Category: New Publications

Almeida, Paul. Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization. Univ of California Press, 2019.

Social Movements cleverly translates the art of collective action and mobilization by excluded groups to facilitate understanding social change from below. Students learn the core components of social movements, the theory and methods used to study them, and the conditions under which they can lead to political and social transformation.

This fully class-tested book is the first to be organized along the lines of the major subfields of social movement scholarship—framing, movement emergence, recruitment, and outcomes—to provide comprehensive coverage in a single core text.

Features include:

• use of real data collected in the U.S. and around the world
• the emphasis on student learning outcomes
• case studies that bring social movements to life
• examples of cultural repertoires used by movements (flyers, pamphlets, event data on activist websites, illustrations by activist musicians) to mobilize a group
• topics such as immigrant rights, transnational movement for climate justice, Women’s Marches, Fight for $15, Occupy Wall Street, Gun Violence, Black Lives Matter, and the mobilization of popular movements in the global South on issues of authoritarian rule and neoliberalism

With this book, students deepen their understanding of movement dynamics, methods of investigation, and dominant theoretical perspectives, all while being challenged to consider their own place in relation to social movements.

Vaughan, D., 2021. Dead Reckoning: Air Traffic Control, System Effects, and Risk. University of Chicago Press.

Vaughan unveils the complicated and high-pressure world of air traffic controllers as they navigate technology and political and public climates, and shows how they keep the skies so safe.

When two airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, Americans watched in uncomprehending shock as first responders struggled to react to the situation on the ground. Congruently, another remarkable and heroic feat was taking place in the air: more than six hundred and fifty air traffic control facilities across the country coordinated their efforts to ground four thousand flights in just two hours—an achievement all the more impressive considering the unprecedented nature of the task.

In Dead Reckoning, Diane Vaughan explores the complex work of air traffic controllers, work that is built upon a close relationship between human organizational systems and technology and is remarkably safe given the high level of risk. Vaughan observed the distinct skill sets of air traffic controllers and the ways their workplaces changed to adapt to technological developments and public and political pressures. She chronicles the ways these forces affected their jobs, from their relationships with one another and the layouts of their workspace to their understandings of their job and its place in society. The result is a nuanced and engaging look at an essential role that demands great coordination, collaboration, and focus—a role that technology will likely never be able to replace. Even as the book conveys warnings about complex systems and the liabilities of technological and organizational innovation, it shows the kinds of problem-solving solutions that evolved over time and the importance of people.

Poulson, S.C., 2021. Racism on Campus: A Visual History of Prominent Virginia Colleges and Howard University. Routledge.

Drawing on content from yearbooks published by prominent colleges in Virginia, this book explores changes in race relations that have occurred at universities in the United States since the late 19th century. It juxtaposes the content published in predominantly White university yearbooks to that published by Howard University, a historically Black college. The study is a work of visual sociology, with photographs, line drawings and historical prints that provide a visual account of the institutional racism that existed at these colleges over time. It employs Bonilla-Silva’s concept of structural racism to shed light on how race ordered all aspects of social life on campuses from the period of post-Civil War Reconstruction to the present. It examines the lives of the Black men and women who worked at these schools and the racial attitudes of the White men and women who attended them. As such, Racism on Campus will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and anthropology with interests in race, racism and visual methods.

You may apply the discount code (SMA08) on the publisher’s website when purchasing!

Mangla, A., 2021. Social conflict on the front lines of reform: Institutional activism and girls’ education in rural India. Public Administration and Development. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pad.1959  

Rasit, H., 2021. Competing revolutionaries: Legitimacy and leadership in revolutionary situations. The British Journal of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12875.

Schrag, Z., 2021. The Princeton guide to historical research. Princeton University Press.

The Princeton Guide to Historical Research provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian’s craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have defined historical scholarship for centuries.

Zachary Schrag begins by explaining how to ask good questions and then guides readers step-by-step through all phases of historical research, from narrowing a topic and locating sources to taking notes, crafting a narrative, and connecting one’s work to existing scholarship. He shows how researchers extract knowledge from the widest range of sources, such as government documents, newspapers, unpublished manuscripts, images, interviews, and datasets. He demonstrates how to use archives and libraries, read sources critically, present claims supported by evidence, tell compelling stories, and much more.

Featuring a wealth of examples that illustrate the methods used by seasoned experts, The Princeton Guide to Historical Research reveals that, however varied the subject matter and sources, historians share basic tools in the quest to understand people and the choices they made.

This book:

• Offers practical step-by-step guidance on how to do historical research, taking readers from initial questions to final publication
• Connects new digital technologies to the traditional skills of the historian
• Draws on hundreds of examples from a broad range of historical topics and approaches
• Shares tips for researchers at every skill level

Mattias Smångs, Race, Gender, and the Rape-Lynching Nexus in the U.S. South, 1881-1930, Social Problems, Volume 67, Issue 4, November 2020, Pages 616–636, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz035

2020. Somers, Margaret R. “The Moral Economy of the Capitalist Crowd: Utopianism, the Reality of Society, and the Market as a Morally-Instituted Process in Polanyi’s The Great Transformation.” Special Dossier on Moral Economy, edited by Jeremy Adelman and Sam Moyn. Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Volume 11, Number 2, Summer 2020, pp. 227-234

2020. Somers, Margaret R., and Fred Block. “Polanyi’s Democratic Socialist Vision: Piketty through the Lens of Polanyi.” Pp. 211-30 in Karl Polanyi and twenty-first century capitalism. Edited by Radhika Desai and Kari Polanyi Levitt. Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press.

Somers, Margaret R. 2020. “Even the Republican ‘Skinny’ Relief Bill Failed. How Is Such Unnecessary Suffering Justified? | Margaret Somers.” The Guardian. (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/republican-skinny-coronavirus-relief-mitch-mcconnell).

Brown, Hana E. 2020. “Who Is an Indian Child? Institutional Context, Tribal Sovereignty, and Race-Making in Fragmented States.” American Sociological Review 85(5):776–805.

Padgett, John F., Katalin Prajda, Benjamin Rohr, and Jonathan Schoots. “Political discussion and debate in narrative time: The Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, 1376–1378.” Poetics (2020): 101377.

Schoots, Jonathan, Benjamin Rohr, Katalin Prajda, and John F. Padgett. “Conflict and Revolt in the Name of Unity: Florentine Factions in the Consulte e Pratiche on the Cusp of the Ciompi Revolt.” Poetics (2020): 101386.

Downey, Liam, Elizabeth Lawrence, Micah Pyles, and Derek Lee. “Power, Hegemony, and World Society Theory: A Critical Evaluation.” Socius 6 (2020): 2378023120920059. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120920059

Li, Yao, and Manfred Elfstrom. “Does Greater Coercive Capacity Increase Overt Repression? Evidence from China.” Journal of Contemporary China (2020): 1-26. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10670564.2020.1790898

Xiao, Wenming, and Yao Li. “Building a ‘Lofty, Beloved People’s Amusement Centre’: The socialist transformation of Shanghai’s Great World (Dashijie)(1950–58).” Modern Asian Studies: 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X20000141

Elfstrom, Manfred, and Yao Li. “Contentious Politics in China: Causes, Dynamics, and Consequences.” Brill Research Perspectives in Governance and Public Policy in China 4, no. 1 (2019): 1-90. https://brill.com/view/title/56903