My work is centered on the political economy of development, a sub-field that focuses on explaining different national trajectories and global stratification. My work is multidisciplinary, drawing from anthropology, economics, history, and political science, as well as sociology. My research is largely qualitative, and I have conducted field research in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, New Orleans, LA, and Quito, Ecuador. I have also explored other academic interests in Nicaragua and Wales. My research details how poor people push for political change, and the limitations to which they are subjected in their efforts toward greater self-determination. I have particular interest in the links poor people hold – either forged themselves, or imposed on them – with other social groups. The interaction of organized poor people’s movements with groups representing interests of the state, elites, or middle classes, has important implications for how poor people’s political efforts proceed, and the gains they are able to win. Much of my work in Mexico focused on a community organization representing poor neighborhoods in the south of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. This organization, the UCI, actively defied the clientelist political organizational efforts of the government, allying instead with various community organizations of the poor, and middle-class nongovernmental organizations to press a diverging political agenda of democratization and human rights, and land security and better urban services. My work in Mexico lasted for 15 years, and led me to criticize the concept of civil society, which I find analytically, theoretically, and politically inadequate.
Articles
People, Place, And Time: How Structural Fieldwork Helps World-Systems Analysis (with Paul K. Gellert), Journal of World Systems Research (2009)
Some of the most insightful work in the political economy of the world-system area has...
Rethinking Civil Society in the Age of NAFTA: The Case of Mexico, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2007)
This article offers an analysis and critique of the concept of civil society and its...
Sponsored Social Change in a Public Housing Project (with P. Denise Cobb and Beth A. Rubin), Qualitative Sociology (2006)
Federal and local pressures have given rise to a hybrid organization that brings together disparate...
Hierarchy and Partnership in New Orleans (with Denise Cobb), Qualitative Sociology (2002)
Recently, increasing numbers of partnerships have emerged in which universities work to address economic, social,...