Edwin Amenta

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Edwin Amenta
Born
Chicago, Illinois
Alma mater Indiana University Bloomington (AB-1979)
Indiana University Bloomington (MA-1982)
University of Chicago (PhD-1989)
ChildrenLuisa Amenta, Gregory Amenta
Scientific career
Fields Social policy
Social movements
Political sociology
Historical sociology
Comparative sociology
Sports sociology
Institutions University of California, Irvine
Doctoral advisor Theda Skocpol [1]

Edwin Amenta is an American sociologist best known for his study of social policy, social movements and the New Deal.

Contents

Career

Through his Political Mediation Theory, developed as a consequence of studying the Townsend Plan, an organization demanding old-age pensions during the Great Depression, and other New Deal-era movements, Amenta has influenced how scholars conceptualize, study, and explain social movement impacts. [2] He is also known for theorizing the role of political institutions in policy-making. Amenta's recent work includes the development of a newspaper coverage database that allows scholars to test theories of social movement impacts across 32 major social movementss. [3]

Amenta has written four books and more than 50 articles and book chapters. Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton University Press, 1998) won the 1999 Distinguished Book award from the American Sociological Association section on Political Sociology. [4] His article “Age for Leisure? Political Mediation and the Impact of the Pension Movement on U.S. Old-Age Policy" (with Neal Caren and Sheera Joy Olasky) won the 2006 Best Published Article Award from the American Sociological Association section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements. [5]

Amenta's other books include When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security (Princeton University Press, 2006) [6] [7] and The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). [8]

Amenta has served as the chair of the American Sociological Association Political Sociology section and Collective Behavior and Social Movements section, [9] and he has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation [10] and the National Science Foundation. [11]

Political Mediation Theory

Before Amenta, most work on the influence of social movements focused either on the internal characteristics of movements (membership, resources, organization, tactics) or their external environments (openness of the political system, elite alignments and alliances, and state repressive capacities). In his books Bold Relief and When Movements Matter and in a string of articles, Amenta’s political mediation model proffers a theory regarding interactions between the internal characteristics of movements and their external environments. Amenta argues that particular movement tactics work better in some contexts than in others, and his empirical work shows interactions between the assertiveness of movement tactics and short-term political contexts. Specifically, when elected officials and state bureaucrats are favorably disposed towards a movement, minimally-assertive tactics will suffice; but when elected officials and state bureaucrats are hostile towards a movement, assertive tactics are necessary. In addition, if elected officials are favorable but state bureaucrats are hostile, or vice versa, movement organizations must target the hostile parties rather than the favorable ones. [12]

Selected bibliography

Books

Articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political movement</span> Movement to obtain a political goal

A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some theories of political movements are the political opportunity theory, which states that political movements stem from mere circumstances, and the resource mobilization theory which states that political movements result from strategic organization and relevant resources. Political movements are also related to political parties in the sense that they both aim to make an impact on the government and that several political parties have emerged from initial political movements. While political parties are engaged with a multitude of issues, political movements tend to focus on only one major issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political sociology</span> Branch of sociology

Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how power is distributed and changes throughout and amongst societies, political sociology's focus ranges across individual families to the state as sites of social and political conflict and power contestation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francis Townsend</span> American politician

Francis Everett Townsend was an American physician and political activist in California. In 1933, he devised an old-age pension scheme to help alleviate the Great Depression. Known as the "Townsend Plan", this proposal would pay every person over age 60 $200 per month, with the requirement it all be spent quickly. It was never enacted but the popularity of the Plan influenced Congress to start the Social Security system, which involved much smaller amounts. The Plan was organized by real estate salesman Robert Clements, who made Townsend only a figurehead while the Plan expanded to thousands of clubs in many states. Townsend was born just outside Fairbury, Illinois, where he is memorialized by a post office named in his honor.

The term new social movements (NSMs) is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora of new movements that have come up in various western societies roughly since the mid-1960s which are claimed to depart significantly from the conventional social movement paradigm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic sociology</span> Branch of sociology

Economic sociology is the study of the social cause and effect of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one, known as "new economic sociology".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theda Skocpol</span> American sociologist and political scientist (born 1947)

Theda Skocpol is an American sociologist and political scientist, who is currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She is best known as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, as well as her "state autonomy theory". She has written widely for both popular and academic audiences. She has been President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association.

David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, specialized in sociology of religion and the academic study of new religious movements. He has written extensively about cults, new religious movements, apostasy, and the anti-cult movement.

The Townsend Plan was an American social movement organization and old-age pension program that was inaugurated during the Great Depression in the United States. It was designed to give every person over age 60 a monthly cash payment of $200, which was far more than any proposal by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It was devised by Francis Townsend, an elderly California physician. The plan was promoted by real estate salesman Robert E. Clements, who organized thousands of clubs in many states. It demonstrated a nationwide demand for old-age pensions. The New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with a much more complex and frugal system of Social Security that was enacted in 1935 and amended afterward to expand it, based on the activism of the Townsend Plan and other pension activists.

Co-option, also known as co-optation and sometimes spelt cooption or cooptation, has two common meanings. It may refer to the process of adding members to an elite group at the discretion of members of the body, usually to manage opposition and so maintain the stability of the group. Outsiders are "co-opted" by being given a degree of power on the grounds of their elite status, specialist knowledge, or potential ability to threaten essential commitments or goals. Co-optation may take place in many other contexts, such as a technique by a dictatorship to control opposition.

Peter B. Evans is an American political sociologist who is Faculty Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and Professor of Sociology emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social movement theory</span> Interdisciplinary social study

Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, political, and economic consequences, such as the creation and functioning of social movements.

The Second New Deal is a term used by historians to characterize the second stage, 1935–36, of the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The most famous laws included the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the Banking Act, the Wagner National Labor Relations Act, the Public Utility Holding Companies Act, the Social Security Act, and the Wealth Tax Act.

Mobilization is an academic journal that publishes original research and academic reviews of books concerned mainly with sociological research on protests, social movements, and collective behavior.

A social movement organization (SMO) is an organized component of a social movement.

Political opportunity theory, also known as the political process theory or political opportunity structure, is an approach of social movements that is heavily influenced by political sociology. It argues that success or failure of social movements is affected primarily by political opportunities. Social theorists Peter Eisinger, Sidney Tarrow, David S. Meyer and Doug McAdam are considered among the most prominent supporters of the theory.

James Macdonald Jasper is a writer and sociologist who has taught Ph.D. students at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 2007. He is best known for his research and theories about culture and politics, especially the cultural and emotional dimensions of protest movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social movement impact theory</span>

Social movement impact theory is a subcategory of social movement theory, and focuses on assessing the impacts that social movements have on society, as well as what factors might have led to those effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drew Halfmann</span> American sociologist (born 1967)

Drew Halfmann is an American sociologist best known for his research on social policy in the United States.

Legal opportunity structure or legal opportunity is a concept found in the study of law and social movements. It was first used in order to distinguish it from political opportunity structure or political opportunity, on the basis that law and the courts deserved to be studied in their own right rather than being lumped together with political institutions. Legal opportunities are made up of: access to the courts, which may be affected in particular by the law on standing or locus standi, and costs rules; 'legal stock' or the set of available precedents on which to hang a case; and judicial receptiveness. Some of these are more obviously structural than others - hence the term legal opportunity is sometimes preferred over legal opportunity structure.

The Charles Tilly Award for Best Book is given by the Collective Behavior and Social Movements section of the American Sociological Association in recognition of a significant contribution to the field. Nominees of the award are regarded as being representative of the "best new books in the field of social movements." The award was established in 1986 and is named after sociologist Charles Tilly.

References

  1. Amenta, Edwin Louis (1989). Lost ground: American social spending and taxation policies in depression and war (PhD). University of Chicago. p. ii. OCLC   22176348.
  2. Halfmann, Drew. 2011. Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  3. Somma, Nicolas M. "Individual resource contributions to voluntary organizations in the United States: A comparison between social movements and other organizations." 2014. Acta Sociologica 57(1): 0001699313518081. Accessed 2/17/14.
  4. "Section Award Winners." November 1999. Footnotes Newsletter of the American Sociological Association 27(8). Accessed 2/17/14.
  5. Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association: List of Award Recipients. Accessed 2/17/14.
  6. Zieger, Robert H. "The Development of Federal Old-Age Policy in the Era of the Great Depression: Pensions, Policies, and Politics, 1920–1940." 2008. Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts: Official Journal of the Gerontological Society of America 2(3-4): 251-265. Accessed 2/17/14.
  7. Princeton University Press. Accessed 2/17/14.
  8. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Accessed 2/17/17.
  9. ASA Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Accessed 2/17/14. Archived 2014-02-10 at the Wayback Machine
  10. Russell Sage Foundation: Edwin Amenta. Accessed 2/17/14.
  11. Amenta, Edwin, Neal Caren, Sheera Joy Olasky, and James E. Stobaugh. "All the Movements Fit to Print: Who, What, When, Where, and Why SMO Families Appeared in the New York Times in the Twentieth Century." 2009. American Sociological Review 74(4): 636. See footnote for grant citation.
  12. Halfmann, Drew. 2011. Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.