Ongoing Work

• Manifesto for a Positional Sociology
  with Ethan Fosse
  

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  In this article, we propose positional sociology, a theoretical framework built around the concept of positional distance, defined as the degree of separation between an actor’s position and a reference point in social space. This concept unifies a wide range of phenomena, including social mobility, status inconsistency, relative deprivation, marital heterogamy, immigrant assimilation, peer influence, and social deviance. The unification reveals that the analytical impasses in each body of literature share a common structure and a common resolution: positional distance is theoretically prior to current position in understanding social experience and action. The concept also generates new analytical problems, among them positional asymmetry, distance regimes, and mechanisms of distance production. We outline a research program for a sociology that considers not only where actors are located but also how far they are from where they have been, from where others are, and from where the social order expects them to be.

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Published Work

• Wealth Inequality: A Relational Perspective
  Oxford Handbook of Social Stratification (2025), with Asher Dvir-Djerassi
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  This paper advocates for a paradigm shift in wealth inequality research by advancing a relational approach that moves beyond dominant atomistic and substantivalist perspectives. We begin by tracing the emergence and empirical maturation of the field, highlighting both its rapid growth and the persistent need for deeper theoretical development. Building on prior research, we propose a claims-based relational paradigm that defines wealth not as a stock of material assets but as a set of socially and legally recognized claims on economic resources. This reorientation shifts analytical attention from the intrinsic properties of things to the processes that secure and enforce access to them. We argue that existing relational frameworks in inequality research—particularly categorical class analysis and rent-based approaches—are not particularly well suited as the building blocks of a relational theory of wealth and do not adequately capture the distinctive dynamics of wealth inequality. As an initial research agenda, we sketch three domains where this proposed relational, claims-based approach offers new analytic leverage: the interpretation of asset price inflation, the role of the state in the constitution and distribution of wealth, and the development of relational financial accounts that link wealth to the structures through which it is created and maintained.

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