Luis Flores

Luis Flores

Assistant Professor
Research Interests
Economic Sociology; Political Economy; Comparative-Historical Methods; Housing & Labor; Social Theory

Luis Flores received B.A. degrees in history and political economy from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before returning to Berkeley, he was a Stone Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Drawing on historical methods, his research examines the regulatory politics at the boundary of home and market, shaping the extent to which homes can serve as sites of labor, production, exchange, and speculation. His previous research has examined how early American zoning laws shaped wealth and labor dynamics through the separation of home and market. His research sits at the intersection of housing, labor, informality, gender, and political economy. 

Representative Publications

Book project: The Regulatory Politics of Home-Based Moneymaking after the American Family Wage

  • Dissertation Award, American Sociological Association, 2024
  • ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, University of Michigan, 2023

2024 - Greta Krippner and Luis Flores. “Toward a Sociology of Contract.” Journal of Law and Political Economy 4(2): 779-819.

2024 - Luis Flores. “Zoning as a Labor Market Regulation.” Theory and Society 53(2): 357-394.

  • Reinhard Bendix Student Paper Award, ASA Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology, 2023
  • Student Paper Award, ASA Section on Labor and Labor Movements, 2023
  • Student Paper Award, Honorable Mention, ASA Section on Urban & Community Sociology, 2023
  • Katherine Luke Best Paper Award, University of Michigan, Sociology, 2020

2022 - Luis Flores* and Neil Gross. “Problem Situation Misassessment and the U.S. Financial Crisis.” The New Pragmatist Sociology: Agency, Inquiry, and Democracy, Edited by Neil Gross, Isaac Reed, and Christopher Winship. Columbia University Press.

2022 - Amy Quandt, Annie J. Kenney, Luis Flores, Daniela Flores, and Mercy Villaseñor. “’We left the crops there lying in the field’: Agricultural worker experiences with the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Rural US-Mexico Border Region.” Journal of Rural Studies 95: 533-543.

  • Featured in: Civil Eats

Book Reviews:

2023 - Luis Flores. “Saito, Leland T. (2022). Building Downtown Los Angeles: The Politics of Race and Place in Urban America. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

2022 - Luis Flores. “Pettengill, Ryan S. (2020). Communists and Community: Activism in Detroit’s Labor Movement, 1941-1956.” Journal of Urban Affairs.

2018 - Luis Flores. “Desmond, Matthew. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York: Crown Publishers.” Critical Planning Journal 23: 303-307.

*Equal authorship