| home | | | about | | | dissertation | | | publications | | | research | | | cv (pdf) | | | teaching | | | presentations | | | service | | | contact |
| social movements My main area of research interest centers on the study of social movements. Primarily, my dissertation, entitled “Cross-National Protest Potential for Labor and Environmental Movements: The Relevance of Opportunity”, considers how political opportunities and the individual characteristics of movement participants predict various protest behaviors. The dissertation presents the first cross-national (including both rich and poor countries), comparative analysis of political opportunity theory that appreciates the nested-characteristics of protest predictors. To test this question in a methodologically-appropriate manner—using a multi-level modeling approach—will greatly add to the social movement literature, since the relative influence of factors that exist at different levels of analysis can be interpreted in a way that is theoretically-sound, but as yet unanalyzed. Parts of this dissertation will be submitted for review in various peer-reviewed journals, including those journals that focus on social movements, comparative sociology, and world-systems analysis. Other research in this area focuses more specifically on left-wing social movements, primarily the anarchist and labor movements. I have published an article comparing union and non-union anarchists in Working USA: The Journal of Labor & Society. An article with a colleague, Matthew Lee, exploring the population ecology and international distribution of anarchist organization is forthcoming in the journal Humanity & Society. One article analyzing the regional variation in anarchist ideologies in the race/class/gender A second area of research interests includes the broad area of inequality, including class, gender, and race, and the intersection between these forms of inequality. Much of my recent scholarly writing has focused on the widespread practice of using Native American culture for professional sports team nicknames, logos, and mascots. Three articles have focused on new, varied aspects of the issue, two theoretical in nature and one empirical. The first, published in Race, Ethnicity, and Education, focused on the operation of institutionalized patriarchy in a university setting that worked to support the continuation of a racial sports nickname. An article in the inter-disciplinary journal Anarchist Studies critiqued the practice of using Native American culture via an analysis of several supportive systems of authority and power in historical and modern-day America, including capitalism, racism, sexism, the state, and militarism. A third article, recently published in Sociology of Sport Journal, presents an analysis of student opinions at a major university employed in such a practice, with results that fundamentally challenge the commonly-held belief that Native Americans themselves support the practice (they do not). The next steps in this research program will be to (1) interpret the activism of nickname change advocates in light of dominant social movement theories, and (2) investigate which university alumni tend to be the strongest defenders of Native American nicknames. political sociology I have co-authored a paper with a colleague, Suzanne Slusser, that compares American attitudes towards the two wars against Iraq (in 1991 and 2003). The analysis shows there was a clear, negative shift in popular opinion from the first war to the second, in nearly every socio-demographic measured. The paper will be presented at the 2008 ASA meetings and is destined for submission to the journal Public Opinion Quarterly. Another study is in an early stage of formulation and focuses on the dramatic shift in support for radical social change in Argentina following the 2001 IMF-induced economic collapse. The presence of a "quotidian" disruption will be analyzed via public opinion survey data from before and after the collapse. |