Davita Silfen Glasberg – författare

The Power of Collective Purse Strings offers a sharp analysis of how banks, acting not as isolated firms but as a unified financial community, wield enormous power over corporations and states. Davita Silfen Glasberg demonstrates how “collective purse strings” allow banks to define what counts as crisis and to dictate terms for recovery or liquidation. Through comparative case studies—including the bankruptcy of W. T. Grant, the Chrysler bailout, Cleveland’s default, and Mexico’s foreign debt crisis—Glasberg shows how financial institutions’ collective actions shape economic outcomes and political realities. By tracing lending consortia, institutional stockholding, and interlocking directorates, the book details how structural unity empowers banks to discipline corporate managers, labor unions, and governments alike.This study reframes crises as socially constructed events, not inevitable economic downturns, emphasizing that financial institutions’ decisions can create crises where none objectively exist. Glasberg’s account extends beyond corporate boardrooms into state politics, showing how municipalities and even nations become subject to the same logic of bank hegemony. Combining political economy, sociology, and historical case analysis, The Power of Collective Purse Strings illuminates the mechanisms of financial dominance and the constraints they impose on democratic decision-making. It is essential reading for scholars of political economy, finance, labor relations, and state theory, and for anyone concerned with the intersection of corporate power and public policy.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

The Power of Collective Purse Strings offers a sharp analysis of how banks, acting not as isolated firms but as a unified financial community, wield enormous power over corporations and states. Davita Silfen Glasberg demonstrates how “collective purse strings” allow banks to define what counts as crisis and to dictate terms for recovery or liquidation. Through comparative case studies—including the bankruptcy of W. T. Grant, the Chrysler bailout, Cleveland’s default, and Mexico’s foreign debt crisis—Glasberg shows how financial institutions’ collective actions shape economic outcomes and political realities. By tracing lending consortia, institutional stockholding, and interlocking directorates, the book details how structural unity empowers banks to discipline corporate managers, labor unions, and governments alike.This study reframes crises as socially constructed events, not inevitable economic downturns, emphasizing that financial institutions’ decisions can create crises where none objectively exist. Glasberg’s account extends beyond corporate boardrooms into state politics, showing how municipalities and even nations become subject to the same logic of bank hegemony. Combining political economy, sociology, and historical case analysis, The Power of Collective Purse Strings illuminates the mechanisms of financial dominance and the constraints they impose on democratic decision-making. It is essential reading for scholars of political economy, finance, labor relations, and state theory, and for anyone concerned with the intersection of corporate power and public policy.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

Most Americans assume that the United States provides a gold standard for human rights-a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed that "the U.S. does a better job than most countries when it comes to protecting human rights." As well, discussions among scholars and public officials in the United States frame human rights issues as concerning people, policies, or practices "over there." By contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that many of the greatest immediate and structural threats to human rights, and some of the most significant efforts to realize human rights in practice, can be found in our own backyard.Human Rights in Our Own Backyard examines the state of human rights and responses to human rights issues, drawing on sociological literature and perspectives to interrogate assumptions of American exceptionalism. How do people in the U.S. address human rights issues? What strategies have they adopted, and how successful have these strategies been? Essays are organized around key conventions of human rights, focusing on the relationships between human rights and justice, the state and the individual, civil rights and human rights, and group rights versus individual rights. The contributors are united by a common conception of the human rights enterprise as a process involving not only state-defined and implemented rights but also human rights from below as promoted by activists.

Most Americans assume that the United States provides a gold standard for human rights-a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed that "the U.S. does a better job than most countries when it comes to protecting human rights." As well, discussions among scholars and public officials in the United States frame human rights issues as concerning people, policies, or practices "over there." By contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that many of the greatest immediate and structural threats to human rights, and some of the most significant efforts to realize human rights in practice, can be found in our own backyard.Human Rights in Our Own Backyard examines the state of human rights and responses to human rights issues, drawing on sociological literature and perspectives to interrogate assumptions of American exceptionalism. How do people in the U.S. address human rights issues? What strategies have they adopted, and how successful have these strategies been? Essays are organized around key conventions of human rights, focusing on the relationships between human rights and justice, the state and the individual, civil rights and human rights, and group rights versus individual rights. The contributors are united by a common conception of the human rights enterprise as a process involving not only state-defined and implemented rights but also human rights from below as promoted by activists.

Asserting a critical sociological perspective, Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival reveals the contested historical processes through which fundamental human needs are constructed as “rights” under international law, and how those rights are confronted by the ruling relations and crises inherent to contemporary global capitalism and the waning American hegemonic world order.Put simply, the book explores why human rights as a formal legal project has failed to deliver on guaranteeing human survival, let alone universal human dignity. Rather than stopping at critique, the authors propose a specific, materialist intellectual and political agenda for the preservation of collective human survival that can achieve the historically unique notions of common humanity and human emancipation. The authors build on previous work, further developing the sociology of human rights as a distinct field at the intersection of Social Sciences and International Law. They take on several provocative theoretical debates, such as those over connections between racism and capitalism; the existence of a global or “transnational” police state; the control, growth, and exploitation of migrants/migration; and the complex relationship between political repression and various forms of domination.Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival offers critical analysis of contemporary politics and options for students, scholars, organizers, and stakeholders to grapple with some of the most pressing social problems of human history.

Asserting a critical sociological perspective, Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival reveals the contested historical processes through which fundamental human needs are constructed as “rights” under international law, and how those rights are confronted by the ruling relations and crises inherent to contemporary global capitalism and the waning American hegemonic world order.Put simply, the book explores why human rights as a formal legal project has failed to deliver on guaranteeing human survival, let alone universal human dignity. Rather than stopping at critique, the authors propose a specific, materialist intellectual and political agenda for the preservation of collective human survival that can achieve the historically unique notions of common humanity and human emancipation. The authors build on previous work, further developing the sociology of human rights as a distinct field at the intersection of Social Sciences and International Law. They take on several provocative theoretical debates, such as those over connections between racism and capitalism; the existence of a global or “transnational” police state; the control, growth, and exploitation of migrants/migration; and the complex relationship between political repression and various forms of domination.Human Rights Praxis and the Struggle for Survival offers critical analysis of contemporary politics and options for students, scholars, organizers, and stakeholders to grapple with some of the most pressing social problems of human history.

A unique multidimensional view of the relationship between the state, society, and oppression Designed to help students analyze and understand political developments in the world around them, this unique text covers a wide array of political sociology concepts and theoretical perspectives. The book's multidimensional view emphasizes the interplay between power, inequality, multiple oppressions, and the state. Blending elements of today's prevalent power structure theories, this framework provides students with a unique focus on the structure of power and inequality in society today.

This unique book traces common perspectives within political sociology. However, it adds to the existing field using an intersectional analysis by including state projects around gender, race, and sexuality. Likewise, it engages with commonly ignored perspectives within political sociology such as queer theory, anarchist theory, and post-structuralism. This gives the book a multi-dimensional view that recognizes the need to include, but move beyond, class-based understandings as well as account for the increasing popularity of anarchist, queer, and post-structuralist theories.