Barry Eidlin

Associate Professor                  

Stephen Leacock Building, Room 820
855 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC H3A 2T7

Tel.: 514-398-6852
Email: barry.eidlin [at] mcgill.ca

Office Hours:

Tuesdays: 10:00 - 12:00 or by appointment
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• Research Areas
• Biography
• Publications
• Courses Taught

Research Areas

Political sociology, economic sociology, organizations and institutions, comparative historical sociology, inequality and social policy, social theory, logic of inquiry, work, labor, social movements.

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Biography

(PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2012).

Barry Eidlin is a comparative historical sociologist interested in the study of class, politics, inequality, and social change. More specifically, his research explores the changing relationship between social mobilization, political processes, and ideology in advanced capitalist democracies. His research has examined diverging trajectories of working class power in the United States and Canada over the course of the twentieth century, changing party-class relations in the United States and Canada, intra-class conflict and organizational transformation in the Teamsters Union, and the effect of Walmart on retail sector wages, among other things. Eidlin’s major current project revisits the question of “why no workplace democracy in America?” Starting from the paradox that most Americans take for granted certain basic rights as citizens that they then willingly check at the door when they show up for work, the project first examines the history of workplace democracy, when workers didn't make such a stark division between their economic lives as workers and political lives as citizens. It then explains how this division between economic and political life developed and became entrenched. He is also working on a series of other projects broadly aimed re-theorizing contemporary notions of class identity, ideology, and politics.

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Recent Publications

Book:

Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in the Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics series) (2018)

Edited volumes:

Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 37: Rethinking Class and Social Difference (co-edited with Michael A. McCarthy) (Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 2020).

Peer-reviewed articles:

"Moral Economies, Mobilization, and Inequality: The Case of the 2018 U.S. Teachers' Strikes" (with Eric Blanc). Forthcoming in Research in Political Sociology vol. 28 (2021).

"Introducing Rethinking Class and Social Difference: A Dynamic Asymmetry Approach" (with Michael A. McCarthy). Political Power and Social Theory vol. 37 (2020).

"U.S. Union Decline, Revitalization, and the Missing "Militant Minority" (with Micah Uetricht). Labor Studies Journal 44(1):36-59 (2019).

“The Problem of Workplace Democracy.” New Labor Forum 27(1):70-79 (2018) (with Micah Uetricht).

“Election 2016: Labor, Politics, and the Imperative of Organization.” Labor Studies Journal 42(3):226– 32. (2017)

“Why is There No Labor Party in the United States? Political Articulation and the Canadian Comparison, 1932-1948.” American Sociological Review 81(3):488-516 (2016).

“Unions and Inequality.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Sociology, Janeen Baxter, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

“Class vs. Special Interest: Labor, Power, and Politics in the U.S. and Canada, 1911-2011." Politics & Society 43(2): 181-211 (2015).

“Class Formation and Class Identity: Birth, Death, and Possibilities for Renewal.” Sociology Compass 8(8):1045–62 (2014).

“Class and Work.” Chapter 4 in Sage Handbook on the Sociology of Work and Employment, Stephen Edgell, Heidi Gottfried, and Edward Granter, eds. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2015).

“Continuity or Change? Rethinking Left Party Formation in Canada.” Pp. 61-86 in Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society, Cedric de Leon, Manali Desai, and Cihan Tuǧal, eds. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2015).

“‘Upon This (Foundering) Rock’: Minneapolis Teamsters and the Transformation of U.S. Business Unionism, 1934-1941.” Labor History, 50(3):249-267 (2009).

Book Chapters:

"Labor Unions and Movements," Oxford Handbook of Karl Max, Matthew Vidal, Tomas Rotta, Tony Smith, and Paul Prew, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Reprinted as "Why Unions Are Good -- But Not Good Enough." Jacobin January 6, 2020.

"Social Class and Social Movements" (with Jasmine Kerrissey, equal authorship), Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd ed., David Snow, Sarah Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Holly McCammon, eds. (Hoboken: Wiley, 2018).

Book Reviews:

"Review of Strategizing against Sweatshops: The Global Economy, Student Activism, and Worker Empowerment by Matthew S. Williams." Social Forces, published online January 22, 2021.

"Review of Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions Since the New Deal by Michael A. McCarthy." Social Forces 98(4): 1-4 (2020). 

"Class War on New Ground: Review of On New Terrain by Kim Moody." Against the Current 198 (Jan-Feb): 33-35 (2019).

"Review of When Solidarity Works: Labor-Civic Networks and Welfare States in the Market Reform Era by Cheol-Sung Lee." Contemporary Sociology 47(5):605-607 (2018).

“Review of Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures by Betsy Leondar- Wright.” Contemporary Sociology 45:2 (2016), 206-209.

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Courses Taught

Undergraduate Courses:

SOCI 211: Sociological Inquiry

SOCI 312: Sociology of Work and Industry

SOCI 386: Contemporary Social Movements

Graduate Seminar:

SOCI 501: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

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