We kicked off our first session today with a chapter from John Lie's 2018 book, The Dream of East Asia. And we had such a very lively discussion about why it's problematic to use the so-called "Confucian tradition" to explain contemporary phenomena in China (and East Asia more broadly)!

10 years ago, I, along with my friends at the Datong Society of China Studies at Berkeley, designed & taught a student-led DECal course on Chinese society as undergrads. This semester, I'm starting a Sociology of China Reading Group for my students at @birminghamschool.bsky.social. How time flies!

Went to the cafe and hotel that appeared in K-On! The Movie! (2011) while I was in London for my birthday 😊 #KOn #animepilgrimage

Abductive logic (as opposed to inductive or deductive) is the truly human mode of discovering and making meaning from qualitative data.

New podcast on my "Gender Uptake" article in @sociologicaltheory.bsky.social! Very excited to have this opportunity to talk about the conceptual development and theoretical/methodological intervention of this paper 🤩 #theory #sociology #genderstudies sagesociology.libsyn.com/sociological...

If you care about your students, ban digital devices in your classroom. Contrary to what some might think, it's easier now than ever. Students call time on screens "Rotting." #CulturalTailWinds #EvenStudentsWantThis #Attentionism #Ai #screens #digitaldevices #pedagogy #highered

After 3 semesters, I finally taught a module that I'm satisfied with! In redesigning this module, I made a deliberate effort to cultivate core academic skills, and now many of my 1st-year students in the module are doing WAY BETTER than our current 3rd years!

Today we published a report on public understanding & attitudes to #irregularmigration in the UK. this is my a one-line summary: strong opinions, wrong facts. But there is so much more to it. Ultimately the picture is much more nuanced and complex... i-claim.eu/project/publ...

Iconicity!!! #Cat #Peirce #Semiotics

New paper out in The British Journal of Sociology!🎉 @lsesociology.bsky.social Based on my doctoral research on young carers in China, we explore children’s emotional labour and the moral tensions that shape their everyday caregiving experiences. 🔗 Open access: doi.org/10.1111/1468...

In Week 10, we will wrap up the module by considering methods that help us attend to the connection between the "micro" and the "macro." We will compare Burawoy's Extended Case Method with Smith's Institutional Ethnography, and then zoom into Hoang's ethnography of global sex work as an example.

Society as Sy-meow-ic Interaction 🐱 #SymbolicInteraction #Sociology #AcademicSky #Cat

So interesting!!!

In Week 9, we'll examine what happens when a puzzling "surprise" happens in everyday interaction. I shamelessly assigned my own article on feminist parents' accounts for their kids' *gender-stereotypical interests* and paired it with Chase Raymond's article on "Category Accounts."

Happening soon!!!

Almost cried during course prepping 😭😭😭

New paper out in Qualitative Inquiry! 🎉 In this study, we explore power relations between researchers from elite institutions & participants often seen as ‘vulnerable’, proposing a framework for ethical reflection. 📖 Open Access here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Join us on Friday for the next talk in our How to Write and Publish Theory series, featuring Dr. Yuchen Yang (@dr-yang.bsky.social) on the development and publication of his award-winning ST article, “Gender Uptake: Theorizing the Semiotics of (Un)Doing Gender.” Sign up: ucla.zoom.us/j/91370822602

In Week 8, we will reflect on the methodologies and theories for studying online interactions. We will read @peterforberg.com and Schilt's comparison of digital vs analog ethnographies, and Manning and @structureless.bsky.social's comparison of animation vs performance models of/for human action.

After the reading week, we turn our focus to online interactions in Week 7. Showcasing articles by Ross ("Being Real on Fake Instagram") and Zhao ("Intrapersonal Interactions on Social Media"), this week asks, how is the construction of self in online spaces related to/divergent from offline spaces?

Thrilled to see that my articles are among the 10 most-read articles in Sociological Theory in the last 6 months (2nd & 8th respectively) 🥰 Gender Uptake: doi.org/10.1177/0735... What's Hegemonic about Hegemonic Masculinity: doi.org/10.1177/0735...

Had a great time talking to European linguistic anthropologists about the problems/limits of "positionality statements"! #ELAN #LinguisticAnthropology #Ethnomethodology #ConversationAnalysis

A nice look back at Labov's "Department Store" study (one of the foundational sociolinguistic studies) by one of his last students. If you're a linguist or have learned about the study in a linguistics class, this is worth a watch. youtu.be/cK6g53lLgnw?...

This article was born out of a question I had since my sophomore year in college. I'm so thrilled to have the opportunity to share this backstory through the ASA Theory Section later this month!!!

Just realized it's been 15 years since I started playing the bass 😲 So I bought a Jack Casady semi-hollow bass to celebrate 🤩

In Week 5, we will step back from ethnography and return to #ConversationAnalysis and #MembershipCategorizationAnalysis. I assigned articles by @kevinawhitehead.bsky.social and @tianhao.bsky.social and am excited to explore how people manage "racial commonsense" in everyday life with my students!

Wearing my favorite sweater to work. Can I blend in with the undergrads?

And then, after you paid the high Immigration Health Surcharge, you'll learn the health service you get from NHS is literally a piece of sh*t and you may need to fly back to your home country to get the basic treatment/exams you need 🙄

People are starting to acknowledge that the (AI) emperor has no clothes.

In Week 4, we'll go down the ethnography route to explore the classed dimension of everyday interaction. I assigned Lareau's "Invisible Inequality" and @peterfrancisharvey.bsky.social's "Make Sure You Look Someone in the Eye." We'll see how this AJS + ASR pairing will work for undergrads...

This is especially interesting considering that the formation of the history of soc section was driven at least partly by the feminist revisioning of the discipline's history. And Helena Znaniecki Lopata was its first elected section chair. www.asanet.org/history-2/

Just recommended her book to my first phd student this Wednesday 😢

When I was taking Soc 101 at Berkeley in 2015, Michael Burawoy and his GSIs organized a meeting for international students to discuss our concerns about learning theory in a second language. Having benefited from that event, I decided to do the same for my students at @unibirmingham.bsky.social

In Week 3, we will extend our focus from gender to sexuality. I paired @kitzingercelia.bsky.social's CA work on person reference in medical calls with @cjpascoe.bsky.social's ethnography of homophobic epithet in school. Close analysis of mundane interaction makes heteronormativity visible.

"There are very few infallible rules in intellectual life, but a surely robust one would be to close any book on Northeast Asia as soon as it begins to hold forth on Confucius and Confucianism and their relevance to the contemporary era." ——John Lie, The Dream of East Asia (2018)

Social theory is as hard to teach as it is to learn. The hardest part? When students do everything right—read every page, show up every time—and still feel theory won’t open up for them.

#EMCA One of my 2nd year students mentioned in her homework about how she tried out a breaching experiment (in this case speaking in honorifics with her sister) and the reaction, and started diving deeper into the ideas. I'm such a bad influence sometimes, but I love it.

This is who @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social is. Brilliant. Fearless. I fucking hate typing this shit out: Free Eman. Amplify amplify amplify please.

WTF 😡

In Week 2, we will read West & Zimmerman's early work on interruption in cross-gender conversation, Goffman's work on Gender Display, and a chapter from Thorne's Gender Play. Hopefully these texts will prepare the students for reading "Doing Gender" in the first week of Gender & Sexuality next year.

Achievement Unlocked: I watched 6 films by Shinkai Makoto yesterday at the Birmingham Anime Film Festival! Their Shinkai Makoto Marathon included The Place Promised in Our Early Days, The Garden of Words, 5 Centimeter Per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, Your Name, and Weathering with You.

Teaching starts next Monday, so I'm PINK again! ✧٩(ˊωˋ*)و✧

I'm revamping our Sociology of Everyday Life module at @birminghamschool.bsky.social this semester to make it more interactionist and ethnomethodological. For our first lecture next week, we'll read Adler et al.'s Annual Review article and Fishman's classic piece, "Interaction: The Work Women Do." 🤩

Congratulations!!! @stephanieternullo.bsky.social

ICE killed a Chicago area man last week. His name was Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez. He wasn't "the worst of the worst." He was a cook. ICE hopes we'll forget about him. We won't.

Take action for international students! Proposed DHS rule eliminating Duration of Status is detrimental for international students. Submit public comment (naming Docket No. ICEB-2025-0001) before 11:59 pm EDT, Sept. 29: https://bit.ly/3KoPB0w. Context: https://bit.ly/42nbq6Y.

Some big news: the University of Birmingham is launching a new MA in Gender & Sexuality. It's interdisciplinary, with a focus on combining theory & practice. It's going to be amazing. I'm convening it: message or email with questions. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr... @unibirmingham.bsky.social

Reunion of three sociologists of childhood from Hangzhou in Birmingham!

Apparently, Google AI has already learned what I mean by "gender uptake" (mostly) within 3 days of the publication of my article 😲

This article is a must-read for anyone interested in media, platform, nationalism, or China!!! anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...