About
Current Research
Current research pursued by Pitt sociologists
- Gender, states, and social policies
- Gender and social movements
- The changing interplay of the local and the global
- Battering and welfare-to-work transition
- Organized racism and hate crimes
- Racist and anti racist movements in the United States and Europe
- The role of social movements in the history of democracy
- Movements about welfare rights in the wealthy countries
- Movements of the far right
- The human rights movement
- Historical memory in Japan and the USA
- Gay and Lesbian Movements
- Concepts of Democracy
- Peace Movements
- Women's political participation
- Islamic Movements
- The Social Roles of Intellectuals in the Middle East
Much of this work is interdisciplinary, and Sociology faculty and students are active in the Women's Studies Program, the University Center for International Studies, the Center for Race and Social Problems, the University Center for Social and Urban Research, the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies, and other interdisciplinary efforts across campus and around the world.
Current research pursued by Ph.D Candidates
Maria Jose Alvarez Rivadulla
Title: Contentious Urbanization from Below: Land Squatting in Montevideo
Through a combination of statistical analysis and ethnographic tools, this project attempts to describe and explain the origins and trajectories of land squatting as a social movement in Montevideo, Uruguay from its emergence in the 1950s until today. Such an elusive form of collective action is difficult to grasp theoretically and methodologically. This has been the most challenging/interesting part of the project to me so far.
Kai Heidemann
Recent years have seen a well-spring of policy debates and initiatives emerge within the European Union regarding the rights of minority language speakers. Perhaps nowhere has this debate sparked more controversy than in France where linguistic rights have been periodically derided as a threat to the culture-blind model of citizenship which dominates French republican politics. Taking this political environment as a starting point, my research takes a longitudinal look at the struggles and strategies of minority language rights activists in the Basque and Occitan-speaking regions of France. Working with qualitative methods, I explore the processes through which grassroots activists have forged alternative, community-based schooling organizations as a way to promote increased self-determination and recognition for linguistic minorities within the French Republic. Building on theories of ethnic mobilization, education reform and state-level power, I argue that language activists have made political gains over the years by relying upon strategies which generate solidarity in the civic realm.
Margee Kerr
Many people have mobilized around the theory that mercury in federally licensed vaccines partially or completely caused their child's or loved one's autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) rejects this theory. How and why have activists continued to mobilize around the theory that mercury in vaccines triggered ASDs? Through the analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews, and archival documents, I will examine divergent knowledge claims among ASD/mercury activists, scientists, and the CDC as well as strategies for achieving credibility in the ASD/mercury link debate. Specifically, my dissertation will a) explain different meanings and constructions of credibility in the debate, b) describe and analyze activists' mobilization, and c) investigate which strategies of credibility activists have employed to advance their claims.
Veronica Szabo
Among many controversial policies of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, the efforts to “indoctrinate” youth were widely documented by the media and scholars of East Europe. Most of these accounts are limited to cursory descriptions of foreign observers peeking through the Iron Curtain or passionate dissidents’ accounts. The end of the Cold War and the beginning of the East European “transitions” brought a renewed interest in what was then called “the communist legacy”. Few studies however, approached these policies in-depth (a notable exception is Redden’s “Textbook Reds”) or from a multi-angled perspective. Through archival research, life histories and interviews with former students, teachers, researchers and policymakers I am looking at the political socialization of high-school youth in 1980s Romania. I examine political socialization as a dynamic process involving different actors and agendas, shaping it or subverting it from policy on paper to real life.