Allison Pugh
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I regularly speak to academic and public audiences about culture, family and work.  Topics include the larger significance of trends in work, relationship insecurity, and meeting childrearing challenges from media, schools and popular culture.

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A selection of speaking engagements and media appearances:

KEYNOTE AND INVITED PRESENTATIONS, TALKS, SPEECHES

2019. Keynote speaker. “Real Work in the Virtual World.” Helsinki, Finland, August.
2017. Keynote speaker, "Insecure Work, Dignity and the Moral Wall."  20th anniversary of the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability.  Sponsored by the Shepherd program and the Roger Mudd Center for Ethics.  Washington and Lee University.  November.
​2017.  "Systematizing Human Connection: Contemporary Relationship Work."  Presidential Panel, Eastern Sociological Society (ESS) meetings, Philadelphia, February.
2016.  “Understanding Inequality: Children, Consumer Culture and Compassion.”  Keynote address.  Child and Teen Consumption Conference.  Aalborg, Denmark, April.
2015.  “Sexuality in an Insecure Society.”  American Sociological Association (ASA), Chicago, August.
2015.   “Gender and Precarity at Work.”  Conference in honor of Joan Smith, University of Vermont, Burlington, April 16.
2014.  “The Paradox of Voice:  What We Can Do with What People Tell Us.”  ASA Presidential Panel, "Methodological Disagreements: Comparing the Value of Qualitative Interviews and Participant-Observation." San Francisco, August.
2014.  “The Theoretical Costs of Ignoring Childhood: What Children Have to Tell Us About Inequality, Independence, and Insecurity.”  Childhood Studies Speaker Series, University of Pittsburgh. April.
2014.  “Job Insecurity and the Making of Commitment:  Culture and Inequality in the Tumbleweed Society.” Thematic Session on “Identity work.”  Eastern Sociological Society meeting, Baltimore, February.
2013.  Keynote speaker and Jackson Memorial Lecture, “The Hidden Injuries of Childhood Inequalities.”  At the “Childhood and Diversity – Multiple childhoods?” conference of the International Association of Francophone Sociologists – Research Committee on the Sociology of Childhood, and the Canadian Sociological Association, Halifax, Nova Scotia.  June.
2013.  "Gender and the Emotional Geographies of Insecurity:  Managing the Unrequited Contract at Work and at Home."  Lecture to the Social Sciences Faculty, University of the Ruhr, Bochum, Germany.  June.
2013.  "The Coral Society: Reframing the Choice between Family Stability and Family Diversity."  Migra! Network, University of the Ruhr, Bochum, Germany.  June.
2013.  "The 'Common Sense' of Insecurity:  Cultural Strategies at Work."  University Rhein-Waal, Kleve, Germany, June; Faculty of Gender and Work, University of Bielefeld, Germany, July; Hans Böckler Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany, July.
2013.  “Using Culture to Manage Insecurity: The Tumbleweed Society at Home.”  Colloquium, University of California, Berkeley, Sociology Department.  March.
2012.  “Reconciling Ourselves to the ‘Common Sense’ of Insecurity: Cultural Strategies at Work in the Tumbleweed Society.” Colloquium at the University of Maryland, College Park, Department of Sociology.  December.
2012.  “The Strange Marriage of Irony and Passion:  Culture and Intimacy in the Tumbleweed Society.”  Colloquium at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of Sociology.  December.
2012.  “The Right Way to Feel: Managing Expectations and Emotions at Work in an Insecure Age.”  Presentation to the “Redefining Work” Working Group, Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University.  October.
2012.  “The Uses of Contradiction:  Gleaning Culture from Meta-Feeling in Interviews.”  Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago.  October.
2012.  “Inequality, Insecurity, and Interdependence: What Sociology Can Learn from Children/Childhoods.”  Invited panelist, Thematic Session on Children and Childhood, ASA annual meeting, Denver, August.  
2012. "The Moral Wall: Expectations, Emotions and Honor at Work in the New Insecurity." Sociology Colloquium.  Georgetown University.  Washington, DC.  March.
2011. “Beyond the Adult Universal: Childhood Research and Intellectual 'Progress'.”  University of South Florida Sociology Colloquium.   November.  
2011.  “The Tumbleweed Society:  Re-working Honor and Betrayal in an Age of Insecurity.”  University of Missouri Sociology Colloquium.  September.
2011.  “The Planned Obsolescence of Other People: Consumer Culture, Insecurity and Connection.”  Conference on “Being Human in a Consumer Society,” Social Trends Institute, Barcelona, Spain, March.
2011.  Annual Sociology Lecture.  Furman Univ., Greenville, South Carolina, March.
2011. “The Uses of Betrayal:  Emotions, Culture and Action Among the Postindustrial Jetsam.”  Boston University Sociology Departmental Seminar Series.  March.
2010.  “Managing Distaste: Allowances and Ambivalence in Affluent Families.” Conference on “Reconsidering the American Dream:  Middle Class Families Experience the 21st Century,” Center on the Everyday Lives of Families, UCLA, April.
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