Work and Culture

Rachel Meyer's research and teaching interests include social movements, social class, labor movements, political sociology, social change, culture and identity, labor and work, globalization, US labor history, and qualitative methods. Meyer's research explores the relationship between political economy and working-class mobilization. She is interested in precarious workers, neoliberalism, and social change. Her focus is on how collective action experiences transform working-class consciousness and subjectivity with attention to organizing trends in the American labor movement, including living wage campaigns. She has published on precarious workers' subjectivity; working-class mobilizations targeting the state; the subjective consequences of local political mobilization; events and the subjective consequences of collective action, using a historical sociological perspective (with Howard Kimeldorf); and the grassroots political mobilization of immigrants in the US (with Janice Fine). She has also published on the extent and sources of ethical consumption with respect to sweatshops and workers' rights with colleagues at the University of Michigan. Meyer is currently working on a project about the relationship between workplace and community in the mid-twentieth century American labor movement. She received her PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan.