Tarun
Banerjee
Assistant Professor
Education

PhD., SUNY - Stony Brook (Sociology)

Courses Taught

Undergraduate: Introduction to Sociology, Social Problems, Social Movements, Black Lives Matter, Advanced Statistics, Research Methods

Graduate: Organizations, Statistics

Professional Memberships

American Sociological Association, The Study for the Society of Social Problems, International Network of Social Network Analysis

 

Scholarly Work
  • Book

Young, Kevin A., Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz. 2020 (July). Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules, and What the 99% Can Do about It. New York, NY: Verso Publishing. ISBN: 9781788730969.

  • Journal Articles (most recent)

Banerjee, Tarun. 2022. “Class, Sectoral, or Self-interest? The Collective Action of Large Manufacturing Firms in Response to Protest,” Class, Race, and Corporate Power, 10(2). https://www.jstor.org/stable/48695965

Banerjee, Tarun and Joshua Murray. 2021. “Class Dominance or Fracturing? Sources of Broad Interest in Lobbying by Fortune 500 Corporations,” Sociological Perspectives, 64(2): 157-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420921883

Banerjee, Tarun. 2020. “The Collective Interests of Large Corporations: Social Movement Protest and the Policy-Planning Network,” The Sociological Quarterly, 61(3), 389-421 https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2019.1711250

Banerjee, Tarun, and Benjamin S. Case. 2020. “The Leverage of Protest: Market, Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success,” Sociological Forum, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12569

Banerjee, Tarun, and Caitlin Schroering. 2020. “Responsible for Whom? The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Firm Vulnerability and Responsiveness to Social Movement Demands,” Sociological Focus, 53(4): 337-358. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380237.2020.1823915

Young, Kevin A., Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz. 2018. “Capital Strikes as a Corporate Political Strategy: The Structural Power of Business in the Obama Era,” Politics & Society 46(1): 3-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329218755751

Honors and Awards

2023-2024. Pipeline GrantThe Russell Sage Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. ($30,000)

2023-2024. Feliks Gross Award for Outstanding ResearchCity University of New York

2023-2024. Faculty Scholarly Excellence AwardJohn Jay College of Criminal Justice.

2022-2023. Faculty Research Grant, Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies InitiativeCity University of New York. Funded by Andrew Mellon Foundation. ($10,000)

2022-2023. Professional Staff Congress Research AwardCity University of New York. ($6,000)

2022 (Fall). Distinguished CUNY Scholar, Advanced Research Collaborative. Graduate Center, City University of New York. (Listed in ‘Appointments’ section above).

2021-2022. Professional Staff Congress Research AwardCity University of New York. ($6,000)

Research Summary

As a sociologist, I want to know how power works: who has it? what do they do with it? who doesn’t have it? and how can those without power get it? I have two broad lines of research: i) public policy and the power structure. Here, I study those with power to answer questions about how public policy is made, how business influences policy, and the effects of this on the democratic process. I also study ii) social movements and change, to understand how people without power organize collectively to get it. What tactics do and don’t work when people are shut out of formal positions of power? And specifically, how does the world we live in today—one dominated by gigantic corporations and endless money in elections—change the strategies ordinary people can use to organize for change?

 

I am involved in a number of projects in these areas including a recent book on public policy and social change called Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules, and What the 99% Can Do About It (with Kevin A. Young and Michael Schwartz); a large-scale project on the revolving door between Congress and paid lobbyists; as well as other papers on the Civil Rights movement and the War on Poverty; corporate social responsibility; media coverage and its impact on social change; and how large corporations navigated the social movement upsurge that resulted from the 2008 financial crisis.

 

As a researcher, I believe sociology is an applied science and its application ought to be towards enabling positive and democratic social change. That is, it is our moral and professional duty to do research that matters for the public good. As a teacher, I strive to inculcate in my students an appreciation for the intricate (and often hidden) social forces that shape our lives and to see that a sociological understanding can help us organize for a better world. I teach graduate and/or undergraduate classes around topics such as social movements, organizations, social problems, research methods, and statistics.