Author Archives: jason

Grant Opportunity: Negotiating Agreement in Congress

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The Negotiating Agreement in Congress Research Grants are aimed at scholars who seek to understand the conditions under which political negotiation can be achieved (or not achieved) in Congress and other legislative arenas. The grants provide up to $10,000 of funding for each awardee, to be used for up to one year of research and writing. Applicants must have a PhD in hand by the application deadline and must hold an affiliation with a college or university based in the United States. For more information, please visit www.ssrc.org/nacg or contact democracy@ssrc.org.

Deadline: Sept 15

Eligibility: Applicants must have a PhD in hand by the application deadline and must hold an affiliation with a college or university based in the United States. Additional criteria can be found on our website.

Call for Papers: Non-union class struggles from below

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ISA session being organized — “Non-union class struggles from below” — Session of the ISA World Congress of Sociology, July 2018, Toronto. Organized by Marcel Paret (University of Utah and University of Johannesburg)

While many observers lament the declining significance and political power of organized labor, unions were never the only protagonists of resistance from below. Historical accounts include numerous examples of struggles by working classes and other economically marginalized groups. Similar examples of non-union resistance from below are rampant in the contemporary period of widespread economic insecurity. Groups that scholars consider to be especially “precarious” or even “surplus” to global capitalism – the unemployed, part-time and temporary workers, those eking out a living through “informal” activities, etc. – are prominent within these struggles. These struggles from below often connect economic demands to issues of citizenship, nationalism, and community.

This session will focus on class struggles from below, broadly defined but excluding struggles by capitalists and elites, that are taking place outside of formal union organizations. While maintaining emphasis on class-related demands and issues such as wages, land, and basic livelihood, relevant struggles may include significant or even dominant non-class dimensions (e.g. citizenship). Informal social networks, community-based organizations, political parties, or other non-union entities are also relevant. The goal is to highlight and contrast non-union class struggles in different parts of the globe, with attention to the influence of varying local, national, and regional contexts.

Relevant themes may include, but are not limited to:

  • protests and riots by the urban poor;
  • mobilization by, for, and against migrants;
  • struggles by indigenous groups;
  • class dimensions of nationalist movements;
  • Occupy-type movements against austerity and economic inequality;
  • middle class movements;
  • peasant movements and/or struggles against land dispossession;
  • organization by self-employed workers or independent contractors;
  • political party mobilization;
  • workplace resistance by non-unionized workers;
  • worker centers and other community-based worker organizations.

To submit a paper to this session, please go to the following link: https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Session10931.html. Click the “Submit an Abstract to this Session” button to upload your submission. You will need to create an account with ISA if you do not have one already.

This session will be organized as a roundtable, and is listed in the program under “RC44 Roundtable”. Please direct any questions to Marcel Paret at marcelparet@gmail.com.

New Book: Charles Tilly Reader

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Ernesto Castañeda & Cathy Lisa Schneider. 2017. Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change: A Charles Tilly Reader. Routledge.

Tilly Reader coverCharles Tilly is among the most influential American sociologists of the last century. For the first time, his pathbreaking work on a wide array of topics is available in one comprehensive reader. This manageable and readable volume brings together many highlights of Tilly’s large and important oeuvre, covering his contribution to the following areas: revolutions and social change; war, state making, and organized crime; democratization; durable inequality; political violence; migration, race, and ethnicity; narratives and explanations.

The book connects Tilly’s work on large-scale social processes such as nation-building and war to his work on micro processes such as racial and gender discrimination. It includes selections from some of Tilly’s earliest, influential, and out of print writings, including The Vendée; Coercion, Capital and European States; the classic “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime;” and his more recent and lesser-known work, including that on durable inequality, democracy, poverty, economic development, and migration. Together, the collection reveals Tilly’s complex, compelling, and distinctive vision and helps place the contentious politics approach Tilly pioneered with Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam into broader context. The editors abridge key texts and, in their introductory essay, situate them within Tilly’s larger opus and contemporary intellectual debates. The chapters serve as guideposts for those who wish to study his work in greater depth or use his methodology to examine the pressing issues of our time. Read together, they provide a road map of Tilly’s work and his contribution to the fields of sociology, political science, history, and international studies. This book belongs in the classroom and in the library of social scientists, political analysts, cultural critics, and activists.

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

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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.