Fellow 2023-2024
Wilson Sherwin's research integrates labour studies with critical and social movement theories in a critical sociological tradition. Her interdisciplinary perspective on a utopian horizon is grounded in rigorous empirical research. Sherwin's work inquires whether it makes sense for the welfare of working people to depend entirely on gainful employment. In doing so, she explores alternatives that she develops particularly from the historical experiences of the African American Welfare Movement.
Sherwin is currently Neil Davidson Postdoctoral Writing Fellow at the University of Glasgow. She undertook her undergraduate studies at Barnard College in New York, received her MA from the University of Brussels and received her doctoral degree from The City University of New York (CUNY). She is a member of the American Sociological Association.
Abstract
Rich in Needs: The Welfare Rights Movement’s Forgotten Radical Politics
At LIAS Wilson Sherwin will complete her first book-length manuscript. “Rich in Needs: The Welfare Rights Movement’s Forgotten Radical Politics” that draws on the development of bold “freedom dreams” articulated by participants in the Welfare Rights Movement (WRM). It presents a novel interpretation of the visionary, Black-led social movement and highlights welfare activists as inventive feminist and anti-capitalist theorists who militantly challenged many of society’s most powerful institutions and ideologies, in particular the reverence for wage work. Focusing on the Welfare Rights Movement’s demand for guaranteed income, “Rich in Needs” weaves together institutional histories, political-economic transformations, sociological theory and the lived experiences of working-class women to make sense of how people gain the audacity to demand seemingly impossible things, and what forces curtail these aspirations.
Drawing from a rich and variegated lineage of revolutionary and abolitionist politics, “Rich in Needs” provides empirical fodder for conversations on anti-work politics and the pursuit of pleasure as a guiding ballast for social transformation.
Education
2019 PhD Sociology, The City University of New York (CUNY)
2011 MA Urban Studies, Free University of Brussels, Belgium (VUB)
2004 BA Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York
Most Recent Academic Position
Inaugural Neil Davidson Postdoctoral Writing Fellow, University of Glasgow
Most Recent Publications
„„Nothing but Joy“: The Welfare Rights Movement’s Antiwork Freedom Dream.” „Souls“ 22, no. 2-4 (2020): 185-212.
„Time for Rabble-Rousing: Lessons from the Historic Fight for Reduced Working Hours.“ In „The Green New Deal and the Future of Work“, edited by Craig Calhoun and Benjamin Fong, 142-152. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2022.
„Working for Abolition Means Abolishing Work.” “Spectre Journal” 3, Nr.1 (Spring 2022) online