UC San Diego’s Sociology Colloquium Speaker Series offers the opportunity to learn about the latest research from leading scholars in sociology and closely related fields. Presentations are followed by Q&A.

Colloquia are typically held Thursdays, 12:30 p.m. — 1:50 p.m. in SSB 101 unless otherwise noted

2025-2026

October 23, 2025

Title: Propaganda is already influencing large language models: evidence from training data, audits, and real-world usage

Abstract: Millions of people around the world query (prompt) large language models for information.  While several studies have compellingly documented the persuasive potential of these models, there is limited evidence of who or what influences the models themselves, leading to a flurry of concerns about which companies and governments build and regulate the models.  We show through six studies that coordinated propaganda from powerful global political institutions  already influences the output of U.S.-based large language models via their training data. We first provide evidence that Chinese state propaganda appears in large language model training datasets. To evaluate the plausible effect of this inclusion, we use an open-weight model to show that additional pre-training on Chinese state propaganda generates more positive answers to prompts about Chinese political institutions and leaders. We link this phenomenon to commercial models through two audit studies demonstrating that prompting models in Chinese generates more positive responses about China's institutions and leaders than the same queries in English. We then use a cross-national audit study to show that languages of countries with lower media freedom exhibit a stronger pro-regime valence than those with higher media freedom. The combination of influence and persuasive potential suggest the troubling conclusion that states and powerful institutions have increased strategic incentives to disseminate propaganda in the hopes of shaping model behavior.

October 30, 2025
Speaker: Yen-Ting Hsu

Title: Who Governs Heritage Production? Evidence from Institutional Politics in 21st-Century Taipei

Abstract: The process of heritage production often entails discursive power struggles among stakeholders over tensions between property and cultural rights. Drawing on a data set of 652 candidate buildings reviewed in Taipei, Taiwan, between 2016 and 2023, this paper examines how competing rights are weighed in the mechanisms of nomination and consultation by analyzing links between stakeholders’ preferences and designation outcomes. Logistic regression results show that nominations by non-property-owner stakeholders or the state are at least 15 percentage points more likely to receive approval than those by property owners, suggesting a structural preference for cultural rights. Yet property rights regain influence in consultation: property-owner support is associated with a 38-percentage-point higher likelihood of approval, while cultural-activist support—due to selection effects—is associated with a 36-percentage-point lower likelihood, compared to their absence. These findings indicate that heritage production in Taipei emerges from contested negotiations rather than the dominance of either side.

November 20, 2025

Speaker: Caroline Martínez

Title: Transnational Indigeneities: How Indigenous Immigrants Navigate Racial Identification and Belonging in the United States

Abstract: How do Indigenous Latin American immigrants identify in the Census? Why do they reject or embrace ethnoracial categories used to count populations in the United States? Understanding Indigenous immigrants’ identification in the Census is crucial given the importance of Census data in the allocation of federal and state resources and the monitoring of discrimination. Research on Latinx racial identification shows that Latinxs experience a discrepancy between self and external classification and that Latinxs hold multiple racial schemas that come from a Latin American and U.S. way of viewing race. While scholars have examined multiple aspects of Latinx racial identification, Latinx identification as American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN), the only Indigenous category in the U.S. Census, has received little attention. However, the Indigenous non-Indigenous boundary is one of the most important racial boundaries in Latin America, making it key to understanding Latinxs’ racial identification dynamics in the United States. Through in-depth interviews with 31 Indigenous immigrants, I argue that Indigenous immigrants’ identification and sense of belonging is mediated by Latino mestizaje and strict rules of who counts as AIAN in the United States. Findings from this study show that, while participants selected the Latino/Hispanic category in the Census, they did not feel they were part of this ethnoracial group due to experiences with identity policing and anti-Indigenous discrimination. Participants also did not feel they belonged in the AIAN category, showing that this category does not translate well across borders. My research contributes to the growing body of literature on Latinx racial identification in the United States and on Indigenous identification in Latin America by showing the mismatch among Census identification, belonging, and discrimination.

December 4, 2025

Speaker: Lane Kenworthy

Title: Is Inequality the Problem?

Abstract: To a host of thoughtful observers, economic inequality is one of our most important problems and needs to be fixed. This is partly because it's morally objectionable, but perhaps more importantly because it is believed to have harmful effects on outcomes such as living standards, democracy, opportunity, health, and happiness. I examine the country-level evidence in rich democratic nations over the era of rising inequality from 1979 to 2019. I conclude that support for inequality-is-harmful hypotheses is underwhelming. What should we advise policymakers to do? I suggest we should encourage them to reduce economic inequality, because there's a compelling moral argument in favor, because lots of people would prefer that, because we know it's possible to achieve (we did it in the 1940s-70s), and because it's unlikely to slow economic growth or require other sacrifices. But inequality reduction should be a secondary goal.

January 15, 2026

Speaker: Lewis Miles

Title: Bougie Refugees: Race, Gender, Class, and the Blaxit Movement to Mexico

Abstract: Black Americans have long sought freedom, opportunity, and mobility beyond U.S. borders, from Liberia in West Africa to “Little Liberia” in Mexico. Sociologist Lewis Miles explores the contemporary wave of Black expatriates in Mexico in the era of “#Blaxit.” In this talk, he will present a section from his manuscript, tentatively titled, Bougie Refugees, Dissident Migrants, and Beautiful Cosmopolitans: Black American Migration to Mexico which combines historical analysis, ethnographic observations, and over 130 interviews. Miles will discuss the gender and social class selectivity of this “down-south” migration flow and the lives these individuals construct in various locales in Mexico. At the intersections of privilege, precarity, and the postcolonial, he theorizes the “petite-bourgeois refugee,” offering a novel look at how Blackness, status, and positionality are reconfigured by lifestyle migrants within the hierarchies of Mexico and the globe.

January 29, 2026

Speaker: Emily Ruppel

Title: Capitalizing on Disability: Labor Process and Governance in Disability Employment Programs

Abstract: Capitalizing on Disability investigates the operation of disability as an organizing principle of labor 1970s-present. In my book project, I trace this evolution through empirical analysis of job training programs for workers with disabilities, combining historical research on the emergence of this industry with ethnography in two contemporary employment programs. In this talk, I draw on 19 months of comparative ethnographic fieldwork in (1) a welfare state program placing people with mental illnesses in low-wage jobs in the service sector and (2) a tech company hiring autistic people for quality assurance roles, using this comparison to illustrate how disability is managed and made profitable across industries. I show that, despite the divergent organizational identities of welfare state programs and autism in tech initiatives, labor practices at these sites converge due to the strings attached to program funding. Both programs channel people with disabilities into precarious, low-wage jobs as a provisional resolution of the contradictory conditions attached to funds from the state and from private capital. This analysis highlights structural contradictions in disability as a labor market category, showing that disability is presently defined through the simultaneous purported inability to work and imperative to work, and reveals ways that these contradictions produce disabled workers as a labor supply suited to the contemporary economy. This project advances a materialist theory of disability, linking transformations in disability as a social category to transformations in the system of production.

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