Graduate Sociology at SUNY Albany

Area of Specialization: Political Sociology

Political sociology is an area of major strength in the Department of Sociology. Faculty bring a variety of perspectives to the study of political sociology, and graduate students are able to draw also upon resources in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and to use the extensive archives of the University Libraries and the New York State Library. In addition, Albany, as the state capital, serves as a site for various research projects by faculty and students.

Students are encouraged and expected -- in graduate course work, as faculty research assistants, in preparing for their specialized examinations, and in writing their dissertations -- to develop their own research and have the opportunity to engage in collaborative research and publications with faculty.

Members of the department have studied the organizational bases for the exercise of power, urban places as sites of power and conflict, and networks of elites. Some of our research has addressed the historical origins of nation states and the role of conflict among elites in determining state forms and policies. The examination of government polices -- in war making, social policy, family and gender issues, economic and work regulation, urban planning and allocation, and toward social movements -- is a core concern of political sociologists in this department. We have approached these issues in qualitative and quantitative research, through studies in the contemporary United States and in other nations in all regions of the world, and through historical studies of state formation in early modern Europe, the demise of dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Latin America, and of social movements in the United States. Comparative studies of the exercise of power -- in work organizations, in states, in cities, and through networks of elites in the United States and throughout the world -- are central to the research agenda of several members of the department. Faculty also are interested in the operation of the world system and with understanding how the United States achieved hegemony and whether its dominance will continue.

Graduate students in political sociology have the opportunity to examine a range of approaches to the study of this field and to participate with faculty in analyzing political institutions and behaviors in historical and contemporary societies. The following listings of faculty in this area and of recent and ongoing dissertations by Albany graduate students in political sociology will give you a sense of the work possible here at Albany, and of the faculty and student colleagues with whom you will exchange ideas and plans for research.

Recently completed dissertations related to political sociology include:

• An historical examination of competing citizenship practices and discourses of the body during the Civil Rights Movement.
• A study of the role played by narrative and memory practices during the anti-military mobilization in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
research based on interviews and fieldwork with neighborhood association leaders, a study of the disparities in organizational resources between underclass and gentrifying neighborhoods and evaluates their significance for the defense of neighborhoods.
• a study showing that economic dependency has strong effects on crime in third world countries through the intervening variables of immiseration, structural distortion, and political concentration.
• based on historical research on political change in South Korea and the Philippines, it is shown that the state is an active actor with its own interests using its resources strategically to sustain a nondemocratic regime.
• an examination of the relationship between military control and post-war violence within indigenous communities in the highlands of Guatemala. This study uses archival data and original interviews.
• a study of nonprofit organizational forms that support civic engagement.
• an investigation of the effects of gender, personal characteristics, political experiences, views of public policy issues affecting political candidates’ electability.
• a study of motives, outcomes, and commitment mechanisms in the cohousing movement using participant observation and intensive research in original sources.
• an examination of recruitment to the movement against sexual violence among women who have been victimized.
• a study of grassroots private economy in modern China using extensive archival and field research. The principal concerns are how state policies channel and limit the development of the private sector, the character of the new class that is being created, and the social consequences of a changing class structure.
• a quantitative investigation of rural-urban inequality in modern China.
  

Faculty in Political Sociology

Beth Popp Berman
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Professor Berman studies organizations, economic sociology, and science & technology.  She is interested in the boundary between states and markets, how ideas affect policy, and the effect of the state on fields highly dependent on state funding.  Her current research asks why universities have transformed their relationship with the marketplace in the last few decades, and argues that this change was driven by government, and resulted indirectly from policymakers’ adoption of a new frame which emphasized the role of innovation in driving economic growth.  She is beginning a project that explores how new ideas about the economy emerge and eventually impact policy decisions.

Berman, Elizabeth Popp. 2006. “Before the Professional Project: Success and Failure at Creating an Organizational Representative for English Doctors.” Theory and Society 35:157-191.

Angie Chung
Ph.D. University of California at Los Angeles

Professor Chung's research interests include urban sociology, international migration, race/ ethnicity, Asian American studies, qualitative sociology, and gender/family. In this area, she has written on the topics of interethnic coalitions, ethnic community-based organizations, intergenerational politics, race relations theory, and second-generation youth in various journals and books. Her book, Legacies of Struggle, examines the diverse ways 1.5/ 2nd generation ethnic organizations in Koreatown are able to construct ethnic political solidarity despite class polarization, residential dispersal, and intergenerational conflicts.

Selected Publications:

Angie Y. Chung. 2007. Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Angie Y. Chung. 2005.

"'Politics without the Politics': The Evolving Political Cultures of Ethnic Non-Profits in Koreatown, Los Angeles." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 31(5): 911-929.

Angie Y. Chung. 2001. "The Powers That Bind: A Case Study on the Collective Bases of Coalition-Building in Post-Civil Unrest Los Angeles." Urban Affairs Review 37(2): 205-226.

Angie Y. Chung and Edward T. Chang. 1998. "From Third World Liberation to Multiple Oppression Politics: A Contemporary Approach to Interethnic Coalitions." Social Justice 25(3): 80-100.

Ronald N. Jacobs
Ph.D. University of California

Professor Jacobs’s areas of interest include social theory, cultural and political sociology, mass media, and civil society. His research has examined racial crisis, the sociology of news production, the relationship between African-American and “mainstream” public spheres, and the use of narrative methods for studying discourse. He is currently working on two new research projects investigating media and the public sphere. The first is a study of media opinion and commentary, while the second is an examination of television, entertainment media, and the aesthetic public sphere.

Selected publications:

Jacobs, Ronald N., 2000. Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. Cambridge University Press.

Jacobs, Ronald N., 2007 “From Mass to Public: Rethinking the Value of the Culture Industry”, in Culture in the World, vol. 1: Cultural Sociology and the Democratic Imperative, ed. J. Alexander and I. Reed. Paradigm Press, pp. 101-128.

Jacobs, Ronald N. and Sarah Sobieraj, 2007. "Narrative and Legitimacy: US Congressional Debates about the Nonprofit Sector", Sociological Theory 25, 1: 1-25.

Richard Lachmann
Ph.D. Harvard University

Professor Lachmann’s research is concentrated in the areas of comparative historical sociology and the sociology of culture. He has written on the origins of capitalism and nation states in early modern Europe. He currently is researching state fiscal crises and the private appropriation of public resources and is writing a comparative study of the decline of dominant powers in early modern Europe and the contemporary United States. He also is examining the fate of democracy during eras of economic and geo-political decline and comparing new coverage of war dead in the United States and Israel during the Vietnam, Six Day, Iraq and Lebanon wars.

Selected Publications:

The Making and Breaking of States (Polity, forthcoming).

“Elite Self-Interest and Economic Decline in Early Modern Europe” in American Sociological Review, volume 68, #3, June 2003, pp. 346-372.

Capitalists In Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2000).

Aaron Major
Ph.D. New York University

Professor Major is studies the relationship between structures of global capitalism and their effects on national states. He has conducted research on American welfare state policy making in the 1960s in relationship to the postwar international monetary system. He is also interested in the relationship between business and state elites, and is currently conducting research on the emergence of business conservatism as a defining force in American politics. Professor Major is also conducting research on changing patterns of defense spending since the end of the Vietnam War and their effects on American political and economic development.

Selected Publications:

Major, Aaron. Forthcoming (Fall 2008). “Which Revolution in Military Affairs?” Armed Forces and Society.

Gwen Moore
Ph.D. New York University

Professor Moore's research focuses on elites, gender, networks, and power. She has examined the informal interaction structures of national elite groups in several capitalist societies and finds considerable social cohesion among political, business, and other powerful leadership groups Her work also addresses issues of gender and authority and includes cross national studies of women's underrepresentation in senior decision-making positions and examination of gender differences in informal networks of national elites, senior bureaucrats in state government, and non-profit leaders.

Selected Publications:

Mino Vianello and Gwen Moore, with others, Women and Men in Political and Business Elites: A Comparative Study, monographic issue of Current Sociology 5(3), 2004.

Gwen Moore, 2004. “Comments: ‘Mommies and Daddies on the Fast Track’ in Other Wealthy Nations,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 596: 508-513.

Gwen Moore and Stephanie Mack, “From Vietnam to Iraq: American Elites’ Views on the Use of Military Force.” Comparative Sociology 6 (2007): 215-231.

Barbara Sutton
Ph.D. University of Chicago

Professor Sutton’s research interests include the intersections of systems of social inequality (gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality), women’s and global justice movements, human rights and state violence, body politics, globalization, and feminist theory and research. She is particularly interested in Latin America, and more specifically in Argentina. She is currently conducting a comparative study on perceptions of state violence.

Selected Publications:

2008 Sutton, Barbara, Sandra Morgen, and Julie Novkov, eds. Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Militarization. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Forthcoming Fall 2008.

2008 Sutton, Barbara. “Gendered Bodily Scars of Neoliberal Globalization in Argentina.” Pp. 147-168 in The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economic Marginalities, edited by Nandini Gunewardena and Ann Kingsolver. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press. 

2007 Sutton, Barbara. “Naked Protest: Memories of Bodies and Resistance at the World Social Forum.”  Journal of International Women’s Studies 8 (3): 139-148.

2007 Sutton, Barbara. “Poner el Cuerpo: Women’s Embodiment and Political Resistance in Argentina.” Latin American Politics and Society 49 (3): 129-162.

2007 Borland, Elizabeth and Barbara Sutton [equal authorship]. “Quotidian Disruption and Women’s Activism in Times of Crisis, Argentina 2002-2003.” Gender and Society 21 (5): 700-722.

James Zetka
Ph.D. University of Oregon

Professor Zetka's research interests concern industrial and occupational developments. His research links development occurring in the workplace, the market arena and the wider political economy. At the workplace level, his interests includes wildcat strikes, and other forms of militant protests, the implementation of new technology, the development of authority systems and their implications. At the market and political-economy level, his interests include the emergence of market structures regulating industry competition, as well as the role of state policy and state institutions in regulating industries, markets, and factories.

Professor Zetka's new project explores the impact of new technology on the skills, work organization and work relationships of surgeons and physicians.

Selected Publications:

"The Technological Foundations of Task-Coordinating Structures in New Work Organizations: Theoretical Notes from the Case of Abdominal Surgery,: Work and Occupations 25: 343-366, 1998.

"Bureaucratic Strikes and the Rationalization of Factory Conflict: The Case of the U.S. Automobile Industry, 1962-1979." Social Problems 43: 39-56, 1996.

Militancy, Market Dynamics, and Workplace Authority: The Struggle Over Labor Process Outcomes in the US Automobile Industry 1946-1973. SUNY Press, 1995.

-From 2008 Brochure