This week Craig Calhoun will present a formal speech designed to be experienced in conjunction with visual materials. NYLON is asked to comment on the substance of the speech as well as the form of the presentation. There is no reading for this week's session.

This first substantive chapter of my dissertation explores the successful campaign to repeal state licensing laws, by a grassroots alternative medical movement, Thomsonism after the 1832 cholera epidemic. It explores the process by which cholera was translated by Thomsonists into the repeal of the licensing laws. I argue that in order to understand this process we must examine the underlying medical epistemologies of orthodox physicians and Thomsonists. Thomonists were able to succeed in getting the licensing laws repealed not because of their particular framing of cholera, but rather because this framing carried epistemological implications that resonated with the changing culture of the state legislatures. The first part of the chapter describes how discord within orthodoxy as to the foundations of their knowledge resulted in an inability for regulars to develop a coherent framing of cholera. The second part of the chapter focuses on the contest between regulars and Thomsonists to define cholera, specifically within the context of the NY State legislature.

Notes: This paper analyzes the epistemes underlying the visual representation of the nation as brand. Drawing on "visualization strategies" employed by twenty-six nation-states, it reveals how nation branding practices set up a system of valuation that privileges passion and sexiness as desirable national qualities, while advocating "therapy" for those nation-states which do not espouse such positive dimensions.

Dinner to discuss where we would like to see NYLON go in the future.

Notes: There is an abundance of both public and academic discussions on psychopharmaceutical consumers that construct a normative binary between "deserving" (mentally ill) and "undeserving" (e.g. cosmetic) users. In drafting my dissertation proposal, I am attempting to move away from these discussions and revisit earlier research on individuals who take psychopharmaceuticals (specifically the class of drugs known as SSRIs) by looking at a younger cohort of consumers who have grown-up in the "post-Prozac" environment.

As research students, it can feel like we spend a lot of time in seminars or methods chapters reflecting on how to place ourselves as researchers when planning and presenting our work. Sometimes this might feel like an unproductive rote exercise - ticking the reflexivity box. Sharing our work can remind us how the relationship between researcher and research can be crucial. I plan to kick off the ethical antagonisms series by talking about instances when other people's work has struck me as particularly interesting in this regard, and revealed how this sort of reflexive process can be productive, rather than formulaic. Reading colleagues' work alongside my own has helped me to think about a number of aspects of self in the research - is it possible to analyse research participants without considering their interaction with the researcher? How do we deal with immediate physical consequences of research, for ourselves or others? What about less visible consequences? As readers, do we understand research differently depending on our assumptions about the author and their allegiances? How much does a writer or researcher's personal history matter, and how can it be considered in the research without seeming self-indulgent?

Notes: The paper is essentially an introductory chapter describing the setting where my research took place. Very straightforward, descriptive, very little "sociology."

Notes: A working version of a chapter from the dissertation: Death Worthy: An Ethnography of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials.

How can social science take advantage of the digital information revolution to improve and expand research and publishing practices? This is a hopeful look towards a dynamic, exciting future for the social sciences in a digitally networked present/future.

How do the voices of study participants get rendered into sociological accounts? What happens to the faces of research subjects in the process of translation between research and writing up? What happens to identity as a result of the distortions that representation entails? Are the answers to these questions determined by an institutional ethical practice or do the answers to these questions inform ethical practice?

This seminar, part of the Ethical Antagonisms series will look at the above questions and explore how they relate to the work within our research communities.

How do stereotypes translate into unequal life chances, material consequences, and categorical inequalities? How do everyday interactions affect larger political arrangement between immigrants and locals, minorities and majority publics? How do some groups garner more of a political voice inside a polity than others? Why are Arabs in Europe seen as contentious while Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are seen as more docile and apolitical? Is this empirically true? How do the immigrant's habitus lead the immigrant to misread a new cultural surrounding?

Notes: An updated version of my 'cemetery' project, looking specifically about the relationship between Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the surrounding community, and issues of history and collective memory. What I'm hoping to do is to look specifically at how Green-Wood is integrated within the surrounding community, rather than just to look at it as a singular 'site' that is often studied outside of daily life in cities.

Notes: The as of now untitled paper is going to look at the language used by non profit development executives (fundraisers) to justify their reticence to recruit and cultivate African American donors for their organizations. I have conducted interviews with non profit development executives at a range of non profit organizations in New York, and this work comes out of that data. I find that development executives' racial stereotypes about black donors fall into several distinct categories. These stereotypes become organizational roadblocks, through which development executives opt out of recruiting black donors.

What are the political implications of the movement from understanding and accounting for difference through identity politics to an understanding of identity couched in material cultures? What are the ethical implications in research that favours one approach over the other?

As researchers, how do we take stock of our influence on the ways in which identities are understood, accounted for and politically mobilised? What is the role for reflexivity in this changing trend?

Merriment will ensue.

Pending.