Adam Kotanko

a cartoon character from futurama is waving at the camera ALT: a cartoon character from futurama is waving at the camera

Original footage from Pete Hegseth's speech today

What's the collective in this #collectiveaction?

A. Kotanko’s (@akotanko.bsky.social) #Socius study of an #immigration clinic demonstrates how #socialmovement organizations draw on #personalidentity to encourage collective action participation.

Read: doi.org/10.1177/2378...

Making a Martyr?: Scandal, Symbolic Power, and the Controversial Death of Evangelical Missionary John Chau - Qualitative Sociology How do groups respond to accusations of scandal? Because scandals pose significant risks of moral stigma and loss of status to those associated with them, sociologists have analyzed how actors within ...

NEW ARTICLE/OPEN ACCESS
Proud to share my PhD advisee, @akotanko.bsky.social's, recent publication in Qualitative Soc. Adam and I worked on this one together, which was a great collaborative experience, but he is very much the lead author.

The first of many to come from the future Dr. Kotanko!

From the NYT: Not Just More Babies: These Republicans Want More Parents at Home As the Trump administration shrinks federal child care programs, Republicans are backing policies they hope will allow more parents to scale back at work.

They want more MOMS at home. And not just because they hate women.

Their *economic* model depends on unpaid labor. And the most effective way to coerce unpaid labor is to create a second class of people and teach them that they're only "naturally" suited for labor they're forced to do for free.

So contrary to many post-election analyses, Dems don't need to move rightward to win. Rather, they need to figure out what those nearly 40% of nonvoters want & how to help them vote. A good place to start: protect voting rights, make election-day a federal holiday, fight disenfranchisement, etc.

Seeing someone use “woke” as a derrogatory descriptor is useful in that it lets me know I don’t need to take whatever they say next seriously.

Btw, substitute #healthcare for learning & the post is just as valid. Commodifying some things ruins them

AI, MOOCS, etc. = tech solutions for symptoms, not the disease. #Learning is a messy, inefficient, personal, relational process. It’ll never be rational (in the Weberian sense). We need to embrace the messy, costly process bc it’s good in itself, not instrumentally (eg for profit, jobs, etc.)

When I was a young writer, I received a LOT of rejections. Now, after decades of hard work, I am no longer young.

Tonight is a work night, as I try to finish giving students feedback on final projects--which is why I'm on Bluesky, bc staying focused in the middle of the night is difficult

I regularly wake up in the middle of the night. If I can't get back to sleep & don't start working, I often listen to a couple eps of Star Talk w/ @neildegrassetyson.com. It's perfect, bc it's fascinating/fun & not tied to my work. I'll usually understand the 1st ep & fall asleep during the 2nd

We're never going to catch everyone, or even a majority, who "cheat," esp given AI capabilities, & trying to do so is emblematic of a bigger problem in education: a focus on what students do wrong over over an emphasis on intrinsic reasons to care about learning even when it's difficult

My extroverted wife: My sister’s graduation party went until 4am

Introverted me: That sounds horrible

Wife: Everyone had fun

Kid: I’m hungry

Me: You just ate

Kid: I just ate FIRST bfreakfast. What abt second breakfast? Elevensies? Lunch? Tea time? Dinner? Supper? Once? Midnight snack? Pre-bfast snack? Random treats?

My kids are basically hobbits

This post captures so much post-election analysis: some voters don't like reality, so Dems need to better embrace fantasy in order to win their votes. Oh, and throw some minoritized folks under the bus while you're at it

Finally, I started No Homework Mondays last year bc students deserve weekends free from homework. We do activities on Mondays based on the previous week's content (e.g., "create your own religion" after a module on solidarity, or "create McPurdue" after a section on rationality)

some groups complete a module on implicit bias, while others focus on weathering. They discuss their module in groups, & we conclude the class sharing between groups that did different modules or discussing each module as a full class

I'm also experimenting with what I call "choose-your-own-adventure" modules. We all do the same prep work/discussion on Wednesdays, but for Fridays, students choose from bt similar modules. For instance, on a Friday focusing on how stereotypes get inside of us...

There's no final exam, but students do complete & share w/ classmates an open-ended self-learning project, where they choose both the topic and medium of presentation (paper, presentation, board game, sociological short story, musical analysis, podcast, etc.).

Instead of exams, students watch doc films at the end of each section, & we talk about them in light of theory/empirical stuff that we've covered in that section (e.g., Merchants of Doubt -> cultural hegemony, social identity theory, etc.). Students collaborate in turning in group responses

A few more thoughts on how the class runs: we spend most of our time in small groups discussing readings/podcasts/videos. I check in with as many groups as possible during each class period, after a brief intro/preview of next class period. In the last 10 mins, we share big takeaways as full class

Also, during the 1st week of classes, we critique the artificiality of "industrial education," reading @susandblum.bsky.social, watching a Ken Robinson talk, & discussing what a better learning system would look like. I do this to prime students for why our class is different from other courses

Here's what works 4 me instead: I (mostly) give students credit for completing activities (bc the U requires a grade), & I give individualized (or group, depending on class size) written feedback for most assignments. It takes a lot of time (about 2hrs after every class period), but it's worth it

To distract you from end-of-term #grading, here's @alfiekohn.bsky.social's wonderful essay (which I have my students read in a module on Foucault & discipline) laying out reasons why u should stop (or at least minimize) grading www.alfiekohn.org/article/case...

Big spoiler: grading impedes learning

I think a lot of us internalized the love part more deeply than the boundaries part, which why it’s still so hard for us to understand our CN family and friends.

So today, when your libertarian Uncle Ron extols the virtues of innovative capitalism, you might ask him about capitalism’s mundane exploitative innovation. You won’t convince true believer Uncle Ron, but you might have a great consciousness raising session after supper w/ Cousin Sally.

The key point is that capitalists’ goal is to increase profit in any way possible, and that frequently involves innovations that make life worse for lots of people—sometimes everyone. Exploitative innovation is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

One of the greatest capitalist innovations of history involved justifying enslavement based on race through religion/science.

For the capitalist, dumping toxic waste on poor communities is just as good an innovation as creating a better product/service; outsourcing or slave labor is as good as hiring qualified experts; manipulative marketing of fabricated needs is wonderfully innovative, as is capturing legislative bodies.