Charles Post
Professor
Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice
EMAIL: cpost@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office: N-651E
Office Hours:
Phone: +1 (212) 220-8000;ext=5202
BMCC Sociology Professor Charles Post is an expert in Historical Sociology.
Expertise
Historical Sociology
Degrees
- B.A. SUNY-Stony Brook, History,1976
- M.A. SUNY-Binghamton, Sociology,1979
- Ph.D. SUNY-Binghamton, Sociology,1983
Courses Taught
- This course studies the social world and how it has evolved over time, as well as how individuals are influenced and structured by social interactions in small groups and by larger social forces. The course covers major sociological theories and research methods, and key concepts such as culture, socialization, social class, race/ethnicity, gender, technology, social inequality, and social change.
- A close relationship exists between the social problems and the values and structures regarded by society as normal and stable. In this course, students apply sociological principles, theory, methods, and research toward an understanding of social problems. Prerequisite: SOC 100
- This course focuses on sociological approaches to the study of racial and ethnic relations and their impact on social life. The relations between racial and ethnic groups in the United States will be examined from a social-structural and social-Psychological perspective. This course will examine historical and contemporary constructions of identity, assimilation stratification and interaction between majority and minority groups.
Prerequisite: SOC 100
Research and Projects
- The Decline of Industrial Unionism in the North American Tire Industry, 1966-2007
The decline of private sector industrial unionism has been a major determinant of growing income inequality and a right-ward political shift in the United States. The most common explanation for the decline of private sector industrial unionism has been “globalization”—the movement of manufacturing to the global South and the increase of foreign ownership of manufacturing in the US. This research project seeks to test this hypothesis and that presented by Michael Goldfield in The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States (1987), which emphasizes a sharp shift in the relationship of class forces in the US through an examination of the tire industry in the US. To test this hypothesis, I have compiled a tire industry investment data base and map tire industry investment since 1966, determining that “globalization” is not an adequate explanation of the decline of union organization in the tire industry. I am now beginning to examine evidence of a shift in the relationship of forces between the corporations and unions in the industry between 1966 and 2007.
Publications
- “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Colonial British North America: The Place of the American Revolution in the Origins of US Capitalism”, Journal of Agrarian Change 9,4 (2009)
- “The American Road to Capitalism” , New Left Review, 133 (1982)
- “The Agrarian Origins of US Capitalism: The Transformation of Northern Agriculture Before the Civil War” , Journal of Peasant Studies, 22, 3 (1995)
- “Plantation Slavery and Economic Development in the Antebellum Southern United States”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 3,3 (2003)
- Ernest Mandel and the Marxian Theory of Bureaucracy,
- What’s Left of Leinism? New European Left Parties in Historical Perspective, Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy
- The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620-1877, Haymarket Books
- “The Politics of US Labor: Paralysis and Possibility” (with Kim Moody), Transforming Classes: Socialist Register 2015
- “Comments on the Brenner – Wood Exchange on the Low Countries”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 2,1, 2002
- “Exploring Working Class Consciousness: A Critique of the Theory of the “Labour-Aristocracy””, Historical Materialism 18:4
- The “Agricultural Revolution” in the United States: The Development of Capitalism and the Adaptation of the Reaper in the Antebellum North, Science & Society 61,2 (1997)
- “Social Property Relations, Class-Conflict and the Origins of the US Civil War: Toward a New Social Interpretation, Historical Materialism
- Capitalism, Laws of Motion and Social Relations of Production, Historical Materialism
- THE ROOTS OF WORKING CLASS REFORMISM AND CONSERVATISM: A RESPONSE TO ZAK COPEâS DEFENSE OF THE âLABOR ARISTOCRACYâ THESIS, Research in Political Economy
Honors, Awards and Affiliations
- Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize, 2011
The American Road to Capialism was short-listed for the 2011 Deutscher Prize.
- 2013 Paul M. Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award
The American Road to Capitalism has been awarded the 2013 Paul M. Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award by the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association.
