Category: Books

Recent books published by faculty, students, and alumni.

James M. Jasper – Protestors and their Targets

James M. Jasper (Faculty) edited Protestors and their Targets (Temple University Press, 2020) with Brayden King

The strategic interactions between protestors and their targets shape the world around us in profound ways. The editors and contributors to Protestors and Their Targets—all leading scholars in the study of social movements—look at why movements do what they do and why their interactions with other societal actors turn out as they do. They recognize that targets are not stationary but react to the movement and require the movement to react back.

This edited collection analyzes how social movements select their targets, movement-target interactions, and the outcomes of those interactions. Case studies examine school closures in Sweden, the U.S. labor movement, Bolivian water and Mexican corn, and other global issues to show the strategic thinking, shifting objectives, and various degrees of success in the actions and nature of these protest movements.

Protestors and Their Targets seeks to develop a set of tools for the further development of the field’s future work on this underexplored set of interactions.

Contributors: Edwin Amenta, Kenneth T. Andrews, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Sarah Gaby, Pablo Gastón, Frances Fox Piven, Gay W. Seidman, Nicole Shortt, Erica Simmons, Katrin UbaKim Voss, and the editors

Bonnie D. Oglensky – Ambivalence in Mentorship: An Exploration of Emotional Complexities

Bonnie D. Oglensky (alum) published Ambivalence in Mentorship: An Exploration of Emotional Complexities (Routledge, 2018)

Ambivalence in Mentorship is based on research of scores of mentors and protégés in longstanding relationships representing a range of career fields. Using vivid case narratives, the book takes a nuanced look at the emotional complexities of their mentorships—the intense passions and hopes that get stirred up in these professional, yet intimate connections as well as the turmoil created by disappointment, betrayal, competition, and the mere readiness to move on and separate from these relationships.

Framing the psychodynamics of mentorship dialectically, the book unpacks the relational struggles in mentorship to trace how these emerge from strong emotional bonds. This is accomplished by delineating and illustrating three modes of the ambivalent attachment between mentor and protégé: idealization, loyalty, and generativity. Pushing at the boundaries of research on the topic, Ambivalence in Mentorship locates this relationship at the crosshairs of authority and love—highlighting the interplay of intrapsychic, interpersonal, cultural, and historical forces that drive this relationship to be at once vital and risky. Professionals in the social sciences, business, and management fields will find that the book offers a fresh perspective and authentic voice to the very real joys and complicated feelings that attend mentorship.