Jeffrey L. Kidder’s research while affiliated with Northern Illinois University and other places

This paper examines how graduate students and professors talk about the funding they receive from libertarian-leaning organizations. Building from cultural economic sociologists’ insights on relational work, we analyze the meaning of money—in this case, politically controversial donations and grants—from the perspective of scholars who are supported by these types of funds. We integrate concepts from the organizational management literature on stigmatized job tasks to examine the discursive strategies scholars use to “normalize” the “contestable currency” they receive. Our theoretical synthesis allows for a nuanced understanding of how ideologically-based funding in higher education precipitates complex negotiations about the meaning of quality scholarship in higher education today.

In this article, the authors draw on the literatures about academic career pipelines and the sociology of ideas to understand how an outside group of organizations provides resources to aspiring scholars as young as high schoolers and as senior as emeriti professors. One of the goals of these organizations is to promote libertarian ideas in the academy. The authors show how, in contrast to other academic pipeline building, libertarian-leaning organizations fear that their perspectives encounter resistance in the progressive field of higher education. Therefore, to keep libertarian ideas alive, they pursue strategies to guarantee a supply of graduate students for eventual academic jobs and provide professors with relatively easy access to funding, granting them autonomy vis-à-vis their home institutions. This funding may be used in part for programs that specifically hire libertarian PhDs, which in turn provide young scholars with a step ladder into the academy. The authors call this set of strategies an “idea pipeline.” On the whole, these efforts are designed to make a career studying libertarian ideas more desirable and viable for those inclined toward these viewpoints and to ward off the demise of libertarian thought in the academy.

This article clarifies and revises the sociological theory of voluntary risk taking known as edgework. The concept has three distinct aspects: material practices, embodied experiences, and supporting structures. I first provide a critical summary of these aspects as they exist in the current literature. Second, I advocate for an approach to edgework through the analysis of symbolic practices. I argue that researchers can best understand the meaning of voluntary risk taking by studying how individuals discursively frame their actions. Given the ascendency of neoliberal ideology in contemporary Western societies, there is an increasing importance for research into risk (especially as it relates to the study of sports), and a cogent sociology of edgework can be an important component to such an intellectual endeavor.

This article is concerned with college‐aged activists’ discussions about provocative speakers invited to their campuses. Our research shows how the students on the front lines of debates over free expression and inclusion conceptualize the stakes and think about the consequences of their political involvement. Our analysis goes beyond simplistic portrayals of young people as being either “for” or “against” speech rights. Instead, we argue that conservative activists adopt an absolutist stance toward the First Amendment, which is encouraged by outside national organizations that regard free expression as a wedge issue in higher education. This contrasts with progressive activists, who struggle to weigh the value of individual freedoms against the potential harms caused by derogatory or hostile words and symbols. Ultimately, our semi‐structured interview data allow us to see the complex (and sometimes contradictory) reasoning behind students’ responses to contentious speaking events at colleges and universities

In this paper, we report data from interviews with members of conservative political clubs at four flagship public universities. First, we categorize these students into three analytically distinct orientations regarding Donald Trump and his presidency (or what we call Trumpism). There are principled rejecters, true believers, and satisficed partisans. We argue that Trumpism is a disunifying symbol in our respondents’ self-narratives. Specifically, right-leaning collegians use Trumpism to draw distinctions over the appropriate meaning of conservatism. Second, we show how political clubs sort and shape orientations to Trumpism. As such, our work reveals how student-led groups can play a significant role in making different political discourses available on campuses and shaping the types of activism pursued by club members—both of which have potentially serious implications for the content and character of American democracy moving forward.

In this paper, I explore the spatial logic of othering. This perspective helps link a strong cultural program with microlevel analyses of small groups. Using ethnographic and interview data of College Republicans at a mid-sized public university, I report on the ways members mapped out boundaries to the civil order through ideological performances involving profane narratives about place. In talking about a wide range of topics, the College Republicans in this study constructed a moral geography of contemporary America – one that relegated urban areas into the realm of the uncivil. In studying the spatial logic of othering, the resonance of campaign rhetoric like “real America” and “New York values” come into sharper focus. Cultural research into inequality and political discourse can benefit from the analysis of how perceptions of the material world interrelate with identity and morality.