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Benjamin H. Bradlow

@bhbradlow.bsky.social
6.1K followers 779 following 516 posts

Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, @princeton.edu Visiting Researcher, Wits Southern Center for Inequality Studies CIFAR Fellow, "Humanity's Urban Future" Member, IAS School of Social Science, 2026-27 bradlow.princeton.edu

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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Got a big paper from my current work on transitions to green tech manufacturing in the Global South conditionally accepted at one of sociology’s top generalist journals. Could not be more thrilled! More soon…
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Julian Go @juliango.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Latest news: 2 of my sociology colleagues, John Levi Martin & Geoff Wodtke & I each wrote separate reviews of the Vanderbilt-Wash U Report on Sociology by A. Rubin. For my brief opinion and links to all 3 reviews, see this blogpost: scatter.wordpress.com/2026/09/19/g...
scatter.wordpress.com
guest post: scholarly malpractice and the vanderbilt-washington university report on sociology
The following is a guest post by Julian Go. By now readers of scatterplot will be aware of the Sociology portion of the Vanderbilt-Washington University Report (VWUR) by Ashley Rubin. Part of the “…
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Such important work by colleagues at the NZIPL! And it raises a critical question: why are some Global South countries more capable of attracting and using this investment for building up green industry than others?
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Lukas Bogner @lbogner.eurosky.social · 23/09/2026
New Paper out in Socio-Economic Review! Part of a coming special issue on the socio-economics of loss and decline. About the 4D chess of using blended finance for the coal exit in the Global South. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/ser/... (or ask me for a copy if you don't have access)!)
 The spectre of de-assetization: legal infrastructures and fragile fixes in fossil decommissioning - Lukas Bogner. Abstract: Efforts to decommission coal power plants in the Global South are constrained by the legal infrastructures that create and protect them as assets. This article examines the Asian Development Bank’s Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) as a case of managing these constraints via a series of increasingly complex and fragile spatio-temporal fixes: First, power purchase agreements and investment treaties require compensation of investors at business-as-usual asset valuations; second, for lack of public funding, this compensation is to be generated via a blended finance mechanism; third, its inability to stem these costs necessitates further legal-financial engineering, including a novel guarantee mechanism and ‘coal-to-clean’ credits. The ETM and its successive fixes are haunted by the power relations inscribed in asset creation and protection in the Global South. This renders ‘de-risked’ transition finance dubious as a blueprint for fossil decommissioning and highlights the troubled nature of climate-related asset stranding in transnational, hierarchical legal space.
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
CALL FOR PAPERS Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand and @princeton.edu Joint Symposium THE CLIMATE FACTORY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH 1-2 April 2027 Johannesburg, South Africa www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-u...
wits.ac.za
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Welcome (back) to the Institute for Advanced Study @benbraun.eurosky.social. There couldn't be a more timely topic than "Emerging Forces in Global Political Economy" and we are fortunate to have you leading the School of Social Science community in this crucial discussion.
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This is an impressive line up.
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Occupying my office at the Institute for Advanced Study today. This is where book #2 is going to be written, by hook or by crook!
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Who gets to decide what science gets done and for whom? In @bostonreview.bsky.social's “How to Save Science” forum, @scijust.bsky.social and I argue that issues of public accountability are key to any democratic future of the federal research enterprise.
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Andrew Leifer @andrewleifer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
"American science needs an executive branch constrained by checks and balances" now out in Nature Physics with Andrea Liu, Sidney Nagel and Thierry Emonet. Gift-link: rdcu.be/fCDGE Original: doi.org/10.1038/s415... @natphys.nature.com #physics
rdcu.be
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Jeremy Wallace @jeremywallace.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Eyes emoji. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Thailand to Shift From LNG Toward Renewables in Wake of Iran War
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johnedwinmason @johnedwinmason.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
One more great thing about Dolly. She was a paid-up union member — American Federation of Musicians, Local 257, Nashville. And she had been for 58 years. www.afm.org/2026/08/afm-...
afm.org
AFM Statement on the Passing of Dolly Parton
Today, the entire community of professional musicians mourns the loss of an irreplaceable icon and a generous heart: Dolly Parton. While the world knows her as a global superstar and philanthropist…
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Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
How did Sociology become the hate piñata of Concerned Pundits on the education beat? The past month saw calls in the press for the discipline to be "liquidated" bc it's a "scam." My theory: it's bc we expose the harms of inequality. Me in today's @economist.com:🎁 www.economist.com/by-invitatio...
economist.com
Why is sociology the hate-piñata of the social sciences?
Accusations that it is thinly disguised socialism are wide of the mark, writes Brooke Harrington
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Carney: “Canada fuels American growth, supplying 99% of their natural gas imports, 85% of their electricity imports, and 60% of their crude oil imports. “I don’t think they want us to stop sending any of that energy.”
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Brett Christophers @brettchristophers.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Penguin has a page up for my new book, coming Feb 2027, HOUSE SOCIETY The epigraph is from Kenneth T. Jackson's famous "Crabgrass Frontier": "... no society can be fully understood apart from the residences of its members" The book is an exploration and affirmation of that thesis!
penguin.co.uk
House Society
The world is in the midst of a deep and worsening housing crisis. It has caused rents to soar in Britain, millions to protest in Spain, and a government to collapse in Sweden. Under a global ideology ...
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Ilias Alami @iliasalami.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This stops in 2022. I imagine that we'll see a pretty much vertical line for the years 2022-2026, once these are included in the database.
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Social Forces @socialforcesfan.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
📖 New book review in Social Forces "Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg" by Benjamin H. Bradlow Reviewed by @schechtlm.bsky.social ➡️ doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf114
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Appreciate @drodrik.bsky.social's discussion of an article I co-wrote with @akentikelenis.bsky.social in his chapter on "Making the Green Transition Happen" in Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s418...
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JS Tan @js-tan.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
My book AGAINST TECH OLIGARCHY, out Sept 15, is available for pre-order at againsttecholigarchy.com. It chronicles the rise of tech workers' activism, how they courageously came together to challenge the industry's most powerful bosses, and how their movement changed Silicon Valley forever. 1/
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
This is an institutional crisis, but it is also an epistemological crisis — especially for the social sciences, which have treated the US as a theoretically important case. With its increasing epistemological marginality, a rational response would be a more global and transnational social science.
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
11/ Europe and China have traditionally been larger export markets for Africa, but have hardly proved themselves reliable friends, either. For its part, Europe is set to impose a carbon border tax, which will be particularly painful for a handful of African countries. www.ntu.edu.sg/cas/news-eve...
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Adam Tooze's book Carbon is finally going to be out in February 2027. Pre-order here! Climate Crisis and the Eclipse of the West
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Looking forward to learning from / with this crew over the next academic year. www.ias.edu/sss/social-s...
ias.edu
SOCIAL SCIENCE SEMINAR
Except where noted in bold in the list below, the Social Science Seminar is held on Mondays from 10:30am-12:00pm in Room 5 of Rubenstein Commons. Attendees include Faculty, Members, and Visitors in th...
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I have a forthcoming chapter on the South Africa / Morocco comparison in a volume edited by @mkblyth.bsky.social @danieldrisc.com and Lucio Baccaro on "greening growth models." These notable gains are happening at the same time as many risk everything to leave. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
Why Morocco’s ‘forgotten’ young are fleeing to Europe
Failure to translate growth into better living standards has driven migration attempts into Spain’s Ceuta enclave
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
My book URBAN POWER is selling for just $12 on Amazon right now. www.amazon.com/Urban-Power-...
amazon.com
Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg (Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology)
Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg (Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology) [Bradlow, Benjamin H.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg (Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology)
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Livio Silva-Muller @liviosilva.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
The answer I propose involves thinking about climate change as an issue of state-building in a transnational space. The analytical focus is on the interactions between the national environmental bureaucracy, opposing elites, and their ties inside and outside the nation-state.
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Livio Silva-Muller @liviosilva.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
One of my dissertation papers is out this week, I answer one question: How do states build and lose decarbonization capacities? It's about the Brazilian Amazon since 1985, an increadible case of succesful, state-led decarbonization! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... 🧵🧵🧵
journals.uchicago.edu
Reach and Retrenchment of the Environmental State: Global Climate Politics in the Amazon Rainforest1 | American Journal of Sociology: Vol 132, No 1
How do states build and lose the capacity to decarbonize? Based on a comparative-historical analysis of Brazil’s drastic reduction and later resurgence of CO2 emissions from 1985 to 2022, this article...
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I have a new short essay out in LIMN's special issue This Is Not a Platform titled "Platform Obscurantism: The Hidden Substrates of Machine Learning." ChatGPT is a platform. That may be the least interesting thing about it. limn.press/article/plat... 🧵
limn.press
Platform Obscurantism - Limn
ChatGPT is a platform. The chatbot is infrastructure. Thousands of applications now build on OpenAI’s application programming interface, creating a dependent ecosystem of developers, startups, and ent...
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cornelban.bsky.social @cornelban.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
In this article in @socioeconreview.bsky.social I show why Europe is trillions euro behind China in lending to activities that can save the climate.
academic.oup.com
Green monetary transitions? Central banking and climate finance in Europe and China
Abstract. This article examines the political economy of “greening” central banking as a contested project dynamically evolving on the spectrum between neo
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Daniel Driscoll @danieldrisc.com · 07/07/2026
Friends!!! My book, Why Carbon Taxes Failed, is online. Chapters are free to download if you have access to @academic.oup.com: academic.oup.com/book/62984
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Jeff Gordon @jeffgordon.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Industrial policy is often in tension with competition - a problem I call "the dilemma of picking winners." In this essay and the associated working paper, I propose a framework for doing industrial policy without entrenching the winners. lpeproject.org/blog/the-dil...
lpeproject.org
The Dilemma of Picking Winners
Industrial policy will often require picking winners: if there were already many domestic firms capable of producing the desired output, there would be no compelling reason for subsidy or special…
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Finbarr Bermingham @fbermingham.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Brutal. 100,000! Volkswagen is planning to cut up to 100,000 jobs and end production at four plants in Germany in a significant acceleration of its cost-cutting plans as Europe’s largest carmaker seeks to survive the rapid advance of Chinese rivals.
ft.com
Volkswagen to axe up to 100,000 jobs in sweeping cost-cutting drive
Restructuring follows blockbuster sale of marine engines unit to US private equity firm Bain
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
What an absolutely brilliant moment for Bafana Bafana! On to Sunday against Canada in LA.
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Livio Silva-Muller @liviosilva.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Just out in @socialforcesfan.bsky.social some of our work comparing Elites in Brazil and South Africa! Using a small survey with random sample of CEOs, legislators, and top bureaucrats in both countries, we unpack the contradictory ways elite think about merit and taxation and redistrution.
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Joshua Basseches @joshuabasseches.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Today is the day! My book, Owning The Green Grid, is officially out in the world! *For orders placed today, June 23, only* use the discount code "MITP30" at checkout to receive 30% off. 20% off with the code "READMIT20" anytime after. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/814358...
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Really looking forward to presenting some new work at the Science, Knowledge and Technology pre-conference at ASA in August!
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
funny how no one calls this...."overcapacity"
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Can't wait for this one -- congrats, @jeremywallace.bsky.social!
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The Baffler @thebaffler.com · 02/06/2026
With more cows than people, Brazil is the world's largest producer of beef. @samcowie84.bsky.social writes on the country’s cowboys.
thebaffler.com
Rodeo Clowns | Sam Cowie
Brazil has fused the codes of the American West onto its own supposedly endless tropical frontier of savannah and rainforest.
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
This is after years of officials from both parties in the US continuously berating China for its [declining share of] coal power.
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Sociedad Mexicana de Sociología @smsociologia.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
La Sociedad Mexicana de Sociología lamenta profundamente el fallecimiento del Dr. Raúl Pacheco-Vega, profesor del CIDE y FLACSO. Nuestras más sinceras condolencias a sus familiares, amigos y colegas cercanos. Descanse en paz
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Daniel Driscoll @danieldrisc.com · 02/06/2026
New State of the Art article in @sasemeeting.bsky.social with @mathiaslarsen.bsky.social. States, markets, and decarbonization are colliding in ways that political economy is only just beginning to map. This article is our map. doi.org/10.1093/ser/...
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Patrick Heller @pheller.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I have new article out in the Sociology of Development on the possibilities of building welfare states in the global south. Its free for now: online.ucpress.edu/socdev/artic...
online.ucpress.edu
The Democratic Social Developmental StateParameters of the Possible in the Global South
Colonial legacies and the structural constraints of global capitalism pose significant obstacles to building welfare states in the Global South. Yet the past three decades have seen significant progre...
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Excellent essay by CK Lee in the new @phenomenalworld.bsky.social. "Three Frontiers of Global China" phenomenalworld.org/analysis/glo...
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Without a strategy to absorb the advanced technology associated with contemporary automobiles, overly restrictive local content requirements are no panacea. The US is looking increasingly like middle income countries struggling to keep up in this sector.
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Benjamin H. Bradlow @bhbradlow.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
"The gap between principle and practice yawns wider with every export control and company added to the Entity List. You can almost see the eyes of America’s adversaries twinkling." — @quinnslobodian.com
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Janet Vertesi @cyberlyra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
If you 👍 the Pope's recent Encyclical, you'll 😍 our new paper, shifting the conversation about "ethics" to one about political economy. Catch it here in pre-print before its release next month! #academicsky
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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Save 50% on our "Best of 2024" titles (including ebook and audiobook editions) through June 9th with code SPRING50 at checkout! press.princeton.edu/books/best-o... Some exclusions apply. @guidoalfani.bsky.social
Best of 2024As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West by Guido AlfaniWonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think by Helen De CruzInto the Great Wide Ocean: Life in the Least Known Habitat on Earth by Sönke Johnsen
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SASE | The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics @sasemeeting.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
📖 #HannahPool won the 2026 Alice Amsden Best Book Award for The Game: The Economy of Undocumented Migration from Afghanistan to Europe Congrats to shortlisted authors #ThomasAguilera, #FrancescaArtioli, #ClaireColomb, #BenjaminBradlow, #KatherineEvaMaich & #YingyaoWang 🔗 sase.org/news/2026-al...
sase.org
2026 Alice Amsden Best Book Award Winner Announced | SASE News
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