The Spring 2023 edition of the Critical Mass Bulletin is now available. This issue features a message from CBSM Chair Deana Rohlinger, featured undergraduate student essays, and recent publications. Get your PDF copy here:
The Work and Occupations symposium issue on “The New Labor Activism” has just been released. The fifteen symposium essays present a new generation of labor sociology research for comprehending and sustaining the contemporary labor mobilization in the U.S., the largest labor mobilization since the 1930s. The mobilization is occurring throughout the U.S. economy, including in the logistics, tech, retail, hospitality, automotive, healthcare, civil society, arts, and education sectors. The essays, written by a diverse group of social scientists, focus on the themes of “history,” “intersectionality,” “worker agency,” and “hierarchy” and continue the post-World War II transition of the field from a union-centered toward a worker-centered labor sociology. The symposium essays are written in dialogue with the June 2022 report on U.S. labor organizing issued by the Worker Empowerment Research Network, a new network of labor market researchers associated with the MIT Sloan School of Management, Cornell, Rutgers, and Columbia Universities, and other universities and colleges. The symposium issue can be accessed from the “OnlineFirst” section of the Work and Occupations website.
The Fall 2022 edition of the Critical Mass Bulletin is now available. This issue features a message from CBSM Chair Deana Rohlinger, section award winners, and recent publications. Get your PDF copy here:
The Summer 2022 edition of the Critical Mass Bulletin is now available. This issue features a message from CBSM Chair Rory M. McVeigh, profiles of job market candidates, and a list of recent publications by section members. Get your PDF copy here:
The Spring 2022 edition of the Critical Mass Bulletin is now available. This issue features a message from CBSM Chair Rory M. McVeigh, two op-ed pieces by Meihui Chen and Chris Rhomberg, a list of recent publications by section members, and an overview of CBSM sessions at the American Sociological Association’s annual conference this year. Get your PDF copy here:
With this newly established award, the CBSM section “seeks to honor eminent senior scholars who have offered sustained contributions to social movement research and illuminated ways in which people in the United States and throughout the world have worked collectively to promote equality and justice.” The award committee is delighted to award the inaugural CBSM Aldon Morris Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements to the scholar for whom this award is named: Aldon D. Morris, Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University and former ASA President.
Professor Morris’ career is notable for the way that his scholarship has transformed the way we think about social movements. His path-breaking 1984 book, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (winner of multiple awards including the ASA Book Award and the Gustuvus Myers Award) and related articles in prestigious outlets such as the American Sociological Review developed the “indigenous perspective” and showed how Southern Black communities were not resource-poor and reliant upon Northern elites but instead drew on their own cultural, material, and infrastructural resources to generate resistance. His keen theoretical insights, grounded in careful empirical research, are the hallmark of his work. Indeed, just as Origins of the Civil Rights Movement rewrote the history of the civil rights movement for social movement scholars, Professor Morris’ 2015 book, The Scholar Denied (also the winner of numerous awards, including the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award in 2016) tells the much overlooked story of W.E.B. DuBois and his central contributions to the field of sociology. Similarly, Professor Morris’ theoretical and empirical work on topics such as leadership and oppositional consciousness expanded our notions of the factors that give rise to collective action. These themes are present both in his sole-authored work and in his influential edited volumes, the 1992 Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (co-edited with Carol Mueller) and the 2001 Oppositional Consciousness (co-edited with Jane Mansbridge). These works continue to shape and inspire research on movements of marginalized peoples, both in the U.S. and world-wide. Finally, Professor Morris is a dedicated and impactful mentor who has shaped the field by guiding the careers of generations of scholars.
Through a vote of its membership, the CBSM section has named its career award after Aldon Morris, thereby recognizing Professor Morris’ significant contributions to the field of social movements over the course of his illustrious career. It is only fitting that the inaugural award goes to its namesake.
Mayer N. Zald Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Student Paper Award
(Photo Credit: Simone Durham)
Winner: Simone Durham. University of Maryland. “Not in this Lifetime”: The Black Millennial Imagination and Impacts of Black Lives Matter on Racial Dynamics in the U.S.”
(Photo Credit: Stephen Wulff)
Honorable Mention: Stephen Wulff. University of Minnesota. “’Entrepreneurs of Punishment’: Police Misconduct Insurance, Grassroots Activism, and the Limits of Linguistic Capital.”
Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Article Award
Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Dissertation Award
(Photo Credit: Minwoo Jung)
Minwoo Jung. Ph.D. University of Southern California, 2021 (current position, assistant professor at Loyola University, Chicago). Rights Projects in a Globalized World.
Announcing the Collective Behavior and Social Movements call for award nominations for 2022. Please read on for details on qualifications, submission process, and award committee memberships.
“[We invite you to read] the latest edition of Grassroots, the newsletter of the [International Sociological Association’s] RC48 Research Committee on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3veM9KC
The Summer 2021 edition of the Critical Mass Bulletin is out, and features a report from CBSM Chair Rachel Einwohner, a list of recent publications by section members, and importantly, “on-the-market” notices from junior social movement scholars. Get your PDF copy here:
The American Sociological Association (ASA)'s section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements (CBSM) was created in 1980 to foster the study of emergent and extra-institutional social forms and behavior, particularly crowds and social movements. With over 800 members, CBSM is one of the ASA’s largest and most active sections.
