Stanley Aronowitz

Stanley Aronowitz
Stanley Aronowitz by David Shankbone
Born 1951
New York, New York
Residence New York, New York
Fields Sociology
Institutions City University of New York
Alma mater The New School, Union Graduate School
Influences C. Wright Mills

Stanley Aronowitz (born 1933) is a professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political activist and cultural critic, an advocate for organized labor and a member of the interim consultative committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society.[1] In 2012, Aronowitz was awarded the Center for Study of Working Class Life's Lifetime Achievement Award at Stony Brook University.[2]

Social Text

Aronowitz is the author of numerous books on class, culture, sociology of science, and politics. With Fredric Jameson and John Brenkman, he is a founding editor of Duke University's Social Text, a journal that is subtitled "Theory, Culture, Ideology." He defended the journal from criticism after it published a hoax article in its Summer 1996 issue (see Sokal Affair).[3] In that article, he stated that with this publication, "Our objective was to interrogate Marxists' habitual separation of political economy and culture and to make a contribution to their articulation, even reunification." Aronowitz, however, was not a working editor at the time of the Sokal scandal and had not seen the paper before publication. In an interview in the Brooklyn Rail after the publication of Taking it Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals, Aronowitz cites Mills's influence on his beliefs when he states, "My own insights, as a result of my own experience as a worker, as a trade unionist, and as an activist, were stimulated and, to some extent, guided by Mills’s example. His three major books on American social structure—The New Men of Power, White Collar, and The Power Elite—together constitute a compelling intellectual program for our own times."[4]

Green politics

In 2002, Aronowitz led efforts to maintain the official ballot status of the Green Party in New York and ran for governor on that ticket the same year. He ran a grass roots campaign based on a radical democratic program that combined opposition to corporate power and plutocratic government with commitment to sustainability, racial equality, feminism, gay liberation and individual freedom. His campaign finished in 5th place, receiving 41,797 votes (.89%). He is also an active trade unionist and a member of the executive council of his university's union, the Professional Staff Congress, AFT. Aronowitz is a proponent of a reduced work week, among other strategies for improving everyday life, and works actively with the Basic Income Earth Network toward the furtherance of such goals.

Other activities

In 1965 Aronowitz was one of the lecturers at the Free University of New York shortly after it was founded.[5]

In 2005 Aronowitz co-founded the journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. He has also published articles in numerous publications and with a core group of intellectuals—faculty and students—at the Graduate Center, he spearheaded the effort to create the Center for Cultural Studies (now the Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work) in the spirit of fostering intellectual debate, multidisciplinarity, and the toppling of high cultural privilege in academia. In 1969, Aronowitz, Jeremy Brecher, Paul Mattick Jr., and Peter Rachleff, began sporadically publishing a magazine and pamphlet series called Root & Branch[6][7] drawing on the tradition of workers councils and adapting them to contemporary America.

Family

Aronowitz lives in New York City. He was married to Ellen Willis until her death in November 2006. He has five children.

Works

Books

Articles

References

  1. "International Organization for a Participatory Society: Consultative Committee". International Organization for a Participatory Society. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
  2. Smulewicz-Zucker, Gregory (Jul–Aug 2012). "STANLEY ARONOWITZ with Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker". The Brooklyn Rail.
  3. Aronowitz, S. (1997) Alan Sokal's "Transgression". Dissent, Winter 1997.
  4. Smulewicz-Zucker, Gregory (July–August 2012). "Stanley Aronowitz with Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker". The Brooklyn Rail.
  5. Berke, Joseph (29 October 1965), "The Free University of New York", Peace News: 6–7 as reproduced in Jakobsen, Jakob (2012), Anti-University of Londin–Antihistory Tabloid, London: MayDay Rooms, pp. 6–7
  6. "Root & Branch". A Liberatarian Socialist Journal. 1973. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
  7. Root & Branch: The Rise of the Workers' Movements. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. 1975.

External links

Party political offices
Preceded by
Al Lewis
Green Party Nominee for Governor of New York
2002
Succeeded by
Malachy McCourt
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