Amy Binder, Associate Professor

Ph.D. - Northwestern, 1998

Areas of Specialization: Culture, Conservative Social Movements, Education, Organizations

Email Address: abinder@ucsd.edu
Phone number: 858-534-0483
Office location: 495 Social Science Building

Office Hours

Curriculum Vitae

Conservative Movements Workshop - Current Schedule

Classes to be taught in 2009/2010:

Fall 2009

SOCI 126 - Social Organization of Education

SOCG 216 - Sociology of Culture

Winter 2010

SOCI 110 - Qualitative Research in Educational Settings

SOCI 120T - Conservative College Students

Biography:

Amy Binder received her B.A in Anthropology from Stanford University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. Her principal research interests are in the areas of education, social movements, cultural sociology, and organizations. Her book Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools (Princeton University Press 2002) explored two marginal challenge efforts to shape curriculum in public school systems, and received the 2003 Best Book Prize of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association, the 2003 Distinguished Scholarship Prize of the Pacific Sociological Association, and the 2004 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA). A link to a description of the book on the Princeton University Press website is here: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7430.html

With her UCSD colleagues Mary Blair-Loy, John Evans, Kwai Ng, and Michael Schudson, Professor Binder co-edited a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, titled “Cultural Sociology and Its Diversity,” (2008). The authors in this special issue examine how culture concepts have migrated into and out of various sociological subfields, such as the study of race and ethnicity, science studies, the sociology of law, social movements, inequality/stratification, and popular culture, amongst many others. Most of the articles in the issue were first presented at one of three Annual Culture Conferences, hosted by UCSD’s Department of Sociology.

In 2007, Professor Binder wrote an article in the journal Theory and Society on a single social service organization’s disparate relationships with its larger funding environment — showcasing the diversity of skills, commitments, interests, professional norms, and practices within one small organization. Analyzing these differences, she makes a strong case for further developing a new approach to the study of organizations and institutions, called inhabited institutions. Click here for a pdf version of this article.

In 2007 she wrote an article in The American Journal of Education on the movement to teach intelligent design in public schools from the perspective of creationists’ symbolic commitment to the biblical account of origins, as well as progressives’ (civil libertarians, scientists, educators) strong opposition to it.  Click here for a pdf version of this article.  She and her UCSD colleague John Evans also wrote an opinion-editorial on intelligent design in The Washington Post in July 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/25/AR2008072502792.html

Professor Binder currently has several other articles in various stages of completion, including a paper co-authored with graduate student Andrew Cheyne on elite journalists’ assessment of domestic and foreign rap and the meaning of place in their assessments; the importation of school forms across institutional sectors (co-authored with Scott Davies); and a paper written with graduate student Meghan Duffy and colleague John Skrentny on an elite foundation’s role in building a more socially conscious housing development.

Professor Binder’s current book project analyzes conservative college students’ experiences on two college campuses—one an elite private institution, the other a major public university. In this work, she examines how campuses are places where students do not just come and express their “natural political inclinations,” but rather are places that create political identities. Campuses are overlooked sites where conservative political styles and discourses emerge and are transmitted from cohort to cohort. The study analyzes the perspectives of students, predominantly, but also has reveals insights from university faculty and administrators, as well as the leaders of organizations that give financial and consulting resources to conservative individual students and campus organizations.

What do all these projects have to do with one another?  Although seemingly disparate in focus, Professor Binder’s work consistently centers on the meaning-making processes enacted in her research settings. Whether it is in studying media practices involved in framing popular culture; public school systems' responses to Afrocentric and creationist challenges in the 1980s and 1990s; progressive educators’ and scientists’ responses to conservative movements; organizations' mediation between government agencies and their own professional commitments; or conservative college students’ own sense-making of their place on campus, Professor Binder’s work concentrates on the effects that cultural beliefs have on human action, and how these beliefs contribute to various forms of stratification in society.

In the service of these interests, Professor Binder is a founding member and organizer of a new interdisciplinary workshop at UCSD, called the Workshop for the Study of Conservative Movements http://workshopconservativemovements.ucsd.edu/. She also participates regularly in the Department of Sociology’s Culture + Society Workshop http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jhevans/CSW.htm, and has co-organized three UCSD Culture Conferences http://sociology.ucsd.edu/news/events.shtml

She is also the Director of the Public Service Minor through Thurgood Marshall College http://publicsvcminor.ucsd.edu/ , and has been involved in various activities with The Preuss School — UCSD’s award-winning charter middle and high school for first generation college-goers http://preuss.ucsd.edu/

Projects under review
“Change from the 53rd Floor: Understanding Elite-Led Challenges” (co-authored with Meghan Duffy and John Skrentny; status: revise and resubmit)

“Importing School Across Societal Fields: A Case Study of Institutional Change” (co-authored with Scott Davies; status: under review)

“Cosmopolitan Preferences: The Constitutive Role of Place in Cognition, Culture, and the Elite Taste for Rap Music” (co-authored with Andrew Cheyne; status: under review)

 Selected Publications
* Binder, Amy. 2008. “The Diversity of Culture” (with Mary Blair-Loy, John Evans, Kwai Ng, and Michael Schudson), pp.1-9 in Cultural Sociology and Its Diversity, special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Amy Binder, Mary Blair-Loy, John Evans, Kwai Ng, and Michael Schudson. Volume 619 (September).

* Binder, Amy. 2007. “For Love and Money: One Organization’s Creative and Multiple Responses to a New Funding Environment.” Theory and Society 36:547-71 (December).

* Binder, Amy. 2007. "Gathering Intelligence on Intelligent Design: Where Did It Come From, Where Is It Going, and How Do (and Should) Progressive Coalitions Manage It?" American Journal of Education (August 2007).

* Binder, Amy. 2007. "Evolution Triumphant: Review of the Charles Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History." Contexts. Spring 2007.

*Binder, Amy. 2002. Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools, Princeton University Press.

Winner of the 2004 Outstanding Book Award prize of the American Educational Research Association.

Winner of the 2003 Best Book Prize of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association.

Winner of the 2003 Distinguished Scholarship Prize of the Pacific Sociological Association.

*Binder, Amy. 2000. "Why Do Some Curricular Challenges 'Work' While Others Do Not? The Case of Three Afrocentric Challenges: Atlanta:, Washington DC, and New York State"Sociology of Education.

*Binder, Amy. 1999. "Friend and Foe: Boundary Work and Collective Identity in the Afrocentric and Multicultural Curriculum Movements in American Public Education," in The Cultural Territory of Race: Black and White Boundaries; Michele Lamont (ed.), University of Chicago Press/Russell Sage Foundation, pp.221-48.

*Binder, Amy. 1993. "Constructing Racial Rhetoric: Media Depictions of Harm in Heavy Metal and Rap Music," American Sociological Review, Volume 58 (December).