Istudy...

My primary interest is in the empirical study of meaning systems. My work seeks to bring together the theoretical concerns of post-structuralist semiotic theory with network based mathematical approaches to the analysis of relational systems. In particular I have been interested in the use of dual mode styles of formal analysis (such as lattice analysis and correspondence analysis) to link systems of discourse to systems of practice.

My original training was as an organizational sociologist. My dissertation had to do with the rise of bureaucratic forms of rationalization in the social welfare sector in New York City between 1880 and 1920. My focus is on the effects of cultural meaning systems, and especially moral constructs about worthiness and unworthiness, on the ways in which the old institutional system gave way to something that was distinctly modernist in its orientations.

I also have studied the New Deal era, again with a perspective that seeks to understand how social constructions of need are dually constitutive with the rise and fall of organizational forms.

My primary interest in this domain is in the development of an adequate theory of institutions which I understand to be a fundamentally interpretative problem. But, for me, interpretation is also subject to scientific pursuit and my research has always sought to identify ways in which formal analysis can be usefully linked to the interpretative analysis of institutional forms.

More recently my work has shifted over to the study of post-affirmative action diversity policies at the University of California. Here I am again trying to understand how discourse and social structure are dually constituted. With funding from the "Woman's Leadership Institute" at Rutgers, I am working with Joe Castro and Sarah Fenstermaker and a team of graduate students to better understand how faculty come to be involved (or not) with various types of activism and forms of university engagement.