recent conference on relational sociology

Fred Block, over at UC Davis, forwarded me this announcement about a recent conference on relational sociology. The papers look exciting and I hope to see the special issue soon. Two came from our good friends Nina Bandelj and Fred Wherry. Here’s the announcement:

“Relational Work Conference, UC Davis

On May 1^st, 2010, a workshop was held at UC Davis under the sponsorship of Politics & Society and the Graduate School of Management on the concept of relational work in economic sociology.  The idea was to explore using the concept of relational work as developed by Viviana Zelizer and Charles Tilly as a tool for analyzing a wide range of different market situations.  The papers explored performance circuits, egg donation, university-industry collaborations, governance of internet commons, the government’s role in the commodification of land, and sub-contracting relations in heavy industry.  The plan is to revise the papers for subsequent publication in Politics & Society. The following papers were presented:

• Nina Bandelj,  UC Irvine,  “What Work Can Relational Work Do For Economic Sociology?”
• Viviana Zelizer,  Princeton, “How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does that Mean.”
• Dina Biscotti, UC Davis,  William Lacy, UC Davis,  Leland Glenna, Penn State University, and Rick Welsh,  Clarkson University, “ Constructing ‘Disinterested’ Academic Science: Relational Work in University-industry Agricultural Biotechnology Research Collaborations.”
• Aaron Shaw, UC Berkeley,  “Relational Work as commons governance: distributed informational production, moderation, and filtering at Daily Kos.”
• Frederick Wherry,  University of Michigan,  “Zelizerian Performance Circuits in the Marketplace.”
• Jennifer Haylett, UC Davis,  “One Woman Helping Another:  Family and Motherhood in Egg Donor Narratives.”
• Nathaniel Freiburger, Nicole W. Biggart, and Thomas D. Beamish,  UC Davis, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Toward an Understanding of the Relational State.”
• Sarah Quinn, UC Berkeley,   “Securitizing Social Relations.”
• Josh Whitford,  Columbia University,  “Waltzing, relational work and the construction (or not) of collaboration in manufacturing industries.”

Other participants included Nicole Biggart and Fred Block, UC Davis,  Matthew Keller, Southern Methodist University, Magali Sarfatti Larson, Temple University, Stephanie Mudge, UC Davis,  Marian Negoita, UC Davis,  Leslie Salzinger, Boston College, Andrew Schrank, University of New Mexico,  Michael Peter Smith, UC Davis, Valery Yakubovich,  University of Pennsylvania.”