy) the Department of Sociology, Stanford University “(Im)permeable Boundaries: Why Integration into Affluent White-Majority Schools Is Elusive” Discussants: Phillip Fucella, Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, UC Berkeley Alisa Szatrowski, Doctoral Student, Sociology, UC Berkeley Rachel Best, Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, UC Berkeley 12:30-2:00 Lunch Break 2:00-3:30pm Panel 4: “What Can Be Done?” A Roundtable on Policy Implications Chair: Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley Panelists: Javier Auyero, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology, University of Texas-Austin Lewis Aptekar, Professor of Counselor Education, San Jose State University Prudence Carter, Associate Professor in the School of Education and (by courtesy) the Department of Sociology, Stanford University Dawn Chatty, University Reader in Anthropology and Forced Migration, University of Oxford, UK Gina Crivello, PhD, Researcher, “Young Lives” study, Department of International Development, University of Oxford, UK Philip Kilbride, Professor of Anthropology, Bryn Mawr College J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Muhlenberg College -Lipman Room Co-sponsored with CSSC.

November 2009

>	Wednesday, Nov. 4	4:00-5:30pm
	ISSI Fall 2009 Colloquia Series: John Rawls on Two Concepts of Rules: Some Speculations About Their Ecological Validity in Behavioral and Social Science Research Aaron Cicourel, Professor Emeritus, Departments of Sociology and Cognitive Science, UCSD & CSSC Visiting Scholar Over fifty years have passed since the publication of John Rawls’ paper, "Two Concepts of Rules" (The Philosophical Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Jan. 1955), 3-32). The paper remains a unique work. His seminal “… distinction between justifying a practice and justifying a particular action falling under it…” (p. 3) provides us with a powerful analytic proposition that can have extensive theoretical and empirical consequences for the social sciences, as I seek to demonstrate below. In footnote (1) on page 3, Rawls states that “practice” is a technical term that refers to “any form of activity specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defenses, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure. As examples one may think of games and rituals, trials and parliaments.” Rawls’ philosophical objective was to defend utilitarianism vis-à-vis “punishment and the obligations to keep promises.” The general idea was to provide a clearer understanding of a rule regardless of whether or not it is defensible. The notion of two conceptions of rules is central to his discussion. I ask: can Rawls’ unique analytical notion of two concepts of rules be clarified by empirical research in the social sciences? I present some recent data from a criminal justice case to illustrate the notion’s potential and limitations. The empirical circumstances are somewhat dramatic. The case involved an allegation of inter-racial sexual molestation and two counts of Grand Theft. The sexual molestation allegation is a theme at the heart of deep-seated cultural tensions between Caucasians and African Americans that can be traced back to initial importation of slaves from Africa. The inter-racial sexual molestation allegation was documented in detail by two law-enforcement agencies but was never pursued. Once major consequence of this decision was to render empirically problematic the issue of when a case is said to fall under a rule of law. To read Prof. Cicourel's paper, John Rawls on Two Concepts of Rules: Some Speculations about Their Ecological Validity in Behavioral and Social Science Research, click here. -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
>	Thursday, Nov. 5	12:00–1:30 pm
	Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements: Book Colloquium U.S. vs. Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security Peter Scoblic, Executive Editor, The New Republic When Barack Obama campaigned for president, he promised not just to “end the war in Iraq,” but to “end the mindset that got us into the war in the first place.” What did he mean? Some analysts have described George W. Bush’s approach to the world as revolutionary. In his book, U.S. vs. Them, J. Peter Scoblic maintains that the best way to understand Bush's foreign policy is to recognize that it is not radical, but rather the most recent expression of conservatism, an often misunderstood ideology whose national security instincts are rooted in America's eighteenth-century view of itself and whose modern form has percolated for more than a half century, reaching full strength in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Tracing the history of Cold War conservatism from its development by William F. Buckley to its manifestation in Barry Goldwater through its implementation by Ronald Reagan and its culmination in the Bush administration, Scoblic weaves an intellectual history that shows that the right’s insistence on seeing the world in terms of us-versus-them and good-versus-evil not only increased the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, but obstructed recent efforts to prevent North Korea, Iran, and even al Qaeda from getting the bomb. Today, Scoblic provocatively argues, what conservatives often present as moral clarity is in fact nothing more than a continued failure to recognize that American security depends on our ability to think outside our borders—to stop seeing the United States in unavoidable opposition to the world. In diagnosing the origins of Bush’s foreign policy and its consequences, Scoblic seeks to illuminates the path to renewed American leadership in the twenty-first century and safety from the most dangerous threat we face today: nuclear terrorism. -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way Copies of Peter Scoblic's book, U.S. vs. Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security, will be available for sale and signing at the event.
>	Thursday, Nov. 12	5:00-7:00 pm
	Diversity Matters (Still): Landscaping Diversity at UC Berkeley over the Past 20 Years For three years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a comprehensive study, The Diversity Report, on the experience of diversity at U.C. Berkeley was created by faculty and students. Premier amongst its findings was convergence around the importance of diversity and divergence about what that diversity meant. In 2009, with the state of California facing bankruptcy and the UC system under serious pressure to both reduce expenditure and prove its public worth, the question of diversity, what it is and what it means, have never been so vital. The fact that diversity as an issue is of ongoing public and private concern, is made paramount by the need to republish The Diversity Report. In light of this republishing, lead author of the original report, Professor Troy Duster, and other campus faculty and campus administrators will discuss the context of the original report, and the meaning and impact of diversity on campus today. *Speakers:* Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor, UC Berkeley, and Professor of Sociology, NYU Goodwin Liu, Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Berkeley School of Law Walter Robinson, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Office of Undergraduate Admission, UC Berkeley Cara Stanley, Director of the Student Learning Center, UC Berkeley *Introduced by: Victoria Robinson, Coordinator, American Cultures Center* -Free Speech Movement Cafe, UC Berkeley Co-sponsored by CSSC and the American Cultures Center.
>	Wednesday, Nov. 18	4:00-5:30 pm
	ISSI Fall 2009 Colloquia Series: *Blind Spot: A Self-Critique* Paul Sniderman, Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy & senior fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University --CSSC Conference Room, 2420 Bowditch Street
>	Thursday, Nov. 19	12:00–1:30 pm
	Center on Culture, Immigration, and Youth Violence Prevention Speaker Series: Reconsidering Retaliation: Structural Inhibitions, Emotive Dissonance, and the Acceptance of Ambivalence Among Inner-City Young Men Robert Garot, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York Calvin Morrill, Professor of Law and Sociology & Director, Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Law and Society.

December 2009

>	Tuesday, Dec. 1	12:00 - 1:30 pm
	CSSC's Visiting Scholar Speaker Series: The Right to the City Movement in U.S. Cities: Conceptions of rights, citizenship, and political subjects in the neoliberal city Tony Samara, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
>	Wednesday, Dec. 2	4:00-5:30 pm
	ISSI Fall 2009 Colloquia Series: Unchurched Believers: Fewer Americans Have a Religion But Religious Beliefs Haven't Changed Much Michael Hout, Professor, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley --Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
>	Date: TBA	Time: TBA
	*ISSI Holiday Party* -Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way