In April 2023, The Sociology Graduate Student Association (SGSA) at the University of Kansas invited Dr. Shams to present her research for her book Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World. This work illustrates how immigrants are “vectors of globalization” who are both subject to and an agent within the interconnectedness of societies. She argues that immigrants exist in a space that is neither the immigrants’ homeland nor hostland- a place Shams calls “elsewhere.” Dr. Shams’ book has received multiple awards including ASA’s 2021 Thomas and Znaniecki Award (International Migration Section), ASA’s 2021 Distinguished Book Award (Sociology of Religion Section), ASAs 2021 Asian American Book Award (Asian and American Section), and the Pacific Sociological Association’s 2021 Distinguished Scholarship Award. In this interview we discuss her book, how she came to research this topic, implications of this research for sociology, and general insight into her journey as both graduate student and early career scholar.
In the fall of 2023, the Department of Sociology at the University of Kansas invited Dr. Rudrappa to present her research at the annual Clark Lecture. Her presentation titled “Landscapes of Infertility: The Afterlives of Colonialism in India” described how the worlds of plants, animals, insects, and diseases weave in and out of narratives of human reproduction guided by the question: What must be carefully nurtured and what must be exterminated in order to render life possible? Dr. Rudrappa seeks to answer this question by examining the human and non-human aspects of coffee plantations in southern India and how techno-pastoral imaginaries- the human aspiration for orderly, hierarchical landscapes where land, beasts, and nature are managed through technical expertise to generate profits- create both life and death. In this interview, we discuss how the ideas in this talk parallel her previous research about the commodification of women’s bodies on the global market. We also discuss how Dr. Rudrappa integrated her background in conservation biology into an interdisciplinary focus in the sociologies of labor and reproduction, and gained insight about how to structure publications as a graduate student to enhance one’s CV for the job market.
The all-encompassing nature of digital technology has killed society’s public forum and resurrected it into a zombie. Tracing the public forum from its historical roots to the age of social media, this analysis highlights how the advent of digital technology has fundamentally altered the nature of the public forum. Social theorists including Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Ellul, and Sherry Turkle are invoked to show how the nature of the new digital public forum is from centuries past, exerting its efficient yet dysfunctional influence over human communication and connection. With technological innovations like the internet and social media that foster discourse, the digital public forum is as loud and active as ever. But this resurrection is not organic. Because of the nature of digital technology and how human interaction is mediated through it, this new public forum is zombie-like. Crucially, the public forum in the digital realm exists in a state of constant contradictions. It features and fractures democratic deliberation, connection, and identity. While powerful, ever-expanding, and a lively setting for political discussion and social interaction, the public forum is nonetheless a shell of itself, having lost the crucial human element of organic connection, much like a zombie brought to life in its original body but without the human spirit that defines it. It will take a concerted effort among the public to reclaim it.
Universities have become a focal point for contestation over the meaning of free speech as well as sites of violent protests connected to white supremacist speakers and anti-racist, anti-fascist activism. This paper investigates incarnations of violence operating during the recent resurgence of white supremacist organizing and counter-protest on college campuses, focusing on the case of the white supremacist attacks at the University of Virginia (U.Va.) and Charlottesville during August 2017 that culminated in the vehicular manslaughter of Heather Heyer. Past research often conceptualizes collective violence through a non/violent binary. In contrast, we argue that a relational and ecological model of violences (pl.) in social movement activity provides a stronger analysis. Using historical methods, we investigate three entangled incarnations of violence that contribute to contemporary moments of social dis/order: the offensive violence of white supremacists, the passive institutional violence of the (white supremacist) University, and active defensive violence on the part of counter-protesters in opposition to white supremacy. In conclusion, we discuss implications for research on violence in movements and contemporary (anti-)racist organizing, arguing that sociologists need to embrace more complex understandings of how violences manifest to address concerns about public safety.
