Tag Archives: Books

Disabled Power: A Storm, a Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster

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Frederick, Angela. 2025. Disabled Power: A Storm, a Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster: NYU Press.

Every disaster is a disability disaster, argues Angela Frederick. Disabled Power tells the stories of Texans with disabilities who endured the 2021 Texas power crisis, which forced millions of Texas residents to endure a dayslong winter storm without heat or water. Based on 58 in-depth interviews with disabled Texans and parents of disabled children, Frederick highlights how disabled people and those with chronic health conditions are uniquely harmed when basic infrastructure such as power and water systems fail. She argues that the vulnerability people with disabilities experienced during this disaster was not an inevitable consequence of individual disabled bodies. Rather, disability vulnerability was “produced” by policies that “disabled” vital infrastructure.

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The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo

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Cuvi, Jacinto. 2025. The Edge of the Law: Street Vendors and the Erosion of Citizenship in São Paulo: University of Chicago Press.

With a little initiative and very little startup money, an outgoing individual might sell you a number of delights and conveniences familiar to city dwellers—from cold water bottles while you’re sitting in traffic to a popsicle from a cart on a summer afternoon in the park. Such vendors form a significant share of the workforce in São Paulo, Brazil, but their ubiquity belies perpetual struggle. Some have the right to practice their trade; others do not. All of them strive to make it—or stay afloat.

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Managing Corporate Virtue: The Politics of Workplace Diversity

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Bereni, Laure. 2025. Managing Corporate Virtue: The Politics of Workplace Diversity in New
York and Paris: Oxford University Press.

A major tenet of contemporary capitalism holds that what is good for
business can align with what is good for society. Efforts toward more
diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces epitomize this rising
ideology, termed responsible capitalism. An increasingly common
managerial mantra is “diversity means business.” But how does it play
out in the daily life of organizations? Drawing on interviews with
diversity managers, a historical review of practitioner literature, and
observations from organizations in New York City and Paris,
Managing Corporate Virtue goes beyond the rhetoric of diversity
initiatives to uncover the concrete challenges faced by those tasked
with implementing them. This book reveals the persistent fragility of
diversity efforts, which are often sidelined; subject to the variations of the legal, social, and
political environment; and require constant efforts to sustain managerial support. Practitioners
must prove their programs are neither merely virtue signaling nor the Trojan horse of political,
legal, or moral pressures that would unsettle the corporate order. Ultimately, by exploring the
day-to-day work of diversity managers in the United States and France, the book exposes the
contradictions lurking beneath the neoliberal promise of harmony between profit and virtue.

Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies

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Kim, Nadia Y. and Pawan Dhingra. 2023. Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies. NYU Press.

disciplinary futures

There is a growing consensus that the discipline of sociology and the social sciences broadly need to engage more thoroughly with the legacy and the present day of colonialism, Indigenous/settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism in the United States and globally. In Disciplinary Futures, a cross-section of scholars comes together to engage sociology and the social sciences by way of these paradigms, particularly from the influence of disciplines of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies.

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Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement

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Stepan-Norris, Judith and Jasmine Kerrisse. 2023. Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement. Oxford University Press.

union booms and busts

The book is a comparative and historical analysis of the factors that helped or hindered workers in their attempts to build unions in the U.S.’s 11 basic industries, 1900-2015. For each industry, we analyze shifts in union power (union density), as affected by the state and macro context, replacement costs of workers, union and employer strategies, and the impact of employment, race, gender, and occupation.  

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