Why am I passionate about this?

Rich Weiner co-edited this featured volume with Francesca Forno. He is a political sociologist with a strong foundation in the history of political and social thought. He has served for twenty-two years as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. His focus has been on non-statist political organizations and social movements with a perspective of middle-range theorizing enriched by three generations of Frankfurt School critical theory of society.


I wrote

Sustainable Community Movement Organizations: Solidarity Economies and Rhizomatic Practices

By Richard R. Weiner (editor), Francesca Forno (editor),

Book cover of Sustainable Community Movement Organizations: Solidarity Economies and Rhizomatic Practices

What is my book about?

This volume shines a light on emergent non-hierarchical community-based socio-economic movements with alternative forms of consumption and production very much…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy

Richard R. Weiner Why did I love this book?

Countering a drifting away from an appreciation of the demos, the book encourages us to build a democratic constitutional political economy that renews traditions of egalitarianism and social rights rather than the recent neoliberalism’s imagined market-based orientation of freedom alone.

I like the way the book revives the American constitutional tradition of discourse emphasizing how constraint of the concentration of wealth is necessary to preserve a democratic republic.

By Joseph Fishkin, William E. Forbath,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the Constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth.

Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the "republican form of government" the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it had almost nothing to say about this threat. But as Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath show in this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a…


Book cover of Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great Recession

Richard R. Weiner Why did I love this book?

A collection of exceptional scholars explore what replaced the New Deal Order’s focus on economic justice at the end of the 1970s with a regime that came to be known as neoliberalism.

This very accessible book approaches the possibility of new forms of life known as solidarity economies and with it a turn toward social-economics.

I appreciate the attempt this history book makes to both take a long view and to create a conceptual framework regarding empirical cases.

By Gary Gerstle (editor), Nelson Lichtenstein (editor), Alice O'Connor (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Beyond the New Deal Order as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ever since introducing the concept in the late 1980s, historians have been debating the origins, nature, scope, and limitations of the New Deal order-the combination of ideas, electoral and governing strategies, redistributive social policies, and full employment economics that became the standard-bearer for political liberalism in the wake of the Great Depression and commanded Democratic majorities for decades. In the decline and break-up of the New Deal coalition historians found keys to understanding the transformations that, by the late twentieth century, were shifting American politics to the right.
In Beyond the New Deal Order, contributors bring fresh perspective to the…


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Book cover of The Squiggly Line Career: How Changing Professions Can Advance a Career in Unexpected Ways

The Squiggly Line Career By Angela Champ,

When we're children, we're asked what we want to be when we grow up. But what if there isn't just one career for us in our lifetime? What if we can have a squiggly line career that spans professions and industries?

This book will guide job seekers on the traits…

Book cover of Liquid Modernity

Richard R. Weiner Why did I love this book?

Describes in depth a brave new world of uncertain constant acceleration and continued change in institutions and social relations.

I like the way Bauman depicts a condensing resonance, a new way of “being in the world.” Specifically, this is an increasing fluidity and fragmentation of social solidarities, where nothing is secure and where everything can be made redundant.

A world that Ulrich Beck, even before the new century, referred to as “the Second Modernity.”

By Zygmunt Bauman,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Liquid Modernity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this new book, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a a heavya and a solida , hardware--focused modernity to a a lighta and a liquida , software--based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un--reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under--defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life--politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history. This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman…


Book cover of Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory

Richard R. Weiner Why did I love this book?

Wide-ranging philosophical conversation and moral critique of capitalism as an instituted social order wherein a structure of domination establishes and reinforces an entire way of life attuned to the hegemony of exchange value as well as commodity production, and their social reproduction.

I very much appreciate the book’s strategy of cogent, accessible and explorative dialogue rather than tit-for-tat debate.

By Nancy Fraser, Rahel Jaeggi,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Capitalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this important new book, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi take a fresh look at the big questions surrounding the peculiar social form known as "capitalism," upending many of our commonly held assumptions about what capitalism is and how to subject it to critique. They show how, throughout its history, various regimes of capitalism have relied on a series of institutional separations between economy and polity, production and social reproduction, and human and non-human nature, periodically readjusting the boundaries between these domains in response to crises and upheavals. They consider how these "boundary struggles" offer a key to understanding capitalism's…


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Book cover of The Romanov Heiress

The Romanov Heiress By Jennifer Laam,

Four sisters in hiding. A grand duchess in disguise. Dark family secrets revealed. An alternate future for the Romanovs from Jennifer Laam, author of The Secret Daughter Of The Tsar.

With her parents and brother missing and presumed dead, former Grand Duchess Olga Romanova must keep her younger sisters…

Book cover of Putting Civil Society in Its Place: Governance, Metagovernance and Subjectivity

Richard R. Weiner Why did I love this book?

A synoptic and synthetic exploration of “civil society” as a mode of governance with a degree of capacity/capability of coordinating the power of social relations and solidarities.

I very much like the book’s focus on networks and solidarity rather than the usual market versus state command binary.

Specifically, I appreciate how the book poses the issue: Can webs of governance – focused on new forms of legitimacy and solidarity – counter webs of capital accumulation uncoupled from territorial spatial boundaries?

By Bob Jessop,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Putting Civil Society in Its Place as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Renowned social and political theorist Bob Jessop explores the idea of civil society as a mode of governance in this bold challenge to current thinking.
Developing theories of governance failure and metagovernance, the book analyses the limits and failures of economic and social policy in various styles of governance. Reviewing the principles of self-emancipation and self-responsibilisation it considers the struggle to integrate civil society into governance, and the power of social networks and solidarity within civil society.
With case studies of mobilisations to tackle economic and social problems, this is a comprehensive review of the factors that influence their success…


Explore my book 😀

Sustainable Community Movement Organizations: Solidarity Economies and Rhizomatic Practices

By Richard R. Weiner (editor), Francesca Forno (editor),

Book cover of Sustainable Community Movement Organizations: Solidarity Economies and Rhizomatic Practices

What is my book about?

This volume shines a light on emergent non-hierarchical community-based socio-economic movements with alternative forms of consumption and production very much at their core. The essays in this collection explore new geographies of solidarity practices ranging from forms of horizontal democracy to interurban and transnational networks.

Book cover of The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy
Book cover of Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great Recession
Book cover of Liquid Modernity

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Interested in the New Deal, economic policy, and capitalism?

The New Deal 34 books
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