Daniel Little
The third meeting of the Asian Network for the Philosophy of Social Sciences (ANPOSS) took place in Bangkok last week (link). It was a highly stimulating success. Organizers Chaiyan Rajchagool, Kanit (Mitinunwong) Sirichan, Yukti Mukdawijitra, and others put enormous effort into carrying it off, and host institutions Thammasat University and Chulalongkorn University provided excellent coordination …
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Aldon Morris's Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (1984) is a highly valuable treatment of the US civil rights movement of the 1950s through early 1960s. The book is a work of history and sociology, and it is deeply informed by the sociology of social movements. (It is significant that …
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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., center, the first defendant called to trial in the racial bus boycott, held a press conference on March 19, 1956 on the steps of the Montgomery County courthouse where he and 92 others are on trial. They are charged with the violation of the anti-boycott law. King's wife, Coretta …
Continue reading "How “micro” does the sociology of social movements need to go?"
photo: Pat Buchanan, Newsweek, March 4, 1996 The election of Donald Trump in 2016 presented mainstream America with a shocking wakeup: right-wing extremism, with its dimensions of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, racism, and anti-LGBTQ bigotry, had somehow wound up on the carousel, and was now in control. This shouldn't be a complete surprise, since the …
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Think about the many fronts in the war on individual rights and freedoms in Florida and other red states: vague but harsh limitations on what teachers can teach in K-12 and public universities (link) faculty members fired for teaching about the racial history of the United States (link, link) widespread book bannings in libraries and public …
Du Bois, Diaspora of Africans to the Americas W.E.B. Du Bois is well known for his pioneering work in American sociology, and most especially his studies of the social situation of African Americans in the reconstruction South. He was a singularly important sociologist in his time, and a wide swath of Americans have read his …
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The persistent fact of racial disparities in the use of deadly force by police officers in US cities is an intolerable injustice. The Washington Post has maintained a database of police shootings since 2015 which includes shootings but not other causes of death; link. This database shows a glaring level of disparity between black, Hispanic, and white persons …
Is it still possible to think big in western democracies about social and economic change in a way that substantially improves the lives and freedoms of most of society? We see the deprivation and indifference of the economic system that has governed most industrialized countries for the past century and a half, leading to gross …
There is certainly a working class in the United States, and it is a majority of the population (persons who earn their livelihood through wage-paying employment). But it is highly fragmented, mostly in the service sector, unorganized, and often disinclined to believe in the possibility of serious social change. A recent Brookings research report by …
An earlier post (link) highlighted the growing severity of inequalities of wealth and income in the United States, as well as Elizabeth Warren's very sensible "billionaire" tax proposal. According to a 2020 article in Forbes, "According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% …
Understanding Society 