Date: Sunday, August 10

Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM

Session 084: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Sociologists as Workers and Political Actors in Today’s Multiracial and Multigendered Working Class Struggle
Room: Crystal Room

Sponsor: Program Committee

Organizer &

Presider/Discussant: Walda Katz-Fishman, League of Revolutionaries for a New America and Howard University

Description: 

The university is a microcosm of society. Its purpose is to produce the next generation of workers and to reproduce the existing class relations. Crises within the corporate university are part of global capitalist crises. Sociologists, as workers, face deteriorating economic working conditions, an attack on tenure, and increasing censorship and repression in relation to teaching, research, and political expression. Ironically, sociology has contributed to invisibilizing the concept of working class. Is the resolution to the crises we are experiencing located in becoming more professionalized, more accepting of our exploitation and oppression as workers or should we be organizing collectively as a front of today’s multiracial and multigendered working class struggle? What could this look like?

Papers:

“Consciousness, Vision, & Strategy: Black Women Fighting beyond Survival,” Nicole Rousseau and Brittney Autry, Purdue University Northwest

“Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: The Betrayals of the Academic ‘Working Class’,” Olivia Perlow, Northeastern Illinois University and Sheldon Applewhite, Borough of Manhattan Community College

“Finding Love in the Swamp: Solidarity and Identity in the M(or)ass Struggle,” Corey Dolgon, Stonehill College

“The Possibility of Black Sociology,” Johnny Eric Williams, Trinity College

“Sociology as a Suspect Discipline: Lessons from Post-Soviet Societies,” Leontina Hormel, University of Idaho

“Wokeness as Revolutionary Praxis in the Academy and Beyond: Exploring Anti-Wokeness and Anti-Marxist Propaganda as Hegemonic Social Control,” Zoe Spencer Harris, Virginia State University

“Revolutionary Praxis behind the Wall: The Struggle of a Black Sociologist in Prison Education at an HBCU,” Anthony Jerald Jackson, Bowie State University

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