Andrew Deener

Professor of Sociology

---

PhD., 2008, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., 2004, Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., 2002, Sociology and History, New School for Social Research
B.A., 1999, Liberal Studies/Cultural Studies, Pennsylvania State University

 

Biographical Statement

Andrew Deener is an ethnographer and historical sociologist with research interests in urban inequality, culture, infrastructure, and the environment. He is the author of two books: Venice: A Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and The Problem with Feeding Cities: The Social Transformation of Infrastructure, Abundance, and Inequality in America (University of Chicago Press, 2020). He is currently working on a series of projects, developing a sociology of infrastructure that emphasizes the changing relationships between urban development, socio-technical systems, and social and environmental problems in the United States. He is also writing a book about global urbanism (with Jonathan Wynn, under contract with Oxford University Press), and he writes and teaches about the logic and practice of qualitative methods and theorizing in sociology. Since 2019, he has been Co-Editor-in-Chief of Qualitative Sociology.

Selected Publications

Deener, Andrew, Hancock, Black Hawk and Folsom, Zoe.  2022. “The Storm Map as Digital Ambiguity: Political and Scientific Authority in the Information Age of Disasters.”  Socio-Anthropologie, 46: 125-141.

Pais, Jeremy, Deener, Andrew, Fischer, Mary, and Kline, Zachary. 2021. “Shelter at Home, if you Can: Community Vulnerability and Residential Sequestering During the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.” Sociological Quarterly, 63(3): 562-589.

Deener, Andrew. 2020. The Problem with Feeding Cities: The Social Transformation of Infrastructure, Abundance, and Inequality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Benzecry, Claudio, Deener, Andrew, Lara-Millan, Armando (Co-Editors). 2020. Archival Work as Qualitative Sociology, Special Issue, 43(3), Qualitative Sociology.   

Deener, Andrew. 2018. “The Architecture of Ethnographic Knowledge: Narrowing Down Data and Contexts in Search of Sociological Cases.” Sociological Perspectives, 61(2): 295-313. 

Deener, Andrew. 2017. “The Uses of Ambiguity in Sociological Theorizing: Three Ethnographic Approaches.” Sociological Theory, 35(4): 359-379 

Deener, Andrew. 2017. “The Origins of the Food Desert: Urban Inequality as Infrastructural Exclusion.” Social Forces, 95(3): 1285-1309. 

Deener, Andrew. 2016. “The Ecology of Neighborhood Participation and the Reproduction of Political Conflict.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 40(4): 817-832. 

Aronowitz, Robert, Deener, Andrew, Keene, Danya, Schnittker, Jason, and Tach, Laura. 2015. “The Pitfalls of Invoking Cultural Change to Improve Population Health.” American Journal of Public Health. 105(S3): 403-408. 

Deener, Andrew, Erie, Steven, Kogan, Vlad, Stuart, Forrest. 2013. “Planning Los Angeles: Neighborhood and Downtown Development.” In Halle, David and Andrew Beveridge (editors), New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Deener, Andrew. 2012. Venice: A Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Deener, Andrew. 2010. “The ‘Black Section’ of the Neighborhood: Collective Visibility and Collective Invisibility as Sources of Place Identity.” Ethnography, 11(1): 45-67. 

Deener, Andrew. 2009. “Forging Distinct Paths Toward Authentic Identity: Outsider Art, Public Interaction, and Identity Transition in an Informal Market Context.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38(2): 169-200. 

Deener, Andrew. 2007. “Commerce as the Structure and Symbol of Neighborhood Life: Reshaping the Meaning of Community in Venice, California.” City and Community, 6(4): 291-314.