Peter B. Evans
Professor

University Address

Department of Sociology
410 Barrows Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

TEL: (510)-642-5877
FAX: (510)-642-0659
EMAIL: pevans@berkeley.edu

---

My teaching and research have focused on the comparative political economy of national development in the Global South (a.k.a. “developing countries). Currently, I am trying to understand how changes in the way in which the global political economy itself is organized and controlled might better promote the well-being of ordinary citizens (especially in the Global South). This interest is reflected in my ongoing research on the global labor movement, as in my recent article with Mark Anner (“Bridging the Double-divide”) and in the general essay on “Counter-hegemonic Globalization: Transnational Social Movements in the Contemporary Global Political Economy,” which is a chapter in the 2005 edition of the Handbook of Political Sociology. You can look at or download these and other papers by clinking on the “Links to Papers” box above. To see how these interests have been incorporated into my courses on “Development” and “Globalization” over the past few years click on the “Courses Taught and Syllabi” box.

Beginning with research on how Brazil’s industrialization was shaped by conflicts and collaboration between global corporations and the Brazilian state to create “dependent development,” my earlier work on the comparative political economy of national development focused particularly on the role of the state in industrialization. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), which looked at Korea and India as well as Brazil, is a good example. Thinking about how ties between the state and industrial elites shaped industrial transformation made me curious about relations between public institutions and less privileged social communities. In 1996, I organized a collection of articles called State-Society Synergy to explore these relations. Thinking that urban environmental issues created possibilities for “state-society synergy,” I collected some examples in an edited volume called, Livable Cities: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability (University of California Press, 2002). This, in turn, led me to think about the possibility that local and transnational social movements might be able to work with public institutions at the global level to counteract the negative features of “neo-liberal globalization,” which is how I came to start doing the work that I am engaged in now on “counter-hegemonic globalization.”

In addition to my own research and teaching, I work with fellow sociologists on a variety of projects that reflect my substantive concerns. For example, my interest in Latin America led me to become involved (together with Laura Enriquez) in the Andrew Mellow Fellowship Program in Latin American Sociology, which has been a source of support for Berkeley graduate students doing research in Latin America for more than a decade. For more about this program click on “Mellon Fellowship” (right under my picture on this page). I am also involved, along with another Berkeley Sociology colleague (Ann Swidler), in the “Successful Societies Program” of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, where we are trying to probe the roots of collective social capacities conducive to well-being, equality and inclusion (see http://www.ciar.ca/web/home.nsf/pages/home). I am pursuing my interests in environmental issues, together with Nancy Peluso (Environmental Sciences and Policy Management) and Michael Watts (Geography), in a collaborative project on “Green Governance” in Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria. This project is organized through Berkeley’s Institute for International Studies and funded by the Luce Foundation. Together with other sociologists working on labor issues, I have been involved in the American Sociological Association’s section on Labor and Labor Movements (see http://www.laborstudies.wayne.edu/ASA/), serving this year (2005-2006) as chair of the section.

© 2005 UC Berkeley - Department of Sociology
Contact Information | Computer Support & Webmaster