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The Sociology Colloquium Series: Welcomes Dr. Andy Andrews

On Friday, December 9, 2022, the Sociology Colloquium Series will feature Dr. Kenneth "Andy" Andrews. Andy Andrews is the Carl W. Ernst Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies protest, social movements, and their influence on politics, media, and social change. He is interested in how relatively powerless groups are able to sometimes propel significant changes in society. Andrews has written extensively on the dynamics and legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. South. In other projects, he has studied the leadership, participation, and influence of environmental groups and the local and state politics of prohibition. Currently, he is studying protest and activism in the period following the 2016 election.

Colloquia Title: 

“Structure and Contingency in Local Protest Challenging Jim Crow”

In the 1950s and 1960s, activists across numerous cities orchestrated local movements to challenge Jim Crow. How can we explain the trajectories of local protest including their emergence, dynamics, and consequences? I address these enduring puzzles in the field by developing a synthetic argument supported by a comparative analysis of local movements. I move beyond dominant theoretical models that locate the causes of protest in national-level patterns of political opportunity, grievances, and organization. Instead, I focus on local sources of organizational capacity, the temporal clustering of protests in episodes, and the interactions among activists, authorities, targets, and bystanders that shape the trajectory of local episodes.