Larry Isaac | |
---|---|
Born | Cleveland, Ohio, United States |
Academic background | |
Education | BS, 1971, MS, 1974, University of Akron PhD, 1979, Indiana University |
Thesis | The Political Economy of Insurgency, State Expenditures, and Income Distribution: A Comparative Panel Analysis, 1948-1970 (1979) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Florida State University,Vanderbilt University |
Notable students | Jonathan Coley,Anna Jacobs,Quan Mai |
Larry W. Isaac is an American sociologist,the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Economy at Vanderbilt University.
Isaac was born in Cleveland,Ohio,graduated from Avon High School west of Cleveland,and received a B.S. in Industrial Management and M.A. in Sociology from the University of Akron. He did his doctoral work and received the Ph.D. in Sociology from Indiana University (Bloomington). [1]
Isaac began his professorial career at Florida State University in 1978 where he rose through the academic ranks to become the Mildred and Claude Pepper Distinguished Professor. He joined the Sociology Department at Vanderbilt University in 2004,where he is now the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor (endowed chair) of Sociology &Political Economy. [1] He served as the Sociology Department Chair at Vanderbilt from 2015 to 2021.
From 2010-2015,Isaac served as senior editor of the American Sociological Review,the flagship scientific journal of the American Sociological Association. [1] He also previously served as president of the Southern Sociological Society from 2007–2008 and received the Distinguished Lectureship Award from the Southern Sociological Society in 2011. [2] [3]
Isaac has published extensively in the fields of political sociology,political economy,social movements,labor studies,and historical processes of social change. He is known for his published work in three major areas:(i) political economy of labor movements and class formation processes;(ii) civil rights and black liberation movement dynamics;and (iii) methodological approaches to incorporating qualitative events and turning points into quantitative models of social-historical change. [1]
Isaac's publications have received three awards from the American Sociological Association (in Comparative-Historical Sociology,Culture,and Labor Movements). [4] [5] In recognition of his accomplishments in research,he was elected into the national honorary research society,Sociological Research Association,in 2014. [6]
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations, or both. Social movements have been described as "organizational structures and strategies that may empower oppressed populations to mount effective challenges and resist the more powerful and advantaged elites". They represent a method of social change from the bottom within nations. On the other hand, some social movements do not aim to make society more egalitarian, but to maintain or amplify existing power relationships. For example, scholars have described fascism as a social movement.
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.
James Morris Lawson Jr. was an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years.
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.
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein was an American sociologist and economic historian. He is perhaps best known for his development in sociology of world-systems approach. He was a Senior Research Scholar at Yale University from 2000 until his death in 2019, and published bimonthly syndicated commentaries through Agence Global on world affairs from October 1998 to July 2019.
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.
Charles Tilly was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was a professor of history, sociology, and social science at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1984 before becoming the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.
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.
Mayer Nathan Zald was an American sociologist. He was a professor of sociology, social work and business administration at the University of Michigan, noted for contributions to the sociology of organizations and social movements.
The American Sociological Review is a bi-monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of sociology. It is published by SAGE Publications on behalf of the American Sociological Association. It was established in 1936. It is along with American Journal of Sociology considered one of the top journals in sociology.
Kim Voss is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley whose main field of research is social movements and the American labor movement.
Rachel Sherman is an associate professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research. Her first book, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels, analyzes how workers, guests, and managers in luxury hotels make sense of and negotiate class inequalities that marked their relationships. Her second book, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence, explores the lived experience of privilege among wealthy and affluent parents in New York City.
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Theory of generations is a theory posed by Karl Mannheim in his 1928 essay, "Das Problem der Generationen," and translated into English in 1952 as "The Problem of Generations." This essay has been described as "the most systematic and fully developed" and even "the seminal theoretical treatment of generations as a sociological phenomenon". According to Mannheim, people are significantly influenced by the socio-historical environment of their youth; giving rise, on the basis of shared experience, to social cohorts that in their turn influence events that shape future generations. Because of the historical context in which Mannheim wrote, some critics contend that the theory of generations centers on Western ideas and lacks a broader cultural understanding. Others argue that the theory of generations should be global in scope, due to the increasingly globalized nature of contemporary society.
The Nashville Student Movement was an organization that challenged racial segregation in Nashville, Tennessee, during the Civil Rights Movement. It was created during workshops in nonviolence taught by James Lawson at the Clark Memorial United Methodist Church. The students from this organization initiated the Nashville sit-ins in 1960. They were regarded as the most disciplined and effective of the student movement participants during 1960. The Nashville Student Movement was key in establishing leadership in the Freedom Riders.
Adolf Fox Sturmthal was a U.S. political scientist, sociologist and journalist of Austrian birth who specialised in labour studies and international relations.
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Aldon Douglas Morris is emeritus professor of sociology at Northwestern University and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose work involves social movements, civil rights, and social inequality. He was the 2021 president of the American Sociological Association. He is best known for his work on sociolgist W. E. B. Du Bois.