Andrew Chalfoun

I too have been stuck behind undergrads in line for coffee. But I didn't feel the need to rant about it in public

Really interesting piece - check it out! Deals with some old but enduring sociological questions.

My Tax Dollars When the mundane reality of paying taxes takes on moral significance

Ruth Braunstein has a nice discussion of why taxation is an important part of civic participation that can mobilize stakeholder interests in government programs.

press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

The paper encourages interaction scholars of all stripes to give this distinction renewed attention by closely examining the different work involved in marking something as against expectations and marking something as a sanctionable offence 4/4

However, despite obvious problems with the Parsonian account, I argue that Parsons highlights important distinctions between constitutive and regulative normativity that tend to drop out of EMCA-inspired research on social interaction. 3/4

Most sociological scholarship on social interaction has followed a path that is closer to Garfinkel (at least when it comes to normativity and rule-following). There are good reasons for this, since Garfinkel focuses attention on situated sensemaking, giving interactionists something to study. 2/4

Differentiating Regulative and Constitutive Normativity: Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfinkel and the Sticky Problem of Meaning In everyday life, individuals regularly confront novel situations which demand their attention and response. In such situations, they routinely deploy portable norms to select between appropriate and....

New from me in Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour! Social theorists have trouble explaining how intersubjectivity is possible if norms are open-ended. I contrast two proposed solutions (offered by Talcott Parsons and Harold Garfinkel), both ultimately unsatisfying. #EMCA 1/4

YouTube video by TerriClarkVEVO Terri Clark - Better Things To Do

youtu.be/h1ScBNkXaJk?...

Wow! This is quite the song!

These are excellent! Thanks!

Nice! Maxwell's Silver Hammer was already in there but the others are great additions!

Working on a playlist for my students. What are people's favorite songs about violence? Bonus points if they're cheerful!

I have never felt more American than I do working on the proofs for a journal that enforces British spelling.

I will be hiring a full-time pre-doctoral Research Professional to work with me at Chicago Booth.

Know someone interested in studying conversation and connection? Please help spread the word!

More details, including application instructions, are here: www.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/facu...

This paper outlines a distributional approach to institutional analysis, reconceptualising institutions as distributions of knowledge and activity across people. We argue that institutionalisation and institutional change are best understood by focussing on actors with the requisite knowledge and motivation to keep institutional patterns going, fix them when they go awry, or transform them when required, here called functionaries. The distributional approach allows us to distinguish between two main types of institutional change often conflated in the literature: Content-based and formal change. Content-based change, the one most often discussed, involves the importation, recombination, or expansion of specific patterns of activity. In contrast, formal change, often neglected in the literature, refers to shifts in the distribution of knowledge and activity, leading to dynamics of centralisation and decentralisation of institutional patterns. In this way, the distributional approach highlights the role of functionaries in both institutional stability and change, providing a micro-level perspective on institutional dynamics.

New paper out with Marshall Taylor and @olizardo.bsky.social:

Functionaries: A Distributional Approach to Institutional Analysis

Instead of institutions as things that contain people, we suggest institutions as expertise distributed across people.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

When cooking with garlic, always remember the fundamental rules:

1) If the recipe calls for 3-4 cloves, use double
2) If the recipe calls for 1-2 cloves, use triple
3) The little cloves are freebies; don't count them

Christianity and Politics in Tribal India - Reading Religion Through an ethnohistorical study of the Nagas—a congeries of tribes inhabiting the Indo-Myanmar frontier—this book explores an unusually interest...

New from me in @readingreligion.bsky.social! I reviewed G. Kanato Chophy's book "Christianity and Politics in Tribal India," which documents an interesting case of the relationship between religious identity and ethno-national mobilization.

Volume 67, issue 1, of TSQ is now LIVE, featuring articles by @achalfoun.bsky.social, @gio-rossi.bsky.social, @daeunjung.bsky.social, @djhardingsoc.bsky.social, @criminovelist.bsky.social, @mmaroto.bsky.social, @dnpetti.bsky.social, @andiewinnipeg.bsky.social, and more!

Read it at bit.ly/45ezfzx

A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”

We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”

Congratulations! 🎉

Secretly he really loves Reservoir Dogs but thinks admitting it would hurt his credibility

You should take this post down since it includes six people who voted no

Guess I'm watching a Mira Nair movie tonight

my paper with my colleague and friend Victoria Tran is finally out!

There may be no atheists in foxholes, but there plenty of agnostics in badger setts. And don't get me started all the freethinking that goes on in rabbit warrens

FREE TO READ

Andrew Chalfoun, Giovanni Rossi, & Tanya Stivers show that everyday requests are made with an optimistic stance. Across seven language communities, people ask as if the answer will be “yes,” revealing a pervasive optimism bias in routine interaction.

Read more at bit.ly/4oKjWWs

6/ Overall, we’re freer to just ask for big things than existing theory suggests. The pressure falls on recipients, who must respond to high-stakes requests—requiring their time, energy, or social capital—already set in motion by others.

5/ Turns out people use pre-requests only when there’s an obvious, local obstacle that can’t be ignored. But even then, they lean optimistic: 67% of pre-requests favor a positive outcome. Not “Are you busy...?” but “Are you free this weekend?”

4/ By contrast, opening with a pre-request (“Are you busy this weekend?”) tests the waters before the ask and offers an easy way out if needed. Smart move, right? But it’s also inherently pessimistic: it anticipates and draws attention to a potential problem.