Grad Workshop: Institutional Choices & Societal Consequences

Registration Required: Click here to register

This workshop brings together two emerging scholars whose work critically examines how institutions shape — and often constrain — social and political life.

This will be a hybrid event. Register to receive Zoom link, or attend in-person.
Lunch provided!

 

• Julia Cope (Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania) explores how the American advertising industry confronts climate change. Her study of AdAge and Adweek reveals the fragile compromises advertising professionals craft between profit-driven market logics and civic or environmental responsibility. By unpacking these discourses, Cope shows how concerns for sustainability are reframed through brand authenticity and reputation, exposing deeper tensions in neoliberal democratic life.
  
  Presenting: Grappling with Green: How the trade press justifies and critiques climate concern in advertising
  
  
• Kevin Yüh (Rice University / Zhejiang University) analyzes the use of referendums in advancing LGBTQ+ rights, with a focus on Taiwan’s same-sex marriage referendum. Drawing on comparative perspectives across Asia, Yu argues that while direct democracy may appear to empower minority rights, in practice it often undermines them, revealing the complex and sometimes contradictory role of referendums in shaping institutional legitimacy and social change.
  
  Presenting: Are Referendums a Bad Idea for the LGBTQ+ Community: Comparative Perspectives From Taiwan to Asia

Together, these presentations highlight how institutional choices — from corporate self-regulation to democratic mechanisms — carry profound societal consequences, shaping the possibilities and limitations of accountability, equity, and justice in the contemporary world.Full bios and paper abstracts are available on amc.sas.upenn.edu. Register to receive full papers.

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Speaker Bios:

Julia Cope is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and is working on her dissertation examining the construction of energy imaginaries by the fossil fuel industry and financial journalism. Methodologically, she uses discourse analysis and computational text analysis to investigate how different corporate actors define the problem of and solutions to climate change. She is a part of several research groups including Climate Social Science Network (CSSN), Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), and PennMAP in the Computational Social Science Lab. 

Kevin Yüh received legal training in different jurisdictions and multiple degrees with honors and top distinctions from Stanford University, the Australian National University, and Zhejiang University.  His research focuses on Chinese law in global contexts and the anthropology of law. He serves as fellows with several LGBTQ+ scholarship and organizations, including the Chinese Rainbow Network, and convenes the only Law and Sexuality research group currently active in China.
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Paper Abstracts:

Julia Cope, Annenberg School of Communications, UPenn Presenting: Grappling with Green: How the trade press justifies and critiques climate concern in advertising  Abstract: This study critically examines how the American advertising industry grapples with climate change. Advertising attempts to persuade consumer audiences to purchase goods or services, driving consumer capitalism. Given the inherent conflict between capitalism’s drive for growth and the vast carbon emissions and waste resulting from production and consumption, corporations face challenges to simultaneously remain profitable and act sustainably, a challenge that is then posed for advertising professionals. Using discourse analysis informed by Boltanski and Thevenot’s orders of worth, this paper analyzes how the trade press negotiates tensions between market goals and civic/environmental responsibilities. It analyzes articles published from 2000 to 2024 in trade magazines AdAge and Adweek that mention “global warming” or “climate change.” The findings reveal two moments of increased climate discourse, from 2006-2009 and 2016-2024, both corresponding to increased public and media attention to the environment. The trade press finds many compromises between the market and the civic/environmental. However, these compromises tend to be fragile, relying upon the maintenance of vague environmental benefits that often fall short upon scrutiny.  The trade press critiques civic/environmental appeals in advertising for their risk of backlash when deceptive claims are exposed, demonstrating a concern with reputation rather than civic accountability. Some articles critique the market-driven nature of advertising for its detrimental environmental impacts. The trade press may label misleading environmental appeals as inauthentic, greenwashing, or propaganda, prompting calls for greater transparency - a move which the trade press itself critiques when it could threaten profitability. By investigating how advertising professionals define and practice environmental responsibility, this paper reveals the limitations of civic and environmental discourse within market-driven logics. The advertising industry’s engagement with climate change reflects deeper tensions in neoliberal democratic life, where environmental concerns are commodified and civic ideals of accountability are defined in terms of brand authenticity.  

 

Kevin Yüh, PhD Student in Anthropology (Rice University) & PhD Candidate in Jurisprudence (Zhejian University)Presenting: Are Referendums a Bad Idea for the LGBTQ+ Community:  Comparative Perspectives From Taiwan to Asia  Abstract: The LGBTQ+ rights movement in Asia has increasingly gained momentum, with marriage equality serving as both a symbolic and practical focal point. Notably, Taiwan, Nepal and Thailand have legalized same-sex marriage, and Hong Kong progressing steadily toward same-sex partnership legislation within the this years. However, such advancements predominantly emerge from top-down institutional reforms, including judicial rulings and legislative enactments, rather than grassroots democratic mobilization. While LGBTQ+ rights issues inherently resonate with broader democratic processes, electoral politics, and social activism, the employment of direct democracy mechanisms, such as referendums, has proven contentious and often problematic. This article critically analyzes Taiwan’s same-sex marriage referendum, emphasizing three significant theoretical inquiries: First, it interrogates why a referendum was initiated despite prior judicial affirmations of marriage equality, and why it subsequently failed. Second, the article explores whether the referendum’s failure highlights unique cultural and socio-political factors specific to Taiwan, or rather reveals inherent limitations of direct democracy in addressing LGBTQ+ rights. Third, it examines how the Taiwanese judiciary managed to invalidate portions of the referendum results without inciting broader political instability or backlash. Drawing comparative insights from LGBTQ+ rights progress in other Asian contexts, this paper further scrutinizes the efficacy and inherent contradictions of using referendums and direct democratic methods to safeguard minority rights. Ultimately, the article posits that direct democracy occupies a marginal and complex role within Taiwanese and broader Asian political dynamics. Despite the intuitive appeal of direct democratic processes for advancing minority rights, these mechanisms often presuppose a simplistic, linear progression of human rights and democratic development. The Taiwanese and other Asian cases illustrate that, in practice, reliance on direct democracy may paradoxically undermine rather than fortify protections for minority communities, suggesting caution in its broader application within LGBTQ+ advocacy across Asia.