Book Launch | Partisans and Partners: Politics of Post-Keynesian Society

The Institute for Public Knowledge and the Department of Sociology at NYU invite you to join us for an election-eve conversation on the divided state of American politics for the launch of Partisans and Partners: The Politics of the Post-Keynesian Society by sociologist Joshua Pacewicz. The author will be in discussion with Delia Baldassarri and Harvey Molotch.

There’s no question that Americans are bitterly divided by politics. But in Partisans and Partners, Josh Pacewicz finds that our traditional understanding of red/blue, right/left, urban/rural division is too simplistic.

Wheels-down in Iowa—that most important of primary states—Pacewicz looks to two cities, one traditionally Democratic, the other traditionally Republican, and finds that younger voters are rejecting older-timers’ strict political affiliations. A paradox is emerging—as the dividing lines between America’s political parties have sharpened, Americans are at the same time growing distrustful of traditional party politics in favor of becoming apolitical or embracing outside-the-beltway candidates. Pacewicz sees this change coming not from politicians and voters, but from the fundamental reorganization of the community institutions in which political parties have traditionally been rooted. Weaving together major themes in American political history—including globalization, the decline of organized labor, loss of locally owned industries, uneven economic development, and the emergence of grassroots populist movements—Partisans and Partners is a timely and comprehensive analysis of American politics as it happens on the ground.

Josh Pacewicz is assistant professor of Sociology and urban studies at Brown University. His research has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, City & Community, and Socio-Economic Review, for which he has won numerous awards. His current projects include research on fiscal policy in greater Chicago and the social processes of policy formulation at the state level. He received his PhD at the University of Chicago.

Delia Baldassarri is associate professor of Political Science and sociology at New York University. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Simple Act of Voting, and many other highly regarded publications in the subfields of collective behavior and social movements, mathematical sociology, and cultural sociology. Her current research projects include a new book, Polarized Politics, Croscutting People, which investigates the demographic and social network bases of partisanship in American public opinion.

Harvey Molotch is professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies at New York University, where he conducts research on power relations in urbanism, design, and media. His many well-known books include Against Security, Urban Fortunes (with John Logan), and Where Stuff Comes From, among others.