Organizations, Networks, and Work
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Brechin, Steven
- Steven Brechin
- Professor
- Ph.D. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Email: steven.brechin@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 131
- Curriculum Vitae
Professor of Sociology. Steve’s current research explores some of the contours of a sociology of climate change – comparative/cross-national levels of public support, the required collective action by nation-states and the international community to address it, the serious social justice issues that climate change generates, and public understanding of climate engineering technologies. Additional projects include examining climate finance and development investments, both public and private in adaptation and mitigation. The levels of cooperation required to make significant reductions in greenhouse gases. He is also interested in capabilities of international organizations engaged in climate change. He is currently editing the 2nd Edition of the Routledge Handbook on Climate Change and Society.
Other projects include articulating Karl Polanyi’s environmental sociology and sustainable institutions built upon Polanyian thinking, investigating sustainable lifestyles in the U.S. – especially around the rapid development of organic farm to table movement in Northwestern Michigan – including its economic sustainability. With local collaborators, as well as students, Steve continues his decades’ long field research in Belize, Central America, investigating the challenges to state-civil society relationships in ecological governance, and more recently on the country’s engagement with climate change - its domestic actions and international systems of support. This country-level examination helps to ground-truth his more international analysis.
His earlier research focused on the sociology of biodiversity conservation, organized international reforestation programs, and environmentalisms. Before arriving at Rutgers, Steve taught at Princeton, Michigan, Illinois, and Syracuse. He earned his graduate degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Steve is currently chairing the dissertation projects of: Robert Duffy, Maria Espinoza, and Amanda Sie.
- Faculty Article(s):
- A case for further refinement for the Green Climate Fund's 50:50 ratio climate change mitigation and adaptation allocation framework: toward a more targeted approach
- Climate change mitigation and the collective action problem: Exploring country differences in greenhouse gas contributions
- Ideology, capitalism, and climate: Explaining public views about climate change in the United States
- Karl Polanyi's Environmental Sociology: A Primer
- Will Democracy Survive Climate Change?
- A case for further refinement for the Green Climate Fund's 50:50 ratio climate change mitigation and adaptation allocation framework: toward a more targeted approach
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Contested Nature: Promoting International Biodiversity with Social Justice in the Twenty-first Century
- Planting Trees in the Developing World: A Sociology of International Organizations
- Population-Environment Dynamics: Ideas and Observations
- Resident Peoples and National Parks: Social Dilemmas and Strategies in International Conservation
- Program Areas:
- Environment and Sustainability
- Global Structures
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements
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Brooks, Ethel
- Ethel Brooks
- Associate Professor and Chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
- Ph.D. New York University, 2000
- Email: ethel.brooks@rutgers.edu
- Office: 132 George Street
- Phone: 732-445-7395
Dr. Brooks is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies and Sociology, teaches courses in comparative and historical sociology, globalization and postcolonial social formations. She is currently finishing a book on transnational organizing in the garment industry with a focus on Dhaka , San Salvador and New York City.
Dr. Brooks is interested in relations of gender, race, class, labor practices and nation-state formations, with a focus on South Asia, Central America and the United States. Her research explores areas of critical political economy, globalization, social movements, feminist theory, comparative sociology, nationalism, urban geographies and post-colonialism, with close attention to epistemology. In her dissertation, she examined three transnationally-organized protest movements for workers' rights in the global garment industry: (1) against poor working conditions in export-processing zones in El Salvador; (2) against the use of child labor in the Bangladesh garment industry; and (3) against immigrant sweatshops in New York City. Her work focuses on the relationship between protest organizers and the mostly women workers they represent, as part of the everyday manifestations of globalized production practices. She is currently working on a book that looks at transnational labor organizing, women's work and relations of globalization and empire.
Dr. Brooks's recent and forthcoming publications include "Transnational Protest, Production and Women's Labor: The politics of sweatshops and the global garment industry," forthcoming in The Journal of International Labor and Working Class History, 2001; "Bangladesh's Garment Industry, Child Labor and Urban Sustainability," forthcoming in Saskia Sassen, ed., The Encyclopedia of Urban Sustainability, (UNESCO: 2001); "Globalized Chinese Capital in Central America," with Amy Freedman, in Asian Pacific Perspectives, May 2001; "Campañas transnacionales de protesta y la nueva división internacional de trabajo: Cuestiones de género en el sector maquila," in Apuntes de Investigación, November 2000; and "After the Wars: Cross-Border Organizing in Central America" with Winifred Tate in NACLA: Report on the Americas, Special Issue on Labor, January/February 1999. Her future projects include an examination of consumption practices and discourses of empire, gender and agrobusiness in Central America and South Asia and a critical study of Romanies and discursive formations of "gypsiness." Professor Brooks has a joint appointment with the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Global Structures
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
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Chaudhary, Ali R.
- Ali R. Chaudhary
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University of California, Davis
- Email: ali.chaudhary@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 132B
- Personal Website
- Curriculum Vitae
- Google Scholar
Dr. Ali R. Chaudhary is a sociologist, musician, and associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick-New Jersey. His scholarship interrogates the significance of socially constructed categories as they mediate opportunities and constraints in contemporary social life. Dr. Chaudhary deploys diverse methodologies, data, and theoretical perspectives to understand how ascriptive social categories (e.g. race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc.), and their corresponding symbolic boundaries—are activated within and across immigrant/diaspora communities, immigrant organizations, and popular music.
Dr. Chaudhary is currently developing new research on the sociology of music and musicians. This research is comprised of two projects. The first is a comparative-historical project examining the legacy and logics of racial segregation in the production/consumption of musical instruments.
The second project examines the lasting consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on working musicians and music venues across New York City and New Jersey. Dr. Chaudhary is currently on leave and a visiting scholar with the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is collecting new data for a book manuscript focusing on the lasting consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on musicians and music-making in the United States.
To view my recent and earlier academic publications, please visit my Google Scholar page.
- In the Public Eye:
- Research on immigrant voting in Europe featured by the International Migration Institute at Oxford University.
- Interviewed about New Jersey Supper Clubs as a strategy to reduce inter-group tensions between natives and immigrants in the Asbury Park Press and USA Today Network.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Ascriptive Organizational Stigma and the Constraining of Pakistani Immigrant Organizations
- Immigrant Organizations
- Paint it White: Segregationist Logics in Advertising and the Electric Guitar
- Voting ‘Here’ and ‘There”: Political Integration and Transnational Political Engagement among Immigrants in Europe
- Ascriptive Organizational Stigma and the Constraining of Pakistani Immigrant Organizations
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Environment and Sustainability
- Global Structures
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
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Davidson, Thomas
- Thomas Davidson
- Assistant Professor
- PhD. Cornell University, 2020
- Email: thomas.davidson@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall
- Personal Website
- Twitter: @thomasrdavidson
- Curriculum Vitae
Thomas Davidson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Cornell University in 2020. His research interests include political sociology, social movements, and the sociology of culture. His research uses digital trace data from social media and other websites combined with statistical analysis and computational methods, including natural language processing and machine learning.
He is currently working on several projects on populism, far-right politics, and social media. He is also working on research understanding the evolution of hate speech moderation policies on social media platforms and developing experimental research to understand how perceptions of hate speech vary according to social contexts.
He teaches classes including Political Sociology, Sociology of Culture, Statistics Methods in Sociology, and Computational Sociology.
- In the Public Eye:
- Published op-eds in The Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog on the relationship between social media activity and far-right support in Germany and Italy.
- Interviewed by The New Scientist, Vox, and Business Insider about his research on automated hate speech detection.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Black Box Models and Sociological Explanations: Predicting High School GPA Using Neural Networks
- Britain First and the UK Independence Party: Social Media and Movement-Party Dynamics
- Black Box Models and Sociological Explanations: Predicting High School GPA Using Neural Networks
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements
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Falzon, Danielle
- Danielle Falzon
- Assistant Professor
- PhD. Brown University, 2022
- Email: dmf283@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall
- Personal Website
- Twitter: @danielle_falzon
- Curriculum Vitae
Danielle Falzon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University in 2022. Her research brings together insights from environmental sociology, global and transnational studies, organizations, and critical development. She also draws upon insights from the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and political ecology.
Danielle’s work uses primarily qualitative methods to examine power and inequality in decision-making about climate change. She aims to work across scales, connecting the global to the local through meso-level organizational intermediaries.
Her current research focuses in two (connected) sites: the UN climate negotiations and the field of climate adaptation work in Bangladesh. At each site she examines the relational and structural power differentials between actors and how these dynamics work for or against climate justice. Her current work at the UN climate negotiations examines obstruction in the areas of loss and damage, climate finance, and adaptation. Her work in Bangladesh elucidates the field of organizational actors involved in efforts to adapt communities to climate impacts and analyzes the implications of the norms and priorities that guide their efforts. She is also developing individual and collaborative projects on climate displacement, locally-led adaptation, and a text-based analysis of global flows of aid and climate finance.
Danielle is affiliated with the International Centre for Climate Change (ICCCAD) in Bangladesh and the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN).
- In the Public Eye:
- Speaker at the 2021 Capacity Building Hub event on “The Role of Universities in Building Long-term Climate Capacities” at the UN climate negotiations COP 26.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Expertise and Exclusivity in Adaptation Decision-Making
- Rebooting a Failed Promise of Climate Finance
- The Ideal Delegation: How Institutional Privilege Silences ‘Developing’ Nations in the UN Climate Negotiations
- To Change Everything We Need Everyone: Recursivity in the People’s Climate March
- Expertise and Exclusivity in Adaptation Decision-Making
- Program Areas:
- Environment and Sustainability
- Global Structures
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
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Handsman, Emily
- Emily Handsman
- ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
- Ph.D. Northwestern University, 2022
- Email: ehandsman@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Curriculum Vitae
Emily Handsman is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in 2022, and worked as a Harvard College Fellow (2022-2023) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute for Education Reform (2023-2024).
Emily is a sociologist of education who uses qualitative methods to study processes of cultural, political, and organizational change in the context of K-12 schools. In her research, she considers how cultural and political changes impact K-12 schools and how K-12 schools as organizations are either resistant to or open to change. In her current book project, Eras of Equity, she studies equity efforts in three suburban school districts, highlighting how exogenous shocks impact these efforts.
In her other projects, she examines changes in character education in US schools as well as equity efforts in mathematics. She is also engaged in a long-term, collaborative project on equity-centered school leadership funded by the Wallace Foundation.
- Faculty Article(s):
- From Virtue to Grit: Character Education in the U.S., 1985-2016
- Solving for X: Constructing Algebra and Algebra Policy During Curriculum Change
- From Virtue to Grit: Character Education in the U.S., 1985-2016
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
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MacKendrick, Norah
- Norah MacKendrick
- ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
- Ph.D. University of Toronto, 2011
- Email: norah.mackendrick@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, Room 107
- Personal Website
- Twitter: @nmackend
- Curriculum Vitae
- Google Scholar
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Norah MacKendrick’s research falls within the fields of environmental sociology, medical sociology, gender, food studies, science and technology studies, and consumer studies. From 2020-23 served as Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environmental Sociology. In 2023, she became co-editor of Rutgers University Press’s award-winning “Nature, Society, and Culture” book series.
MacKendrick is the author of Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, which identifies the rise of “precautionary consumption” in the United States. She finds that chemical body burdens are the consequence of decades of regulatory failure to properly assess the health consequences of environmental chemicals. The burden of addressing this failure has fallen to women and mothers who feel responsible for protecting their children from exposure to chemicals, and do so through cooking, grocery shopping, and management of the household. The book reveals how discourses of maternal responsibility and consumer empowerment circulate within the campaigns of environmental health advocacy groups, and as well as through the retail landscape for organic foods and ‘green’ products, particularly Whole Foods Market.
Better Safe Than Sorry won the Best First Book Award from the Association for the Study of Food & Society (2019), and the Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award from the Environmental Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (2020).
In her other research, MacKendrick has examined the intersections of risk, individualization, and modern motherhood, as well as the dynamics of non-toxic consumption, “foodscapes” and science activism. Her research has been published in Gender & Society, Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Social Science & Medicine, Sociological Forum, Socius, Science Advances, Journal of Consumer Culture, Food, Culture and Society, Contexts, and Gastronomica.
MacKendrick is working on several new projects. One explores the social construction of hormones as risky technologies and substances essential for realizing wellness and selfhood. Another examines air quality and heat stress under climate change. A third, with Dr. Edmée Ballif, examines the normative arguments surrounding the place of plant milks in the diets of children and adults in Switzerland and the United States.
- In the Public Eye:
- Time Magazine, “You Don’t Need to Balance Your Hormones” May 9, 2023
- MacKendrick’s editorial in The Guardian: Your fast food wrappers contain toxic chemicals. Why is that allowed?
- MacKendrick’s book Better Safe Than Sorry featured in the Washington Post, “Scientists know plastics are dangerous. Why won’t the government say so?” September 12, 2018
- Interviewed on National Public Radio, (Madison, WI). Should We Be More Worried About Chemicals in Food and Consumer Products? June 12, 2018
- Faculty Article(s):
- “Leave No Stone Unturned”: Sustainable Belonging and Desirable Futures of African American Food Imaginaries
- Like a Finely-Oiled Machine: Self-Help and the Elusive Goal of Hormone Balance
- “Leave No Stone Unturned”: Sustainable Belonging and Desirable Futures of African American Food Imaginaries
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Environment and Sustainability
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
- Politics and Social Movements
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Mai, Quan
- Quan Mai
- Assistant Professor
- PhD, Vanderbilt University in 2018
- Email: quan.mai@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 049
- Personal Website
- Curriculum Vitae
Quan D. Mai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Vanderbilt University in 2018. Dr. Mai’s research and teaching interests include work & occupations, social stratification, social movements, research methods, and environmental sociology. His scholarship focuses on how a range of social relations—including employment relations, race-ethnic relations, state regulatory capacity, and social movements—combine in the economy, polity, and in urban spaces to influence processes of social stratification. His current projects explore various consequences of nonstandard employment for workers’ labor market outcomes and socioeconomic well-being.
He is a sociologist studying how work, race, and space shape various dimensions of social inequality in the labor market. His recent publications analyze the institutional drivers of work precarity in a cross-national setting. His current research examines how the experience of nonstandard employment shapes various aspects of workers’ lives, including their well-being and labor market prospects. In another related line of research, he explores the interaction between multiple media platforms, political institutions, and social movements. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in Social Forces, Social Science & Medicine, Research in the Sociology of Work, Labor History, and other academic journals.
- In the Public Eye:
- Interviewed by Slate's "Better Life Lab" podcast about the effects of gig work on sleep, April 21, 2022
- Faculty Article(s):
- Employment insecurity and sleep disturbance: Evidence from 31 European countries
- Precarious sleep? Nonstandard work, gender, and sleep disturbance in 31 European countries
- Precarious Work in Europe: Assessing Cross-National Differences and Institutional Determinants of Work Precarity in 32 European Countries
- Unclear Signals, Uncertain Prospects: The Labor Market Consequences of Freelancing in the New Economy
- Employment insecurity and sleep disturbance: Evidence from 31 European countries
- Program Areas:
- Environment and Sustainability
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
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McLean, Paul
- Paul McLean
- Professor and Graduate Program Director
- Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1996
- Email: pmclean@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 133
- Curriculum Vitae
Professor of Sociology, teaches courses on sociological theory, network analysis, political and economic sociology, and the sociology of culture. Other interests include politics in early modern states, the network organization of the Renaissance economy, Adam Smith's social theory, and the culture of videogaming.
Paul McLean's research has focused on exploring the connections between multiple kinds of social networks—marriage networks, economic networks, and political patronage networks chiefly—and describing the cultural practices and identities that actors adopt to move within and across these networks. He has examined the development of elaborate strategies of self-presentation and the emergence of a quasi-modern conception of the self in Renaissance Florence in articles (AJS 104: 51-91 [1998], CSSH 47: 638-64 [2005]) and in his book, The Art of the Network (Duke UP, 2007).
His recent book, Culture in Networks (Polity, 2017) provides an overview of research on the culture-networks link across a variety of interfaces, both historical and contemporary—including research on diffusion, social movement mobilization, clientage structures, topic modelling, the formation of tastes, organizational cultures, and social media usage.
Some of his work on Florence has been collaboratively produced, including studies of Florentine market structure and organizational emergence with John Padgett of the University of Chicago (T&S 26: 209-44 [1997], AJS 111: 1463-1568 [2006], Journal of Modern History 83: 1-47 [2011]), and work on the structure and 'logics' of interpersonal credit exchange with Neha Gondal of Boston University (Social Networks 35: 499-513 [2013], Poetics 41: 122-50 [2013], EJS/AES 55: 135-76 [2014]). He is currently pursuing an interest in consumer credit in the Renaissance.
In addition, McLean has examined the political organization of Polish elites in the early modern period (T&S 33: 167-212 [2004], Annals 636: 88-110 [2011]), looking at that organization and its evolution as the product of multiple-network dynamics. More recent interests include the idea of chance in the Renaissance, the social theory of Adam Smith, networking dynamics and career trajectories in academia, divisiveness in contemporary American political culture, and the organization of videogame play (Soc Forum 27: 961-85 [2012]).
- Faculty Article(s):
- The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Culture in Networks
- The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements
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Shepherd, Hana
- Hana Shepherd
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. Princeton University, 2011
- Email: hshepherd@sociology.rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall, 037
- Curriculum Vitae
- Google Scholar
Associate Professor of Sociology. Shepherd teaches classes in organizations, culture, and how institutions attempt to change individual and group behavior. She studies how social networks, social norms and other group processes, culture, and organizations shape behavior, and facilitate or impede social change more broadly. Shepherd uses a wide range of methods including network analysis, survey and field-based experiments, digital and computational tools, interviews, and archival research. Her work is currently funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and WorkRise.
Hana Shepherd's work covers three areas.
- Social Networks, Group Processes, and Group Culture
Shepherd’s research examines how people perceive the social norms operating in their social groups, the effects of those perceptions on behavior, and how norm perceptions are shaped by social networks. She is interested in social norms as a central element of culture as they shape larger patterns of behavior in groups. You can learn more about and access the data set that she co-designed and uses as part of this work here. Her current work in this area examines the formation and effects of network ties among low-wage workers, sources of perceptions of norms regarding racism, and how digital tools can be used to build supportive online communities. - Organizational Practices: Inequality and Social Transformation
Given the importance of organizations in distributing resources and opportunities, Shepherd examines how organizational practices amplify or diminish inequality as a way of better understanding non-individual sources of the reproduction of inequality. Her current work focuses on discipline systems and policy implementation in schools; employer practices in retail work; and how government enforces minimum wage and paid sick leave laws. In this final area, Shepherd is working on a series of papers and a book manuscript that examines how city agencies interpret and enforce local employment laws, and the implications of those practices for standards and protections at work (with Janice Fine, SMLR). - Cognitive and Social Psychological Accounts of Culture
Shepherd uses tools from social and cognitive psychology, survey experiments, and other analytical methods to investigate the processes of culture and cognition, in particular how we form shared interpretations of the social world, develop shared memories and emotions, and learn about the expectations and behaviors of others. She has a particular interest in the use and interpretation of implicit cognition measures as part of understanding the transmission of culture.
- Social Networks, Group Processes, and Group Culture
- In the Public Eye:
- An interview on “This Week in Sociological Perspective” by Prof. Sam Lucas discusses recent work on how schools implement anti-bullying policies.
- Research featured in the New Yorker about the role of norms in social change.
- Research featured in a CNN Health article specifically about Shepherd’s anti-peer harassment field experiment in 56 NJ middle schools.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Administering New Anti-Bullying Law: The Organizational Field and School Variation During Initial Implementation
- Organizational Practices and Workplace Relationships in Precarious Work: New Survey Evidence
- Rethinking Culture and Cognition
- Administering New Anti-Bullying Law: The Organizational Field and School Variation During Initial Implementation
- Program Areas:
- Crime and Social Control
- Culture and Cognition
- Organizations, Networks, and Work
- Politics and Social Movements