Political Power and Social Theory – Serie

Part of a series studying political power and social theory, this volume discusses topics such as defence policy and corporate growth, global markets, governance structures and policy options, and reflections on embedded autonomy.

The countries or regions under study include the United States, Brazil, Chile, China, Mexico, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. In keeping with the journal's commitment to inter-disciplinary as well as historical inquiry, our nine contributors come from a variety of disciplines (sociology, political science, anthropology, and history), all drawing on debates and themes that cross-cut the social sciences. The significance of the inter-disciplinary perspective is seen not only in the range of cases, literatures, and methodologies brought to bear on the key issues under study; it also forms the substantive core of several contributions that call for a rethinking of conventional disciplinary boundaries and methodological frames.

The 12th volume in a series of analyses of political power and social theory. It is divided into three parts, which discuss: globalization; labour and the state; and scholarly controversy - civil society and ethnicity.

Volume 13 critically probes the significance of worldwide transformations in political and economic systems, asking: are new patterns of liberalization producing fundamental shifts in social, political and economic life? In what ways is agency important for understanding the historical formation and current development of new global and domestic patterns? Among themes examined in six studies are the emergence and autonomy of banking systems in both advanced capitalist and transitional states: how socialist institutions persist and relate to democracy; and the disruptions and opportunities that liberalization has provided to workers. A Scholarly Controversy features a condensed version of Giovanni Arrighi's and Beverly Silver's forthcoming book "Chaos and Governance" with responses from scholars who take different global and domestic perspectives, units of analysis, and time horizons to revisit the volume's earlier themes.

This volume of "Political Power and Social Theory" deliberately grapples with some of the weightiest subjects in the contemporary social sciences: race and class and their impact on political and economic organization. Three historical papers on Cuba, Tanzania, and Mexico open the volume by exploring the complex relations between race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism. Two subsequent papers, which draw on the contemporary case studies of Chile and South Africa, focus on the intersection of class, race, ethnic and generational identities in the contested appropriation of space and territory.The volume concludes with a dynamic debate structured around the question 'Whither Class?' in which the eminent sociologist Alejandro Portes makes a deliberately provocative call to arms. Portes urges a rethinking of class and proposes a new type of class analysis in light of some of the recent social, political, and economic changes of our times. He is rejoined by a distinguished interdisciplinary panel of scholars including Richard Sennett, Edna Bonacich, Richard Ratcliff, Zine Magubane and David Grusky, each of whom examine his position and offers their own view of the continuing relevance of class-based theories. With their contributions, the volume circles back to complex questions of race and other multifaceted forms of identity that increasingly capture the imagination of social scientists in the modern world.

Volume 15 offers a series of critical articles and commentaries by some of the leading historically-oriented social scientists writing in academia today. Collectively, the articles examine issues ranging from the relations between class, power and history, to the role of states and culture in mediating those dynamics. Special attention is paid to race, gender, citizenship and civil society in the formation of such structures and processes. The countries or regions under study include the United States, Brazil, Chile, China, Mexico, Samoa and Southwest Africa.In keeping with the journal's commitment to inter-disciplinary, as well as historical inquiry, our nine contributors come from a variety of disciplines (sociology, political science, anthropology and history), all drawing on debates and themes that cut across the social sciences. The significance of the inter-disciplinary perspective is seen not only in the range of cases, literatures and methodologies brought to bear on the key issues under study; it also forms the substantive core of several contributions that call for a rethinking of conventional disciplinary boundaries and methodological frames.

This volume of "Political Power and Social Theory" addresses some of the most pressing questions of our times, from the origins and meaning of the war in Iraq to the transnational politics of immigration to the impact of race on labor organization to the historical underpinnings of corporate power. With careful attention to historical detail, with a keen eye for the value of inter-disciplinary social science inquiry, and with a view to various countries around the globe, this research annual once again unveils the complex dynamics of key contemporary and historical dilemmas that motivate citizens and scholars alike to struggle for a better future.

Volume 17 of "Political Power and Social Theory" showcases scholarship by historical, political, and economic sociologists grouped around three broad subjects with both contemporary and historical relevance. The first is the relationship between race, class, and urban politics, and specifically, how racial and class identities interact with each other to produce social and political power dynamics in 20th century American cities. The second subject, the interaction of citizens, states, and social movements in both colonial and transnational context, turns away from the sub-national level of the city and examines social and political dynamics at the level of nations and even empires, although racial identities, social movements, and citizenship concerns remain relevant in several of these papers as well. Both U.S. and European cases are examined. The final topic of inquiry is the social origins of corporate irresponsibility, a problem that is explored through the lens of organizational theory, state-society relations, and the history of labor-corporate relations. Overall, the volume aims to open new historical, methodological, and theoretical lines of inquiry for sociologists, organization theorists, political scientists, historians, and others who seek to understand some of the most pressing inequalities and injustices of our times.

Volume 18 of the popular "Political Power and Social Theory" series is broken up into three parts examining political power, state formation, and economic development with examples from Africa, Russia, and Chile. It also looks at the status of opposition politics in America. It is suitable for graduate students and researchers in the field of political science and social theory. Part I examines political power, state formation, and economic development with examples from Africa, Russia, and Chile. Part II looks at the history and current status of opposition politics in America. Part III discusses scholarly controversy within the discipline with some of the field's leading thinkers authoring chapters. With its international scope, this volume is a valuable reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of political science and social theory.

"Political Power and Social Theory" continues its longstanding run as a premier volume of comparative and historical social science. The volume focuses on a variety of questions relating to states, citizenship, and power, common themes examined with divergent analytical entry points and through deep knowledge of country cases as diverse as Russia, the United States, El Salvador, South Africa, and Israel. Whether examined with a focus on revolutions and political parties, or cities and their physical and social transformation, or through development of the concept of the 'familial state', which marries a preoccupation with lineage and micro-cultures to that of national-state institutions, these articles expand our theoretical and methodological imagination of how citizens become included or excluded in local and national structures of power.

"Political Power and Social Theory" is an annual review, committed to advancing our interdisciplinary, critical understanding of the linkages between social relations, political power, and historical development. Alongside peer-reviewed chapters dealing with a diversity of topics, this volume contains a special section on the politics of the 'new middle class' in the global south and post-socialist societies. Over the past few decades, globalization and urbanization have contributed to the development of a newly educated urban middle class around the world, but this new class has been rarely studied. Filling this void, the chapters in this section examine the middle classes in the developing world in areas as diverse as the Middle East, India, South Africa, the former Soviet Union, and Latin America. This is one of the only volumes examining the new urban middle classes in emerging economies. Exploring identity-formation, social change, urbanization and politics among the new middle class, the chapters together offer new insights on this understudied social group and raise provocative questions about politics and social change in the early 21st century around the globe.

This volume of "Political Power and Social Theory" includes a selection of papers exploring Obama and the Politics of Race & Religion. Chapters examine the complex dynamics of race relations and racial meaning in America under the Obama administration. The "Scholarly Controversies" section features a debate on Obama and religion in the United States. This volume will be among the first to critically assess the meanings of race and religion in America under the Obama administration, featuring controversial chapters by Phil Gorksi of Yale University and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University, among others.

As economic stagnation freezes the globe; capitalism is increasingly questioned; war, revolution and political instability unsettles the Middle East; and President Obama's campaign for the Presidency looms, Volume 23 of Political Power and Social Theory reflects on these and related issues. Chapters in this volume discuss the meaning of revolution, the origins of neoliberalism in India, identity formation in a Chicago social movement, the Palestinian National Question, and the Black middle-class in the US. Additionally, in the Scholarly Controversy section, Fred Block questions whether the concept of "capitalism" should be problematized entirely.

Postcolonial theory has enjoyed wide influence in the humanities but for social science, and in particular sociology, its implications remain elusive. This special volume brings together leading sociologists to explore the concept of "postcolonial sociology," with brand new postcolonial readings of canonical thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Robert Park. Chapters consider whether or not postcolonial theory is compatible with sociology; explore the relationship between knowledge and colonial power; and offer critical perspectives on the sociology of race and the implications of postcolonial theory for global sociology. They also unravel the complex entanglements of sociology, area studies, and postcolonial studies; give creative deployments of postcolonial concepts such as hybridity; and critical excavations of sociological thought in India and Mexico. In so doing this volume is among the first to craft newsociologies informed by postcolonial criticism.

Social theory and research has long faced the limitations of its conventional Eurocentric focus. The essays in this volume offer new thoughts and empirical studies for transcending those limitations. A continuation of PPST's previous volume on "Postcolonial Sociology," this volume, "Decentering Social Theory," questions old categories, advances new postcolonial themes in social science, and debates alternative theoretical paradigms. The "Scholarly Controversies" section contains a critical exchange on "Southern Theory" between Raewyn Connell and Patricia Hill Collins, Mustafa Emirbayer, Raka Ray and Isaac Ariail Reed.

This issue of Political Power and Social Theory explores the changes in science associated with the rise of neoliberalism since the 1970s. The neoliberalization of science has complicated interactions among states, markets, and civil society, often in ways that challenge major assumptions underlying decades of research. The articles collected here break with older Mertonian sociologies of science and constructivist microsociologies of scientific knowledge to examine the mesolevel problem of the changing institutional contexts of "the scientific field" as originally identified by Pierre Bourdieu. Papers presented in Part I extend Bourdieu's relational approach to the broader set of interactions among scientific, regulatory, industry, and social movement fields. Part II extends Bourdieu's concern with order and the scientific habitus to the changing patterns of scientific practices under neoliberalism. By reconceptualizing the central problem for the social studies of science as the political sociological problem of field and interfield dynamics, the collected papers chart an important theoretical agenda for future research in the study of sciencesociety relations.

Is the United States in decline? If so, what are the causes and dimensions of that decline and is it irreversible? Will American decline be accompanied by the rise of a new hegemon? To what extent are that rise and decline merely concurrent processes, determined by forces internal to each polity, or are American decline and the rise of its competitors both manifestations of a single global dynamic? The essays in this volume address those questions by examining the rise of finance in the U.S. and worldwide, the U.S. government's actual industrial strategy, China's failure so far to challenge the dollar's status as the world reserve currency, and the contradictions in American strategic doctrine as the Pentagon responds to failures in recent wars and to China's growing power. Two articles address the restructuring of politics in the U.S since the 1960s to explain governmental paralysis and the simultaneous disorganization and political success of corporate elites. This volume concludes with a comparison of U.S. decline and that of its once superpower rival, the Soviet Union. The contributors to this volume clarify our understanding of the current state and future trajectory of the United States and the effect of decline on its citizens and the world.

There is today a new interest in empires past and present. Scholars seek fresh ways of understanding a form of power far older than the modern nation state. Others see empire, not long ago assumed to be a mode of governance on the way out, as having a surprising new lease on life, and want to better understand the reasons why. This volume focuses on the interconnected formations of patrimonialism, colonialism/empire and capitalism. Leading scholars analyze patrimonial politics in empires in regions throughout the world, including the United States, Latin America, China, South Africa, North Africa, West Africa, India, Australia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The articles show that patrimonial practices, which often form the backbone of empire, are present throughout history, including in global capitalist modernity. This volume will appeal to students of politics, and to a multidisciplinary scholarly audience in political sociology; historical social science; history; social theory, and area studies.

This volume covers the evolution of the chartered company; contributions employ comparative methods, archival research, case studies, statistical analyses, computational models, network analyses, and new theoretical conceptualizations to map out the complex interactions that took place between state and commercial actors across the globe.

In this special issue, we address what we refer to as 'perversity of the political' or 'perverse politics': namely, the assumptions political theory and movements, and in our specific case feminism, often make on behalf of their subjects, and how their subjects, in return, perform individual and collective contrariness, unruliness and resistance to what is expected or desired from their 'subjectivity'. Specifically focusing on the themes of 'false consciousness', multiplicity, and uneasy alliances, the papers collected here seek to empirically lay out a number of such 'perverse' moments, and offer anti-imperialist feminist alternatives to second wave feminism's often reductive understandings of freedom; emancipation; oppression; empowerment and democracy.

Postcolonial theory has mostly been confined to literary studies and the humanities, but it has been slowly making its way into social science. This is a welcome development but poses new challenges. How can postcolonial thought be most fruitfully translated and incorporated into sociology? This special volume brings together leading sociologists to offer some answers and examples. The chapters offer new postcolonial readings of canonical thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Robert Park; consider whether or not postcolonial theory is compatible with sociology; explore the relationship between knowledge and colonial power; offer critical perspectives on the sociology of race; ponder the implications of postcolonial theory for global sociology; creatively employ postcolonial concepts such as hybridity; and excavate the social theories of occluded thinkers in India. This volume will be an important guide for scholars and students in the social sciences who are interested in what postcolonial thought has to offer.

This special issue is animated by the necessary entanglement of theory and history, the cortical relationship between theory and practice, and the transboundary (i.e. international) relations that help to constitute systems of thought and practice. We make three core arguments: first, all theory is situated knowledge, derived in and through history; second, theory-practice is a single field in which theory arises out of and acts upon historical experience; and third, both social and political theory have international origins -- theory is forged through ongoing encounters between 'here' and 'there', 'home' and 'abroad', and the 'domestic' and the 'foreign'.

Studies of colonialism and empire have increasingly drawn attention to the problem of conceptualizing the political logic of colonial projects and the circumstances of state formation in colonial contexts. However, the nature and workings of the colonial state remains under-theorized and under-analysed. This volume addresses the analytical challenges of the colonial state from a variety of theoretical and thematic angles, and across a range of empirical cases that stretch over a vast span historically and geographically, to provide a new approach to analyzing the colonial state and its governmental practices.

Social science, history, and philosophy have often been neglect in thinking through their fundamentally intertwined relationship. The result is often an inattention to philosophy where social science and history is concerned, or a neglect of historicity and social analysis where philosophy is concerned. Meanwhile, the place of values in research is often uneasily passed over in silence. The inattention to, and loss of, the intersection between these different disciplines and their subject matters, leaves our investigations all the more impoverished as a result. In resolving these problems, it is not enough to strive for cooperation or integration, but to rethink of the nature of the disciplines themselves; their interests, purposes, and presuppositions. In this volume, contributors explore different facets of these relationships, and move beyond the problematics erected by positivism often cast in terms of value-free or value-neutral science, that is, a science obsessed with empirical data, schematic classifications, and the pursuit of law-like forms. While positivism has been subject to critique, the influence and legacy of positivism remains. It remains in the way in which we often think about science; the line drawn between the sciences and the humanities; the norms researchers should follow; what a successful explanation looks like; and the ethical, normative, and political implications of scientific research. Aimed at students and researchers of philosophy, history and the social sciences, this book is driven by a desire to revindicate questions concerning ontology and social ontology, to rethink the nature of explanation, and to resituate normativity and values within scientific, social scientific, and historical pursuits.

Gender is a defining feature of informal/precarious work in the 21st century, yet studies rarely adopt a gendered lens when examining collective efforts to challenge informality and precarity. This volume foregrounds the gendered dimensions of informal/precarious workers' struggles as a crucial starting point for re-theorizing the future of global labor movements. This volume includes six empirical chapters spanning five countries - the United States, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, and India - to explore exactly how gender is intertwined into informal/precarious workers organizing efforts, why gender is addressed, and to what end. The chapters focus on two gender-typed sectors - domestic work and construction - to identify the varying experiences of and struggles against gender and informality/precarity, as well as the conditions of movement success and failure. Across countries and sectors, the volume shows how informal/precarious worker organizations are on the front lines of challenging the multiple forms of gendered inequalities that shape contemporary practices of accumulation and labor regulation. Their struggles are making major transformations in terms of increasing women's leadership and membership in labor movements and exposing how gender interacts with other ascriptive identities to shape work. They are also re-shaping hegemonic scripts of capitalist accumulation, development, and gender to attain recognition for female-dominated occupations and reproductive needs for the first time ever. These outcomes are crucial as sources of emancipatory transformations at a time when state and public support for labor and social protection is facing the deep assault of transnational production and globalizing markets.

This volume asks how religious convictions inform citizens' engagement in American democratic life, particularly across deep political divides. Strong religious convictions motivate citizens across the political spectrum to engage in public life, yet are also viewed as a driver of political polarization by encouraging too much arrogance and not enough humility. Featuring contributions from leading experts on religion and democratic life in the United States, this volume combines theoretical reflections on this tension with empirical investigations into how a range of religious actors balance conviction with humility in their public interactions with social and political others. Taken together, these contributions reveal that strong religious conviction can encourage political arrogance, but also humility; can lead to deepening political polarization that threatens democracy, but also commitment to movements for equality and justice that advance democracy; can encourage the building of walls, but also of bridges. Contributors also identify the factors and conditions driving each outcome, pointing to the roles of power, context, culture, institutions, and history in how different religious groups engage in political life. The lessons this volume offers will be relevant to anyone interested in the complex relationship between religion and American democratic life; yet they also matter beyond religious groups. After all, religion is only one possible source of strong convictions that drive public engagement. As such, the volume also offers more general insight into how conviction shapes citizens' capacity and willingness to engage with others across deep divides.

In this volume of Political Power and Social Theory, a special collection of papers reconsiders race and racism from global and historical perspectives. Together, these articles serve as an entry point for sharpening our sociological understandings of how racism operates in current times. They address questions such as: What can a new agenda for the global historical sociology of race and racism lend to the existing scholarship? What would it mean to recover the globally constituted forces that have shaped the production of racial categories and dynamics of racial oppression? How can we understand domestic racial policies, not only through their effects on local populations, but also as products of wider global and transnational forces, knowledges, and transformations?In short, what would re-historicizing the history of racism mean for sociological theorizing on the subject in the 21st century? Drawing on empirical analyses of the relations, mechanisms, machinations, and structures of racial supremacies, this volume generates productive avenues for future thinking on race and racism. It sets the agenda for a new generation of scholars interested in sociological questions of race, imperial forms, and the construction of modernity.

In this volume of Political Power and Social Theory, a special collection of papers reconsiders race and racism from global and historical perspectives. Together, these articles serve as an entry point for sharpening our sociological understandings of how racism operates in current times. They address questions such as: What can a new agenda for the global historical sociology of race and racism lend to the existing scholarship? What would it mean to recover the globally constituted forces that have shaped the production of racial categories and dynamics of racial oppression? How can we understand domestic racial policies, not only through their effects on local populations, but also as products of wider global and transnational forces, knowledges, and transformations?In short, what would re-historicizing the history of racism mean for sociological theorizing on the subject in the 21st century? Drawing on empirical analyses of the relations, mechanisms, machinations, and structures of racial supremacies, this volume generates productive avenues for future thinking on race and racism. It sets the agenda for a new generation of scholars interested in sociological questions of race, imperial forms, and the construction of modernity.

While many analysts emphasize Trump’s uniqueness, he can also be viewed as a symptom of a deeper systemic crisis. This collection examines the roots, impacts, and future prospects of Trumpism as well as the possibilities for combatting it.Chapters analyze the role of racism and xenophobia, evangelical religion, and elite support in enabling Trump’s political ascent, demonstrating how both his demagogic style and his policies draw from the historic repertoire of the Right. The authors also trace the impacts of his presidency on inequality, health, ecological destruction, and U.S. empire. As far-right forces cement their hold on the Republican Party, and as the Democratic Party appears unable to stop them, what lies ahead? The authors argue that confronting Trumpism requires a frontal attack on the conditions that incubated the monster.