Andrew J. Perrin, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill CB#3210, 269 Hamilton Hall Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 andrew_perrin@unc.edu - (919) 962-6876 - fax (919) 962-7568

Professional Information

I have recently begun reading a variety of sociological and political blogs; my list to pay attention to is here. Periodically I post at Scatterplot.

My Classes

Papers Available

• Perrin, Andrew J. "Why You Voted." Contexts, Fall, 2008. Available here or here.
• Perrin, Andrew J., and Katherine McFarland. "The Sociology of Political Representation and Deliberation." Sociology Compass, June, 2008. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J., and Sondra J. Smolek. "Who Trusts? Race, Gender, and the September 11 Rally Effect Among Young Adults." Social Science Research 38:1 (March, 2009), 134-145. Available here.
• Prasad, Monica, Andrew J. Perrin, Kieran Bezila, Kate Kindleberger, Steve Hoffman, Kim Manturuk, and Ashleigh Smith Powers. "'There Must be a Reason': Osama, Saddam, and the Social Psychology of False Beliefs." Sociological Inquiry 79:2 (May, 2009). Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J., and Stephen B. Vaisey. "Parallel Public Spheres: Distance and Discourse in Letters to the Editor." American Journal of Sociology 114:3 (November, 2008). Available here.
• Prasad, Monica, Andrew J. Perrin, Kieran Bezila, Steve Hoffman, Kate Kindleberger, Kim Manturuk, and Ashleigh Smith Powers. "The Undeserving Rich: 'Moral Values' and the White Working Class." Sociological Forum 24:2 (2009): 225-253. Available here.
• Hipp, John, and Andrew J. Perrin. "The Simultaneous Effect of Social Distance and Physical Distance on the Formation of Neighborhood Ties." City and Community 8:1 (2009): 5-25. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J., and Hedwig Lee. "The Undertheorized Environment: Sociological Theory and the Ontology of Behavioral Genetics." Sociological Perspectives 50:2 (Summer, 2007), 303--322. Available here.
• Hipp, John, and Andrew J. Perrin. "Nested Loyalties: Local Networks' Effects on Neighbourhood and Community Cohesion." Urban Studies 43: 13 (December, 2006), 2503--2523. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J., Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Lindsay Hirschfeld, and Susan Wilker. "Contest Time: Time, Territory, and Representation in the Postmodern Electoral Crisis." Theory & Society 35 (2006), 351--391. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J. "Political Microcultures: Linking Civic Life and Democratic Discourse." Social Forces 84:2 (December, 2005), 1049--1082. Available here.
• Adorno, Theodor W. "Opinion Research and Publicness," translated, and with an introduction, by Andrew J. Perrin and Lars Jarkko. Sociological Theory 23:1 (March, 2005), 116--123. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J. "National Threat and Political Culture: Authoritarianism, Anti-Authoritarianism, and the September 11 Attacks." Political Psychology 26:2 (April, 2005), 167--194. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J. "Making 'Silicon Valley': Culture, Representation, and Technology at the Tech Museum." The Communication Review 5:1 (2002), 65--81. Available here.
• Perrin, Andrew J. "CodeRead: Using Natural Language Processing for Automatic Coding of Textual Data." Social Science Computer Review 19:2 (2001), 213--220. Available here.
• Klinenberg, Eric, and Andrew J. Perrin. "Symbolic Politics in the Information Age: The 1996 Presidential Campaign in Cyberspace." Information, Communication, and Society 1:3 (2000), 17--38. Available here.
• Terror, Fetish, Fantasy, and Reification: Violence and Meaning in the Namibian Independence Movement, from the (Dis)Placing Nationalisms Conference at UC Irvine in 1996.

Other Publications and Appendices

• Coser, Rose Laub, Laura Anker, and Andrew J. Perrin. Women of Courage: Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in New York
• Perrin, Andrew J. Citizen Speak: The Democratic Imagination in American Life (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
• Texts of the scenarios used for my 2000 focus groups in Alameda County, California, can be found here.
• Methodological details and appendix for my 2008 AJS article, "Parallel Public Spheres," can be found here.

Hats I Wear

• Associate chair of sociology
• Chair, UNC Educational Policy Committee, 2008-09
• Secretary/Treasurer, Theory Section, American Sociological Association
• Newsletter and Website Editor, Culture Section, American Sociological Association
• Book Review Editor, Social Forces
• Member, Faculty Advisory Board, Institute for Arts and Humanities
• Member, Book Selection Committee, Carolina Summer Reading Program, 2008-09
• Faculty Advisor, UNC Student Action With Workers

Public Information

• A May, 2008, press release showing relatively long-term, broad support for North Carolina public employee collective bargaining is here.
• Click here for the open letter to Chancellor Moeser regarding funding proposals that affect the curriculum.
• Click here for an informal questionnaire and responses from candidates for faculty governance office in spring, 2006.

A short biography

I graduated from Swarthmore College in 1994 and spent the following summer working for the Grassroots Policy Project on labor-environment coalition building in the Great Lakes. I am now a Senior Research Fellow at GPP. I then moved to Rochester, New York, where I worked for Tex-Port, Inc., doing computer repairs and support. My biggest customer was Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which in turn was under contract to support three General Motors units in the Rochester area.

I got my Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. In addition, I used to do various computer work for the Demography department and consulting work for DHL World Airways.

I filed my dissertation and received my Ph.D. in Berkeley in May, 2001. Some further projects I'm either considering or actively working on include:

• CodeRead, my computer software for text analysis. It is currently moribund, although I do hope to return to development at some point.
• A study of letters to the editor as a form of public deliberative discourse
• A study of the Open Source movement as a case of social movement behavior

Personal Information

Computer Tips

Some of my most commonly used free software packages are:

• Debian Linux
• GNU Emacs
• LaTeX
• Perl
• PostgreSQL
• R
• OpenOffice.org

I've posted some random computer tips, many of them relating to Perl and Samba. There's also some information on using linux, particularly Debian, on the UNC campus and on UNC's CCI desktops. You can get that stuff here.

Websites I maintain or am involved with include Culture Web, the official site of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association; and North Carolina At Work, a clearinghouse for information on unions and workplace issues in North Carolina.

Other Websites Hosted Here