Assistant Professor 
Stephen Leacock Building, Room 820
855 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC H3A 2T7
Tel.: 514-398-6852
Fax: 514-398-7476
E-Mail: barry.eidlin [at] mcgill.ca
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.
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.
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) https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/sociology/political-sociology/labor-and-class-idea-united-states-and-canada
Peer-reviewed articles:
“The Problem of Workplace Democracy.” New Labor Forum 27(1):70-79 (2018) (with Micah Uetricht). https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796017745037
“Election 2016: Labor, Politics, and the Imperative of Organization.” Labor Studies Journal 42(3):226– 32. (2017) https://doi.org/10.1177/0160449X17726185
“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). (Link)
“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). (Link)
“Class Formation and Class Identity: Birth, Death, and Possibilities for Renewal.” Sociology Compass 8(8):1045–62 (2014). (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soc4.12197)
“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). (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00236560903020823)
Book Reviews:
“Review of Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures by Betsy Leondar- Wright.” Contemporary Sociology 45:2 (2016), 206-209.
“Unions struggle in the courts, but they have a fighting chance in the streets.” The Washington Post, September 2, 2018 (print edition). https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/unions-struggle-in-the-courts-but...
“The Supreme Court’s Janus ruling is flawed. Canadian legal history shows why” (with Charles Smith, first author). The Washington Post, June 27, 2018, Link
“Labor’s Legitimacy Crisis under Trump.” Jacobin, July 5, 2017, Link
(Republished in French as« Crise de légitimité du mouvement syndical à l’ère de Trump », Nouveaux cahiers du socialisme Issue 19, Winter 2018.)
Courses Taught
Undergraduate Courses:
SOCI 211: Sociological Inquiry
SOCI 386: Contemporary Social Movements
Graduate Seminar:
SOCI 501: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
Office Hours
Wednesday 15:00 - 17:00