1986

Leah's book Violent Democratization:  Social Movements, Elites, and Politics in Colombia's Rural War Zones, and update of her dissertation, is scheduled to be released in January, 2011. http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P01399

I don't think my bio would be quite what you are looking for - no teaching or research, no shaping as a sociologist, and as to how sociology shapes the world, well, I'm not sure it does that much. I'm working as an artist, raising my children, and living pretty happily most of the time. Sociology seems kinda like ancient history to me, but not bad history, just not that relevant toi my life in the here and now.

My academic career began with an attempt to decipher 'the Taiwan economic miracle.' The subcontracting network provided a key: its variegated and tiny units of production, its flexible mobilization and combination of these units, its downward-squeezing mechanism, its deployment of homeworkers, and its opportunity for 'becoming one's own boss.' This was the hidden abode of Taiwanese capitalism at its export-oriented phase.

As of this writing, in 2010, I have drifted far afield from academic sociology. I still like to think that my life was forever impacted by having gone to graduate school, so long ago.

My dissertation became my second book, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States, published in 1995 by the Guilford Press.

I was drawn to sociology for the license to practice social change it promised! In 1980, I traveled to the Middle East to see what I could do with an M.A. from the University of Michigan. After six years of work with a community-based organization, research and teaching, I returned to graduate school to prepare for a teaching career. I chose Berkeley, which I imagined to be teeming with Marxist sociologists. Of course quality is better than quantity, so I did not regret my choice, but midway through the program I realized that academia was not where I belonged.