Beverly J. Silver

Beverly Judith Silver ( born 1957 in Detroit ) is an American sociologist.

Curriculum vitae

Beverly J. Silver grew up in Detroit. It was marked by a period of radical workers' struggles in the auto factories of Detroit. Among other things, she was active in the union " United Farm Workers " and was active in the Chile Solidarity. In the 1980s she studied in New York, where he was co-founder of the "World Labor Group " at the Fernand Braudel Center and its member until 1999. Since 1992 she has been Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She was married to Professor Giovanni Arrighi.

Research focus

The focus of her research is on development, working conditions and social conflicts. It is based methodology primarily on comparative and world-historical analyzes. Her work encompasses a wide variety of spatial and temporal contexts in which they want to work out patterns of repetition, developments and real innovations in the ongoing process of globalization.

Publications

Together with Giovanni Arrighi 1999, she published the book " Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System." Silver and Arrighi are representative of the founded by Immanuel Wallerstein world-system analysis and world systems theory. The book was awarded the winner of the " Distinguished Scholarship Award " of the " American Sociological Association PEWS ".

In 2005 she published her book " Forces of Labor. Globalization and labor movements since 1870 "in German ( the original English version of which dates from 2003). Here, she turns sharply against the thesis of the so-called "race to the bottom", that is, from the inevitable decline of social standards and environmental regulations in the competition of globalization. Silver examines the historical capital relocation and arrives at the central hypothesis: where capital would be shifted toward, suggests, new labor disputes. " Forces of Labor " was awarded the 2005 " ASA Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award" from the American Sociological Association.

Papers

• Beverly J. Silver: "Labour, globalization and world politics - related dynamics in world-historical perspective ", in: Yearbook of research on the history of the labor movement, Issue I/2004.