publications
2020
- ArticleReactionary Technopolitics: A Critical Sociohistorical ReviewSean DoodyFast Capitalism, 2020
This paper outlines a critical social history of reactionary media, political, and information networks—what I refer to generally as technopolitics—in the United States and their significance to the hostility towards truth and fact that is a central feature of our political present. I begin with a critical review of the unique right-wing media and political ecosystem that emerged from the alliance between neoliberalism and social conservatism in the twentieth-century. In the second section, I focus on digitization, Trump, and the alt-right, and discuss the historical tethers connecting the latter to the cyber-libertarians and white supremacists operating on the early internet. Next, I take stock of the history covered in the paper, and argue that we can see three general sociopolitical tendencies emerging from our current juncture: something like a paleoconservative hardening of the Republican Party’s base; the degeneration of the core alt-right into white supremacist terrorism; and the rise of an “intellectualist” reactionary assemblage epitomized by the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW). I provide a brief analysis of the IDW and discuss its chief political and social significance in the post-Trump, post-alt-right social landscape of what Jodi Dean describes as communicative capitalism.
2018
- ReportStaffing and Retention in Public Safety Answering Points: A Supplemental StudySean Doody , Katharine Rupp , and James Witte2018
2017
- ChapterThe Work-Life BalanceSean DoodyIn The American Middle-Class: An Economic Enclopedia of Progress and Poverty , 2017
The work-life balance refers to the process of prioritizing one’s time between professional work responsibilities and private lifestyle needs. Achieving “balance” means reconciling the demands of employment with important areas of personal life such as leisure, family time, and other nonwork commitments. In the 21st century U.S. economy, finding a middle ground between these two spheres is often challenging. Actual working hours have increased significantly, meaning that workers are spending much more time than in previous years at work. Additionally, the structure of many people’s jobs—that is, unpredictable and irregular hours—prevent them from satisfactorily planning life activities. In the home, household responsibilities tend to take up much of the remaining time afforded to working people. Moreover, technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, effectively extending work beyond the workplace. Workers are also taking less time off, choosing (or feeling compelled) to stay in the office. Taken together, these facts have resulted in the balance shifting in favor of work for many Americans, shrinking the time left to spend on other areas of life.
2016
- ArticleVarieties of Entrepreneurial Capitalism: The Culture of Entrepreneurship and Structural Inequalities of Work and Business CreationSean Doody , Victor Tan Chen , and Jesse GoldsteinSociology Compass, 2016
As the labor market has changed over recent decades, a distinctive culture has evolved in tandem, epitomized by the innovation and dynamism of Silicon Valley. This culture of entrepreneurship celebrates autonomy and risk-taking, legitimizes a shift toward flexible, contingent, and precarious work, and compels workers to continuously network, self-improve, and self-promote. This culture has helped to disseminate entrepreneurial practices to sectors of the economy traditionally characterized by stability and job security. We shed light on these changes by putting forward a new typology distinguishing between four ideal types of entrepreneurial activity: Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, Main Street entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial self-employment. Each adopts the language and normative behaviors of the culture of entrepreneurship, but the ‘entrepreneurs’ working within these domains enjoy starkly different levels of creative and financial autonomy. Integrating scholarship on economic sociology, work and labor, cultural sociology, and critical theory, we explore the underlying dynamics of entrepreneurship that cut across institutional contexts in unexpected and sometimes contradictory ways. The conceptual understanding of entrepreneurship we put forward recognizes both entrepreneurship’s relationship to past forms of business creation and its contemporary cultural influence, while also underscoring the various constraints and inequalities intrinsic to these forms of market activity.