The Department of Sociology and Anthropology’s (SOA) research series, organized by Dr. Aaron Pitluck, professor of Sociology, continued into the past school year with research talks by various alumni, professors, and guests. These are presented periodically throughout the year, and all are welcome to attend.
Dr. Victor Ortiz, emeritus professor of Latino and Latin American Studies at Northeastern University, presented “The Minoritized-Majority Society to Come is Here Already: Who Counts and Who Does Not?” on September 8, 2023.
The U.S. is projected to become a minority-majority society in merely two decades—if not before. The aggregated percentages of people of color will be larger than those of Euromericans in the total population. Many implications of the eventful transition are uncertain. However, emergent and long-established inequity trends are at play, foreshadowing mounting problems. This paper examines exclusionary institutional dynamics reinforcing established privileges over new demographic balances. Through ethnographic fieldwork in a middle-class suburb undergoing demographic transformations, the paper analyzes institutional restrictions on people of color’s efforts to consolidate social advancements. Focusing on Latinos—the largest minority group in the country and one with its least share of wealth—this paper argues that the minority-majority transition depends on the politics defining the distribution of people and resources. In plain words, on how marginalized groups remain “minoritized” despite—and because of—their growing number.
Dr. Abby Stone, assistant professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University, presented “Place Making Within the Bantu Expansion” on October 6, 2023.
How do immigrant populations construct a sense of place and belonging in a new environment? This paper explores this question in the context of proto-Bantu speaking populations arriving in what is now southern Zambia, around 1,500 years ago. These groups were part of what is commonly called the Bantu Expansion: waves of peoples moving south out of west-central Africa, bringing with them new languages, technologies, and forms of subsistence. Within this sweeping narrative of change, our project uses archaeological and historical-linguistic data to explore the lived experience of in-migrating populations as they adapted their language, economies, movements, and connections to a completely novel environment.
Dr. Utkarsh Kumar, Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow and visiting scholar at Illinois State, presented “‘Plant With a Future’: The “Spatial fix” that helped Caterpillar, Inc., emerge from the cocoon” on November 10, 2023.
Caterpillar, Inc., is a quintessential North American manufacturer of colossal earthmoving, mining, and construction equipment. Its ubiquitously deployed rugged yellow ‘Cat’ machines symbolize the muscular dependency of the worldwide mining industry on the global north. Our research project investigates how this corporation came to define, dictate, and shape the context of mining throughout the world. This presentation focuses on Caterpillar’s ambitious companywide $2.8 billion ‘Plant With a Future’ program of ‘reorganization,’ factory ‘modernization,’ and an interlinked employee satisfaction process (ESP) initiative orchestrated by senior management (1983-94).
Presenting a critical analysis of these programmatic interventions, we argue how through self-organizing around new organizational principles and fundamentally reimagining the spatial layout and design of its North American factories, Caterpillar arrived at a cost-efficient customer-driven business model for its unwavering geographical expansion. We further argue, the architecture and design of the so-called modernized automated factories were achieved through deceitful expropriation of blue-collar workers’ informal technical expertise and cooperation what we refer to here as extraction of labor rents. Moreover, this transformation of factory design and organizational principles ramified into expansion of the heavy equipment industry across the globe. We situate our argument in Schumpeter’s framework of rents and Harvey’s metaphor of the “spatial fix.”
Dr. Michael L. Dougherty, professor of Sociology at Illinois State University, presented “Teaching Climate Change: Syllabus as Argument” on February 2.
Professors in the social sciences tend to organize our syllabi as surveys, as overviews of a particular field, subfield, or genre. However, in this post-truth era, it is no longer enough to organize one’s syllabus in this way. One must respond to the concerted attack on the liberal arts with affirmative argumentation. To this end, I assemble courses under the logic of what I call “syllabus as argument.” The first quarter of the course introduces the conceptual material, and the remainder of the semester is spent on the empirical substantiation of the argument itself. Teaching the sociology of climate change lends itself to this approach. In this presentation I draw from my experiences teaching climate change to exemplify the timeliness of syllabus as argument.
Dr. Aaron Pitluck, professor of Sociology at Illinois State University, presented ““Sometimes it Looks Fake”: Tools For Exploring Radical Aspirations For Social Change” on April 5.
Consider three dilemmas.
Is recycling plastic containers a partial solution to consumption on a limited planet, or does it enable destructive consumerism? When airlines sell carbon offsets, is this a savvy market-based solution to airlines’ carbon emissions, or is it a ruse to feel good about air travel? Is Islamic banking and finance an alternative financial industry that avoids riba, or is it a façade to market conventional products to Muslims?
What these three cases have in common is a conflict between people’s potentially sincere aspirations for social change and their almost inescapable complicity in everyday consumption.
To address dilemmas such as these, we’ll go on an intellectual voyage that begins in Malaysia with Islamic scholars using the theological concept of hiyal to interpret Islamic finance, and ending with four secular social science concepts that you can use in your life and your research: contrivances, conspiracies, cons, and stratagems.
