Beverly J. Silver

Beverly J. Silver is an American scholar of labor and development whose work has been translated into over twelve languages. She is a professor of Sociology at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Research Interests

Silver's research focuses on problems of development, labor, social conflict and war, using comparative and world-historical methods of analysis. Her work recasts a variety of issues in a broad spatial and temporal framework in order to identify patterns of recurrence, evolution and “true novelty” in contemporary processes of globalization.

Silver teaches courses on social theory, development, labor and political sociology, and coordinates a research group on labor in the world system. She is on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power and History at Johns Hopkins University, and was elected Chair of the Political Economy of the World System Section of the American Sociological Association for 2002-2003.

Training and Academic Career

Beverly Silver grew up in Detroit during a period of intense working-class struggle.fact|date=May 2007 She was active in the United Farm Workers Union and the solidarity campaigns for Chile. Silver received her B.A. in economics from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from SUNY Binghamton, where she was part of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. During this time she collaborated with a number of scholars including Giovanni Arrighi, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Terence Hopkins and contributed to the development of the school of world-systems analysis. For many years she was a member of the World Labor Research Group at the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton.fact|date=May 2007

Publications

Monographs

*Silver, Beverly J.; "Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870" (2003), and since translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.
*Silver, Beverly J. & Arrighi, Giovanni"; "Chaos and Governance in the Modern World-System" (1999).
*Silver, Beverly J., Arrighi, Giovanni and Dubofsky, Melvyn, editors; "Labor Unrest in the World-Economy, 1870-1990", special issue of "Review" (Fernand Braudel Center)"', vol. 18, no. 1, Winter, 1995, pages 1-206.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters since 2001

*Arrighi, Giovanni; Silver Beverly J. and Brewer, Benjamin D.; “Industrial Convergence and the Persistence of the North-South Income Divide: A Rejoinder”, "Studies in Comparative International Development", vol. 40, no. 1, Spring 2005.
*Arrighi, Giovanni; Silver, Beverly J. and Brewer, Benjamin D.; “Response”, "Studies in Comparative International Development", 38, 1, Spring, 2003, 39-42
*Arrighi, Giovanni; Silver, Beverly J. and Brewer, Benjamin D.; “Industrial Convergence, Globalization, and the Persistence of the North-South Divide”, "Studies in Comparative International Development", 38, 1, Spring, 2003, 3-31
*Arrighi Giovanni and Silver, Beverly J.; “Capitalism and World (Dis)Order”, "Review of International Studies", 27, December, 2001, 961-983
*Silver, Beverly J.; “Labor Upsurges: From Detroit to Ulsan and Beyond”, "Critical Sociology", vol. 31, no. 3, pages 439-452, 2005.
*Silver, Beverly J.; “Labor, Globalization and World Politics”, in "Critical Globalization Studies", edited by Richard Appelbaum and William Robinson, Routledge Press, 2005
*Silver, Beverly J.; “Labor, War and World Politics: Contemporary Dynamics in Historical Perspective”, in "Labour and New Social Movements in a Globalizing World System", edited by Berthold Unfried, Marcel van der Linden and Christine Schindler (ITH, vol. 38), "Akademische Verlagsanstalt", Leipzig, 2004
**German translation, "Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung", (Berlin), January, 2004
**Hungarian translation, "Egyenlito" (Budapest), vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 34-43, 2004
**Swedish translation, "Folkrorelser och Protester", 2005
*Silver, Beverly J.; “Rejoinder”, response to Symposium of Reviews of Beverly J. Silver’s "Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870", in "In Critical Solidarity" (American Sociological Association), Winter 2003 Reprinted in "Debate", (South Africa), Spring 2004
*Silver, Beverly J.and Arrighi, Giovanni; “Polanyi’s ‘Double Movement’: The Belle Époques of U.S. and British World Hegemony Compared”, "Politics and Society", June 2003
*Silver, Beverly J. and Arrighi, Giovanni; “Workers North and South” in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, editors, "Socialist Register 2001" (Theme: Working Classes, Global Realities). London: Merlin Press, 2000, 51-74

cholarly Acclaim for Forces of Labor

"Forces of Labor" won the highest book award in 2005 from the American Sociological Association, the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award.

Reviews

"This is an exceptional book that advances our understanding of the putative crisis of labor movements across the globe and informs our thinking about what we should expect from labor movements in the future. . . . Silver's analysis results in a complex picture of world working-class bargaining power, class formation, and labor unrest as cyclical and interdependent" "American Journal of Sociology" v. 110 no. 3 (November 2004) p. 810-12

"By highlighting the importance of war, and by investigating industries on a global scale, Forces of Labor makes vital contributions [...] , the book's historical depth and global scope make it essential reading for scholars of class conflict and of social movements."Contemporary Sociology" v. 33 no. 4 (July 2004) p. 467-9