New Book: Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism

Kauffman, L.A. 2017. Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. Verso.

Direct Action coverWhat happened to the American left after the sixties? Kauffman traces the evolution of disruptive protest over the last forty years to tell a larger story about the reshaping of American radicalism. It examines how movements from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have catalyzed change against long odds, winning victories in times of crisis and backlash while creating a distinctive new kind of radical politics in the process. Based on decades of in-depth interviews, archival research, and firsthand experience.

Upcoming Webinar: The Problem of Autonomy

Part of the Critical Realism Network Webinar Series, the upcoming webinar is hosted by Professor Philip Gorski (Department of Sociology, Yale University) and Timothy Rutzou (Post-Doctoral Associate, Yale University) and addresses The Problem of Autonomy.

Wednesday, May 17th, 12:00-1:30 pm EST. Click here to register.

Brief Description: At the recent Values and Human Flourishing conference, a single issue continually emerged: how should we understand autonomy, and what place does it serve within ethical and political projects? Questions about autonomy, social solidarity, human dependency, and interdependency in many ways serve as the bridge between empirical research, social theory, ethics, and politics. Like the topic of structure and agency, the complex relationship between autonomy, dependency, and interdependency is a key problematic of social philosophy and sociology. The long tradition of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber were all concerned with unpacking this problematic, often without shying away from addressing its moral, ethical, and political implications. Our modern understanding of autonomy is animated by this intellectual history and the many antimonies this tradition has generated.

How might critical realism help us to address or contribute to this contested history? The answer is not clear. In this webinar Gorski and Rutzou will discuss the manner in which critical realism might be able to help us navigate this problematic by providing an ontologically stratified view of self and society, and a complex account of causation. Where Gorski argues for a more Durkheimian turn, Rutzou argues for a more poststructuralist turn. Are such accounts compatible? Incompatible? Does the ontology advocated by critical realism necessarily entail certain ethical and political positions? Do certain positions become incoherent when one adopts a critical realist ontology? Or is critical realism morally, ethically, and politically promiscuous? The webinar will explore these issues.

New Book Series: Princeton Series in Global and Comparative Sociology

Over the past several decades, “globalization” and “internationalization” have become new areas of focus in the social sciences. Many sociologists are no longer content with focusing on a single society as if it were an autonomous social unit, but are keen to explore processes that affect societies across the globe or that can only be understood through systematic comparisons across them. The Princeton Series in Global and Comparative Sociology aims to create a home for books that dare to compare across countries and continents. It welcomes projects written in all macro-comparative traditions in sociology and neighboring disciplines. The series is edited by Andreas Wimmer (Columbia) and curated by Meagan Levinson at Princeton University Press. Members of the advisory board are Julia Adams (Yale), Nitsan Chorev (Brown), Matthias König (Göttingen), Jim Mahoney (Northwestern), John Meyer (Stanford), Gisele Sapiro (EHESS), Saskia Sassen (Columbia), Evan Schofer (UC Irvine), and Lawrence King (Cambridge). Please submit proposals to Meagan_Levinson@press.princeton.edu.

Workshop: Migrants’ and Diaspora Responses to the Rise of Right-Wing Populism

Sponsored by the ERC Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty Project (DCS), September 26, 2017, in London. The workshop, “Migrants’ and Diaspora Responses to the Rise of Right-Wing Populism,” is dedicated to research on how migrant and diaspora communities respond to populist, anti-immigrant and ethno-nationalist movements. We will address research on whether, when and how migrants and diasporas mobilise; what groups or parties they choose as political allies; and whether radical-right parties themselves reach out to certain diasporas while rejecting others, among other questions. Radical-right populist movements have grown more potent in liberal democracies, yet there has been little academic focus on how migrant and diaspora populations react to these parties, although anti-immigration campaigning is at the core of populist activities.

The workshop will be held at the University of Warwick’s London site on September 26, 2017. Those interested in participating should a paper abstract (maximum 300 words) by 25 May, 2017 to Dr. Ben Margulies (b.margulies@warwick.ac.uk) and Dr. Maria Koinova (m.koinova@warwick.ac.uk).