Giovanni Zampieri

Entries from an AI-generated child friendly version of Wikipedia: Pierre Bourdieu Facts for Kids, Louis Althusser Facts for Kids, Norbert Elias Facts for Kids.

Start em young

a raccoon standing in an aisle at the library

what is he doing here? he can’t even read

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

Dragon Ball Z meme: It's over 9000!!!!

When people ask me what my article's word count is

The SSHA deadline has been extended to March 15, 2026 - please see the cfp and submit your work! ssha2026.ssha.org @socscihistory.bsky.social

my great idea when i sit down to write

Looking forward to this ASA Culture Section event: "Diversity in Culture: The Current Landscape and Limitations" with Natasha Warikoo (Tufts University), Ellen Berrey (University of Toronto), and Laura Garbes (University of Minnesota).
February 27, 2 PM EST

www.eventbrite.com/e/culture-an...

Billie Holiday avoids making political statement, sings Strange Fruit instead

Consider submitting a paper to the session I am organizing at ASA this year on “Comparative-Historical Sociology and Computational Social Science.” The submission deadline is February 25.

A New AI Math Startup Just Cracked 4 Previously Unsolved Problems Axiom says its AI found solutions to several long-standing math problems, a sign of the technology’s steadily advancing reasoning capabilities.

One of the problems of the LLM/AI debate is that 1) it is guided by an implicit theory of mind and intentionality that is indemonstrable, 2) is riddled with “all in” arguments that miss the point.
www.wired.com/story/a-new-...

Two Invitations To Sociology Bourdieu vs. Garfinkel

In this post, I articulate two invitations to sociology. One is predominant, represented by Pierre Bourdieu. The other is a persistent undercurrent and can be usefully formulated via a look at Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology.

open.substack.com/pub/thesilve...

Being interdisciplinary mostly means everyone agrees your work is interesting but not for their journal.

I am watching what is happening in Minneapolis on Ali Velshi and one of the ICE officers (off camera) literally says, “It’s like Call of Duty. Pretty cool huh?” as they shoot whatever it is they are shooting. Agents walking around, guns unholstered for no reason. This is insanity

A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption Cambridge Core - Historical sociology - A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption

Like a world-famous band (which we are), *A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption* "drops" simultaneously and worldwide TODAY. Thanks to my partners-in-crime, Marco Garrido and Marina Zaloznaya, and to all the contributors!

tinyurl.com/muyeezka

Macron in a hoodie.

Macron with sunglasses in Davos.

Left: writing the damn paper in the shadows of an archive nearby.

Right: presenting the said paper as a keynote at a fancy conference.

#academicchatter

Most of research is discovering that the data doesn't care about your theory

Nothing makes you feel alive like submitting a paper and immediately finding a typo

Conference | Social Science History Association The conference involves over a thousand scholars from around the world, although graduate students and faculty from the leading American universities predominate.

The Social Science History Association 2026 Call for Papers is up! The meeting will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, from November 19th to 22nd, 2026. Submission deadline is March 1st, 2026. Submission link and details here: ssha.org/conference/

🔔 Upcoming Talk

"Speaking of Solidarity" w/ Phil Gorski

Monday, January 12 · 2:00 PM EST

Join us for a conversation with sociologist Philip Gorski about the possibilities and challenges of solidarity and the role of sociology in these times.

www.eventbrite.com/e/speaking-o...

Academia is mostly just opening pdfs you swear you've never seen before, only to find your own highlights

Comment and Reply: "The Person of the Category" Editorial Note: In 2023, Rogers Brubaker submitted a comment to Theory and Society on an article that Greta Krippner and Daniel Hirschman had published the year prior in the same journal. Richard Swed...

In which Rogers Brubaker, Marion Fourcade & @kjhealy.co comment and Greta Krippner and I reply. Read if you like getting into the theoretical and technical weeds of the relationship between categorization, quantification, and different imaginaries of the relationship between variables and persons.

Emotions in Meaning‐Making: Toward a Sociological Theory of Cathexis The role of emotion in meaning-making remains undertheorized in cultural sociology. This article argues that emotions and affect are intrinsic to meaning-making and proposes cathexis—the attachment o...

🔔 Recently out: "Emotions in Meaning-Making: Toward a Sociological Theory of Cathexis" by Dmitry Kurakin

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

Just in time for Christmas: a great interview with an absolute legend.

Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta on her career, US politics, the erosion of democracy, and most of all, what to do about it.

sociologica.unibo.it/article/view...

! NEW ISSUE OUT !

Our latest issue (and the last issue of this 2025) is OUT and ready for you to enjoy here: lnkd.in/euHFDNvZ
Inside you will find a conversation between Edwin Amenta and Theda Skocpol on U.S. politics, higher education, and the relationship between sociology and political science.

A man is sitting at a desk, writing a book with a quill. He is not looking at the page. A godly book, illuminated, is also present in the copperplate print of 1716. The godly message of the flying book is in German and from the Bible: Im Anfang war das Wort Joh:1 v:1". A light beam from the holy book to the yet blank page can also be seen with the words inscribed: „Dein Wort ist ein Licht auf meinem Wege Ps. 119 v. 105“. So, basically, god is the textual inspiration of the author's work. It looks like he is waiting an artificial hallucination in 1716. The source: https://portraits.hab.de/werk/17512/mirador

AI-assisted writing in 1716. #skystorians

Page from an Italian colonial census record for a butcher from Venice living in Asmara

Asked by the 1905 census carried out in Eritrea what language he habitually spoke, this hero said 'Veneto dialect'

(but confessed he spoke a little Italian as a secondary language 'un pocco di italiano'

Also enjoying his religious faith: 'God without priests '

Will the Nordio reform weaken liberal democracy in Italy? - EUROPP The Nordio reform in Italy might appear limited in scope, but it could lead to a further weakening of liberal democracy under the leadership of Giorgia Meloni.

#Italy is set to hold a referendum by spring 2026 on a major constitutional reform of the justice system known as the Nordio reform.

Leonardo Puleo writes on @lseeuroppblog.bsky.social that while the reform might appear limited, it could lead to a further weakening of Italian liberal democracy.

Join us for the Culture Section's inaugural Stuart Hall Award lecture by Dr. Ben Carrington, “‘The University is a Critical Institution, or it is Nothing’ - Stuart Hall, The Elephants’ Graveyard and the Sociology of Race.” Register here: emory.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

The President’s Speech by our outgoing president @emilyerikson.bsky.social to close our third day of the 50th SSHA Conference in Chicago.