This paper examines the history of drought in California as a hybrid scientific fact and social problem from the mid-twentieth century to the present. We build upon a recent comparative-historical sociological framework, reiterated fact-making, that traces the social and scientific careers of facts by analyzing the shifting conditions of possibility, networks of expertise and social mobilization, and epistemic and material path dependencies that are built up around facts over time. In this way, reiterated fact-making helps us see how drought emerged as a social problem in California, and then how it was iteratively transformed into both a scientific fact and an object of expert governance/intervention over the past 70 years or so. The paper therefore extends reiterated fact-making to cases where a social problem is rendered into a scientific fact, rather than vice versa, making the framework suitable for a much broader swathe of topics. It also helps us understand how drought has developed as an object of knowledge and practice over the past few generations—combining deep continuity and radical transformation in the process—in ways that shape when and where it happens, who it impacts, and even what it is.
When the first-term Trump administration announced the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2017, several social actors publicly voiced their concern and opposition. High-level university administrators (HLUAs) also participated in this discourse by distributing statements in support of DACA to their campus communities and elected leaders. Drawing from an analysis of 268 public letters and institutional statements, this paper explores how university leaders express support for DACA. In doing so, they construct notions of citizenship and deservingness that some undocumented activists have abandoned and critiqued. In particular, this paper examines how university leaders rely on contribution frames and other assimilation-based criteria to argue that DACA recipients are worthy of citizenship and are Americans without papers. Furthermore, building off other immigration scholarship, I advance my concept of the “student status frame” to illustrate how university leaders attempt to minimize the meaning of immigration status in the context of higher education.
In marginalized neighborhoods, Latinx and Black Americans disproportionately experience negative policing practices and legal estrangement, a process of detachment and alienation from law enforcement that is pervasive in communities of color. Despite sociological advances, there remains an empirical gap in understanding how legal estrangement is experienced across Latinx and Black communities. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with Latinx and Black men and women from marginalized communities in Riverside and San Bernardino, California, this study examines the relationship between policing and legal estrangement. Findings indicate that estrangement varies across intersecting identities, social networks, neighborhoods, and institutional contexts, particularly through enduring abuse of police power and unreliable protection. I conceptualize these patterns as differential estrangement, a framework for understanding the contextual and intersectional dynamics of legal estrangement. Participants' accounts offer an unruly sociological perspective for rethinking safety in disadvantaged neighborhoods and barrios by reducing reliance on criminalization while investing in communities.
How can historically-masculine organizations most meaningfully promote gender integration, and what should they avoid? This paper examines organized mixed-sex (“coed”) sport as an ideal case for revealing how institutional policy structures gendered interactions. Study 1 observes formal rules of coed team sports and identifies what we call “gender-conscious” rules that specify gameplay based on the sex categories of athletes on the field. We find that the content of these rules relies on and reinforces three sexist cultural beliefs: (1) men are the default athletes, (2) men are superior athletes, and (3) women must be protected from men’s aggression. In Study 2, we interview 20 athletes who have played coed sport. They describe how gender-conscious rules force them to “do” gender in ways that are ultimately detrimental to inclusion. Athletes prefer using athletic skill, and not gender, to socially locate each other. When individuals do gender, they are accountable not just to their gender category but to the context-specific (and policy-informed) meanings of those categories. We discuss how organizations with meritocratic ideals can construct successful policies of integration by avoiding gender salience, and implications for theory on the production of the gender system.
