Jackie Smith’s research and practice focuses on how lessons from social movements can inform today’s work to address urgent social problems such as climate change, inequality, and access to basic needs. Her earlier research on global advocacy movements has led to her engagement with the local and trans-local activism within the right to the city movement. Smith helped co-found Pittsburgh’s Human Rights City Alliance and currently serves on the housing rights working group and coordinating committee. She also is part of the bi-national Human Rights Cities Alliance, which works to support learning and advocacy across cities and to link U.S. with global human rights movements. This work has contributed to her scholarship on social movement coalitions and on the political economy of contemporary conflicts and change. Her current research addresses these themes and brings attention to the growing influence of corporations and their role in political repression. Smith teaches courses on globalization and public health, urban politics and housing, and on social movements and contemporary conflicts around inequality, race, and the environment. From 2012-2020 she served as editor-in-chief of the ASA Journal of World-Systems Research.
- PhD, University of Notre Dame, 1996
- BA, The Catholic University of America, 1990
Education & Training
10.1080/08854300.2019.1676030.
Articles:
“Human rights cities and the expanding global toolkit for decolonization and racial justice” Journal of Human Rights Vol. 23(2): 148-159
“Universities and Human Rights in Cities” (with Michael Goodhart & Tina Kempin-Reuter) Journal of Human Rights Vol. 23(2): 199-212.
“Creative Disappointment: How Movements for Democracy Spawn Movements for Even More Democracy” (with John Markoff & Hillary Lazar), Research in Political Sociology 28.
“Challenging Corporate Power: Human Rights Globalization from Above and Below” Development 64(1).
"Social Movements and Human Rights” In Human Rights: Politics and Practice, 3 rd Edition. Michael E. Goodhart, Editor. . 2022, Oxford University Press.
Making Other Worlds Possible: The Battle in Seattle in World-Historical Context Jackie Smith (2020) "Making Other Worlds Possible: The Battle in Seattle in World-Historical Context," Socialism and Democracy, 10.1080/08854300.2019.1676030.
“Responding to Globalization and Urban Conflict: Human Rights City Initiatives” Jackie Smith (2017) Studies in Social Justice 11(2):347-368.
Jackie Smith, Basak Gemici, Samantha Plummer and Melanie Hughes. 2018. “Transnational Social Movement Organizations and Counter-Hegemonic Struggles Today” Journal of World-Systems Research 24(2):372-403.
Smith, Jackie, Samantha Plummer, and Melanie Hughes. “Transnational Contention and Changing Organizational Fields in the Late-20th and Early-21st Centuries.” Global Networks 17(1) 3-22. DOI: 10.1111/glob.12152
“Counter-hegemonic Networks and the Transformation of Global Climate Politics: Rethinking Movement-State Relations” Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought (January): 1-19.
Books and Edited Collections:
Human Rights Globalization: How local and global actions institutionalize human rights Special issue of Journal of Human Rights, Jackie Smith and Michael Goodhart, Editors. Vol. 23(2) (2024).
Social Movements and World-System Transformation (co-edited with Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning, and John Markoff)
Social Movements in the World-System: The Politics of Crisis and Transformation (with Dawn Wiest)
Social Movements, Globalization, and Peacebuilding (Co-edited with Ernesto Verdeja)
Social Movements for Global Democracy
Public Sociology:
UN to US Government: Do Better on Housing Shelterforce June 3, 2019, Jackie Smith and Emily Cummins
"Bringing Human Rights Home: New Strategies for Local Organizing" By: Jackie Smith & Joshua Cooper, Open Global Rights, August 2019.
Human Rights, Not Corporate Rights, by Jackie Smith. Forum contribution: Corporations in the Crosshairs: From Reform to Redesign Great Transitions Initiative.
Global Peasant Declaration Represents Huge Advance for Human Rights by Jackie Smith, Caitlin Schroering December 2018, Commondreams.org
“Sociology’s Nero Syndrome?” Mobilizing Ideas
"Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Crisis: Is Privatization the Solution?" McClymonds, Daniel, Jackie Smith, Connor Chapman, and Randall Taylor. Research Report. University of Pittsburgh University Center for Social and Urban Research, 2022.
Governments and environmental groups are turning to international courts to address the impacts of climate change — podcast The Conversation June 1, 2023
A Post-Election Strategy for National Unity: Focus on Future Generations Commondreams, January 7, 2021.
- Social conflict and transformation
- Environment & climate change politics
- Urban politics
- Global and local human rights movements
- Global politics of public health
- Media and politics
- International migration
- International law and institutions
- Eco-feminism
- Social movements
- World-systems analysis
- Global and transnational sociology
- Urban sociology
- Race and social conflict
- Public sociology
- Environmental sociology
- Global health
