Frances Fox Piven

Faculty Fellow

Frances Fox Piven is a member of the political science and sociology faculties at the Graduate Center. She is the author or co-author of such books as Regulating the Poor, Poor People’s Movements, The New Class War, Why Americans Don’t Vote, The War at Home, Challenging Authority, and, most recently, Keeping Down the Black Vote. She is currently at work on a book on American labor union strategies in response to globalization and the new economy.

Participating Years

2010–2011

Labor/Crisis/Protest

Labor processes and conditions of employment in almost all sectors of the economy and most of the world have been revolutionized over the last thirty years. Generally, the share of wages in gross domestic product has declined while the share taken by capital (finance in particular) has soared. The response (or lack of it) to these new conditions has been patchy, raising questions of the state of political consciousness and political subjectivity among affected populations. Where, many ask, is the outrage and why the lack of mass protest and mass movement?