Gay W Seidman
Biographic Data
| ID | 77930 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gay W Seidman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gay W |
| FAMILY NAME | Seidman |
| SIGNATURE | SEIDMAN G W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4500-0106 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 145 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Michael Burawoy's Path: From North to South, and Back Again
Can We Unlearn Racism? What South Africa Teaches Us about Whiteness
Manufacturing Militance: Workers' Movements in Brazil and South Africa, 1970-1985
Lula and His Politics of Cunning
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the focus of a roundtable review on John D. French's Lula and His Politics of Cunning: From Metalworker to President of Brazil. The reviewers offer a reading of Lula and his legacies from perspectives that range from LGBTQ+ studies to racial politics, including an analysis centered on the story of a humble man that rose from below, "a most exceptional common man," from his humble beginnings up to his election as presi…
Introduction to the Special Issue
This essay introduces a special issue of Politics & Society in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019
Class, Gender, and Utopian Community: In Memory of Erik Olin Wright
This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947-2019), explores Wright's shift from a decades-long effort to map class structures in industrial societies to a search for paths to a more egalitarian future, pointing to the key role of feminist theory in that shift
Divestment Dynamics: Mobilizing, Shaming, and Changing the Rules
Over the past twenty years, divestment has become a standard tactic for transnational campaigns: activists urge institutional investors to sell their holdings in immoral business activities. But what do activists hope to achieve? Drawing parallels between two successful examples -- the American anti-apartheid movement and today’s ‘fossil-free’ divestment campaign --, I suggest that activists turn to the tactic not in the hope of lowering share pr…
Boycotts, Consumer
Regulation at Work: Globalization, Labor Rights, and Development
Over the past three decades, globalization has created new regulatory challenges. As businesses rail against “red tape” and threaten to move if labor, health and safety codes do not become more “flexible,” what are policymakers to do? When workplaces are spread around the world, what kind of new regulatory system might ensure that basic standards are met—not only to protect consumers but also workers and their communities around the world? The qu…
Social Movement Unionism: From Description To Exhortation
Workers' Rights, Human Rights, and Solidarity Across Borders
Over the past few decades, as restless capital has moved about the world looking for cheaper production sites, labor campaigns have looked across borders for support. In a world where threats of capital mobility and outsourcing strategies are used to push wages and working conditions ever lower, local activists have called on international allies to insist that multinationals improve the treatment of workers—especially in the developing world, wh…
Slender threads: Social labeling in the Indian carpet industry since the mid-1990s
Over the past few years, when global companies have been confronted with evidence that their subcontractors are using child labor, they often turn to ‘social labeling’ and third-party certification to show consumers that their products are ‘child-labor free’.This article examines what is probably the most famous example of this kind of social labeling schemes, ‘Rugmark’, a program in India that attaches a label to handwoven carpets woven on looms…
Violence in the City of Women: Policy and Batterers in Bahia, Brazil by Sarah J. Hautzinger
Labouring under an Illusion? Lesotho's 'sweat-free' label
In 2007 Lesotho's apparel manufacturers took a remarkable step: they voted unanimously to adopt a national 'sweat-free' strategy, promising to protect and strengthen workers' rights in the tiny, landlocked country. This paper seeks first to explain why manufacturers supported the move, in the context of changing market prospects as well as global pressure from multinational brands and international agencies. The paper then asks whether Lesotho of…
Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? - By Robin Archer
Reforming Global Sweatshop Reform
Labor History symposium: Gay W. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott
Transnational Labour Campaigns: Can the Logic of the Market Be Turned Against Itself
Many discussions of how to improve working conditions around the world - especially in poor and developing regions - suggest that transnational activists could 'name and shame' employers, using independent monitors and the threat of consumer boycotts to push international brands to monitor conditions in their suppliers around the world. Drawing on a comparative study of independent monitoring in South Africa, India and Guatemala, this article sug…
Beyond Racism: Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States
Monitoring Multinationals: Lessons from the Anti-Apartheid Era
This article examines the construction and implementation of the Sullivan Principles, a two-decade effort to use corporate codes of conduct to improve the behavior of multinational corporations in South Africa under apartheid. Without organized social movement pressure, corporations would not have agreed to adopt the code, and corporate compliance required sustained pressure from the anti-apartheid movement. The system's independent monitoring pr…
Guerrillas in their Midst: Armed Struggle in The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement
Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article…
Trade Unions and Democratization in South Africa, 1985-1997
List of Tables Preface List of Acronyms Notes on the Contributors Maps Introduction: Consolidating Democracy in a Liberalising World: Trade Union and Transition in South Africa E.Webster & G.Adler Trade Unions in Transition to Democracy in South Africa, Spain and Brazil D.de Villiers & M.Anstey Labour in South Africa's Transition to Democracy: Concertation in a Third World Setting J.Baskin Growth, Structure, and Power in the South African Union M…
Strategic' Challenges to Gender Inequality the South African Gender Commission
As part of constructing its new democracy, South Africa created the Commission on Gender Equality, a horizontal independent body charged with monitoring and stimulating efforts to create gender equality. With unusual powers and resources, staffed by energetic and committed feminists, the Commission is an unusual experiment in strategic feminist intervention. Based on a five-month participant observation study, this article describes the Commissio…
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy
Blurred Lines: Nonviolence in South Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Gendered Citizenship: South Africa's Democratic Transition and the Construction of a Gendered State
The tendency for abstract theorists of democratization to overlook gender dynamics is perhaps exacerbated in the South African case, where racial inequality is obviously key. Yet, attention to the processes through which South African activists inserted gender issues into discussions about how to construct new institutions provides an unusual prism through which to explore the gendered character of citizenship. After providing an explanation for …
Is South Africa Different? Sociological Comparisons and Theoretical Contributions From the Land of Apartheid
For most of the past 50 years, South Africa served as the outlier in sociological discussions of racial inequality: From the late 1940s, when most of the world was moving away from strict racial classification and segregation, apartheid provided social scientists with their most extreme example of the dynamics of racial segregation and exclusion.Yet while apartheid South Africa was unique, social scientists have also used it in comparative studie…
Monitoring Multinationals: Lessons from the Anti-Apartheid Era
This article examines the construction and implementation of the Sullivan Principles, a two-decade effort to use corporate codes of conduct to improve the behavior of multinational corporations in South Africa under apartheid. Without organized social movement pressure, corporations would not have agreed to adopt the code, and corporate compliance required sustained pressure from the anti-apartheid movement. The system's independent monitoring pr…
No Freedom without the Women: Mobilization and Gender in South Africa, 1970-1992
Women in Zimbabwe: Postindependence Struggles
Guerrillas in their Midst: Armed Struggle in The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement
Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article…
Labouring under an Illusion? Lesotho's 'sweat-free' label
In 2007 Lesotho's apparel manufacturers took a remarkable step: they voted unanimously to adopt a national 'sweat-free' strategy, promising to protect and strengthen workers' rights in the tiny, landlocked country. This paper seeks first to explain why manufacturers supported the move, in the context of changing market prospects as well as global pressure from multinational brands and international agencies. The paper then asks whether Lesotho of…
Transnational Labour Campaigns: Can the Logic of the Market Be Turned Against Itself
Many discussions of how to improve working conditions around the world - especially in poor and developing regions - suggest that transnational activists could 'name and shame' employers, using independent monitors and the threat of consumer boycotts to push international brands to monitor conditions in their suppliers around the world. Drawing on a comparative study of independent monitoring in South Africa, India and Guatemala, this article sug…
Strategic' Challenges to Gender Inequality the South African Gender Commission
As part of constructing its new democracy, South Africa created the Commission on Gender Equality, a horizontal independent body charged with monitoring and stimulating efforts to create gender equality. With unusual powers and resources, staffed by energetic and committed feminists, the Commission is an unusual experiment in strategic feminist intervention. Based on a five-month participant observation study, this article describes the Commissio…
Divestment Dynamics: Mobilizing, Shaming, and Changing the Rules
Over the past twenty years, divestment has become a standard tactic for transnational campaigns: activists urge institutional investors to sell their holdings in immoral business activities. But what do activists hope to achieve? Drawing parallels between two successful examples -- the American anti-apartheid movement and today’s ‘fossil-free’ divestment campaign --, I suggest that activists turn to the tactic not in the hope of lowering share pr…
Regulation at Work: Globalization, Labor Rights, and Development
Over the past three decades, globalization has created new regulatory challenges. As businesses rail against “red tape” and threaten to move if labor, health and safety codes do not become more “flexible,” what are policymakers to do? When workplaces are spread around the world, what kind of new regulatory system might ensure that basic standards are met—not only to protect consumers but also workers and their communities around the world? The qu…
Labor History symposium: Gay W. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott
Blurred Lines: Nonviolence in South Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Slender threads: Social labeling in the Indian carpet industry since the mid-1990s
Over the past few years, when global companies have been confronted with evidence that their subcontractors are using child labor, they often turn to ‘social labeling’ and third-party certification to show consumers that their products are ‘child-labor free’.This article examines what is probably the most famous example of this kind of social labeling schemes, ‘Rugmark’, a program in India that attaches a label to handwoven carpets woven on looms…
Beyond Racism: Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States
The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries.Alejandro Portes , Manuel Castells , Lauren Benton
Women in Zimbabwe: Postindependence Struggles
Books in review
Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, Volume 1
The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries.Alejandro Portes , Manuel Castells , Lauren Benton
The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi . Luise White Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 . Cherryl Walker
The Making of Apartheid, 1948-1961: Conflict and Compromise
No Freedom without the Women: Mobilization and Gender in South Africa, 1970-1992
Social Change and Labor Unrest in Brazil Since 1945. Salvador A. M. Sandoval
Manufacturing Militance: Workers’ Movements in Brazil and South Africa, 1970–1985
Manufacturing Militance: Workers' Movements in Brazil and South Africa, 1970-1985
Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration
Gendered Citizenship: South Africa's Democratic Transition and the Construction of a Gendered State
The tendency for abstract theorists of democratization to overlook gender dynamics is perhaps exacerbated in the South African case, where racial inequality is obviously key. Yet, attention to the processes through which South African activists inserted gender issues into discussions about how to construct new institutions provides an unusual prism through which to explore the gendered character of citizenship. After providing an explanation for …
Is South Africa Different? Sociological Comparisons and Theoretical Contributions From the Land of Apartheid
For most of the past 50 years, South Africa served as the outlier in sociological discussions of racial inequality: From the late 1940s, when most of the world was moving away from strict racial classification and segregation, apartheid provided social scientists with their most extreme example of the dynamics of racial segregation and exclusion.Yet while apartheid South Africa was unique, social scientists have also used it in comparative studie…
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy
Blurred Lines: Nonviolence in South Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
La transition démocratique en Afrique du Sud: Construction d'une nouvelle nation et genre de l'État
Le constat selon lequel les théoriciens de la démocratie ignorent les dynamiques de genre peut paraître excessif dans le cas de l'Afrique du Sud où l'inégalite raciale était bien évidemment l'essentiel. Toutefois, les processus par lesquels les militantes Sud Africaines ont posé les questions de genre dans les discussions sur la construction des nouvelles institutions, peuvent expliquer la construction de la citoyenneté. Cette inclusion des intér…
Guerrillas in their Midst: Armed Struggle in The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement
Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article…
Trade Unions and Democratization in South Africa, 1985-1997
List of Tables Preface List of Acronyms Notes on the Contributors Maps Introduction: Consolidating Democracy in a Liberalising World: Trade Union and Transition in South Africa E.Webster & G.Adler Trade Unions in Transition to Democracy in South Africa, Spain and Brazil D.de Villiers & M.Anstey Labour in South Africa's Transition to Democracy: Concertation in a Third World Setting J.Baskin Growth, Structure, and Power in the South African Union M…
Strategic' Challenges to Gender Inequality the South African Gender Commission
As part of constructing its new democracy, South Africa created the Commission on Gender Equality, a horizontal independent body charged with monitoring and stimulating efforts to create gender equality. With unusual powers and resources, staffed by energetic and committed feminists, the Commission is an unusual experiment in strategic feminist intervention. Based on a five-month participant observation study, this article describes the Commissio…
Monitoring Multinationals: Lessons from the Anti-Apartheid Era
This article examines the construction and implementation of the Sullivan Principles, a two-decade effort to use corporate codes of conduct to improve the behavior of multinational corporations in South Africa under apartheid. Without organized social movement pressure, corporations would not have agreed to adopt the code, and corporate compliance required sustained pressure from the anti-apartheid movement. The system's independent monitoring pr…
Beyond Racism: Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States
Reforming Global Sweatshop Reform
Labor History symposium: Gay W. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott
Transnational Labour Campaigns: Can the Logic of the Market Be Turned Against Itself
Many discussions of how to improve working conditions around the world - especially in poor and developing regions - suggest that transnational activists could 'name and shame' employers, using independent monitors and the threat of consumer boycotts to push international brands to monitor conditions in their suppliers around the world. Drawing on a comparative study of independent monitoring in South Africa, India and Guatemala, this article sug…
Labouring under an Illusion? Lesotho's 'sweat-free' label
In 2007 Lesotho's apparel manufacturers took a remarkable step: they voted unanimously to adopt a national 'sweat-free' strategy, promising to protect and strengthen workers' rights in the tiny, landlocked country. This paper seeks first to explain why manufacturers supported the move, in the context of changing market prospects as well as global pressure from multinational brands and international agencies. The paper then asks whether Lesotho of…
Political science (28 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (8 works)