Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Ewick and Silbey have recently argued that legal consciousness can be pre-political. In their view, by drawing on legality, ordinary people's challenges to existing social conditions may later form the basis of broader political and social movement mobilizations. In this paper, I argue that everyday legal mobilization is political action in and of itself, often inspired by oppositional consciousness, nurtured by social movements.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article focuses on the study of attitudes towards social inequality in urban China. The study based on a sample survey conducted in Changchun city. Indicators in the questionnaire are designed to measure two types of attitudes towards social inequalities including egalitarian consciousness and status-seeking consciousness. Chinese attitudes towards social inequality are explained in a refined model.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Healing the world from the crises of globalized capital in late modernity has been the cornerstone of media that serve the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) marketplace. Central to these media is a spiritualized call for worldviews of personal transformation as the pathway to global social change. These (primarily print) media have begun to go beyond their original circulation to include interpersonal communicative action through Internet-based “pods” or groups, salons, conferences-as community, and traveling seminars. These efforts reflect practices that evolved from the New Age and 1960s social movements articulating values about the environment, human rights, social justice and the “true” relational nature of our lives with that of the “other” and with the natural world. This paper explores the community-building work and visions of the LOHAS trade and consumer media to further understanding of how emergent spirituality takes shape through media commodification and the implications of that for social action.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the field of sociology, the role of African American thinker and activist, W.E.B. Du Bois, as theorist and activist is well known. The work of Gloria Anzaldúa, however, while widely discussed in other disciplines is only beginning to be recognized by sociologists as they begin to review and discuss her work. Moreover, while African Americans and Latinos/as are often linked by researchers discussions of major social problems including housing inequity, drug use, and imprisonment rates, sociological researchers have paid scant attention to the links between Black and Latino/a thinkers. This paper provides an analysis of 19th century African American thinker W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of the“double-consciousness” in relation to 20th century Chicana feminist thinker Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the “mestiza consciousness,” among other aspects of their work, and argues that their work is related and represents resonant forms of oppositional culture or consciousness within a matrix of domination (Feagin and Mitchell 1995; Collins 2000). It is suggested that common threads of racial/ethnic and class oppression bind the works of these two thinkers, while discussion of issues related to gender and sexuality, lacking for the most part in Du Bois’ work, are developed more thoroughly by Anzaldúa.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript