Cedric de Leon

Cedric de Leon received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan. He also has a Master’s degree in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. in Sociology from Yale University.

Cedric got his start in the labor movement as a researcher for the Connecticut School Bus Drivers Alliance Local 76 SEIU in 1994. From 1995 to 1996 he worked on the Chateau Ste. Michelle, Bruce Church, and strawberry campaigns for the United Farm Workers in Connecticut and Salinas and Watsonville, California. He then became an organizer for District 1199 SEIU in Providence. After a brief hiatus in England, Cedric returned to the labor movement as a rank-and-file member of Local 3550 American Federation of Teachers at the University of Michigan. He was local union president from 2000 to 2002 and, after finishing his dissertation, became lead organizer for the University of Michigan lecturers’ union, AFT Local 6244.

Books

• Janoski, Thomas, Cedric de Leon, Joya Misra, and Isaac Martin (eds). 2020. The New Handbook of Political Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2019. Crisis! When Political Parties Lose the Consent to Rule. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2015. The Origins of Right to Work: Antilabor Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Chicago. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
• de Leon, Cedric, Manali Desai, and Cihan Tugal (eds). 2015. Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2014. Party and Society: Reconstructing a Sociology of Democratic Party Politics. Cambridge: Polity.

Journal Articles

• Daniel, Meghan and Cedric de Leon. 2020. "Leadership Succession in Intersectional Mobilization: An Analysis of the Chicago Abortion Fund, 1985-2015." Mobilization 25 (4): 461-474.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2019. "The Unbroken South: Political Parties and the Articulation of White Supremacy." Research in the Sociology of Organizations 60: 49-68.
• Vithayathil, Trina, Diana Graizbord, and Cedric de Leon. 2019. “The Retreat to Method: The Aftermath of Elite Concession to Civil Society in India and Mexico.” Studies in Comparative International Development 54 (1): 19-39.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2017. “The Crisis Sequence: The Case of Secessionism in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.” Journal of Historical Sociology 30 (3): 518-544.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2016. “Black from White: How the Rights of White and Black Workers Became ‘Labor’ and ‘Civil’ Rights after the U.S. Civil War.” Labor Studies Journal 42 (1): 1-17 (Lead article).
• Agartan, Kaan and Cedric de Leon. 2016. “Interns and Infidels: The Transformation of Work and Citizenship in Turkey and the United States under Neo-liberalism.” Global Labour 7 (3): 220-239 (Lead article).
• de Leon, Cedric. 2011. “The More Things Change: A Gramscian Genealogy of Barack Obama’s ‘Post-Racial’ Politics.” Guest Editor: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Political Power and Social Theory 22: 75-104.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2010. “Vicarious Revolutionaries: Martial Discourse and the Origins of Mass Party Competition in the United States, 1789-1848.” Studies in American Political Development 24 (1): 121-141.
• de Leon, Cedric, Manali Desai, and Cihan Tugal. 2009. “Political Articulation: Parties and the Constitution of Cleavages in the U.S., India, and Turkey.” Sociological Theory 27 (3): 193-219 (Lead article).
• de Leon, Cedric. 2008. “No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy: The Missing Link in Barrington Moore’s American Civil War.” Political Power and Social Theory 19: 39-82.

Selected Presentations

• de Leon, Cedric. 2022. "For an Eclectic Mass Movement." Plenary address, Labor and Labor Movements Mini-Conference, ASA Annual Meeting, Aug. 5, Los Angeles.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2021. "In Search of James Baldwin." Lois Gray Labor Innovation Initiative Convening on Labor in the 21st Century, Cornell ILR School, March 26, Remote.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2020. "Confronting Police Unions and Institutional Racism in the Labor Movement." Labor Research and Action Network, Aug. 19, Remote.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2019. "Why 1861? Slavery, Settler Colonialism, and the Coming of the U.S. Civil War." Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, Sept. 26, Evanston.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2019. "The Tactics of Mobilization, the Ethics of Care." Plenary address, Du Boisian Scholar Network, May 5, Providence.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2019. "The Origins of Right to Work." Plenary address, National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education, April 8, New York City.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2018. "Du Bois's Theory of Simultaneous Struggle and the Crisis of Postracial Neoliberalism." Plenary address, Sesquicentennial Symposium Honoring W.E.B. Du Bois, Harvard University, Oct. 26, Cambridge.
• de Leon, Cedric. 2018. "Failure of the Establishment." Havens Center for the Study of Social Justice, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Oct. 15, Madison.
• Desai, Manali and Cedric de Leon. 2017. "A Sequential Analysis of Left, Right, and Failed Ethnic Nationalisms." Social Science Research Council and the University of Gottingen, Aug. 18, Gottingen, Germany.

Selected Honors

• ASA Council (Elected), 2021-
• Chair-Elect, ASA Section on Labor and Labor Movements (Elected), 2021-
• ASA Program Committee, 2020-
• Consulting Editor, American Journal of Sociology, 2018-2021
• Editorial Board, Sociological Theory, 2019-2021
• SSHA Executive Committee (Elected), 2016-2019
• ASA Committee on Nominations (Elected), 2017-2018
• Editorial Board, Social Problems, 2015-2018
• Editorial Board, Contemporary Sociology, 2015-2018
• Secretary-Treasurer, ASA Section on Political Sociology (Elected), 2015-2018
• Section Council, ASA Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology (Elected), 2014-2017