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The rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as an intentionally intersectional movement, challenges us to consider the ways in which BLM is reimagining the lines of Black activism and the Black Liberation Movement. BLM may be considered the “next wave” of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), guiding how and with whom the movement will progress. We use a content analysis of public statements and interviews of the founding members from October 2014 to October 2016 to discuss the ways in which the founders of BLM frame the group’s actions. We bring together the critical feminist concept of intersectionality with framing theory to show how the founders of BLM have strategically framed the movement as one that honors past Black Liberation struggles, but transforms traditional framing of those struggles to include all Black lives inclusive of differences based on gender, sexual orientation, age, nationality, or criminal status.

Current research about American Indians of all ages is in short supply, yet design and allocation of public services and resources are increasingly guided by ‘evidence’ provided by research. The health and wellness of this population is persistently poorer than that of other marginalized populations. American Indian tribes have been beset progressively since the earliest arrival of European settlers by both malevolent and well-intentioned assaults on their cultures and peoples. This long history of cultural and physical genocide continues into the present and undermines the effectiveness of Eurocentric processes for research that have been shaped by values and beliefs antithetical to those of most tribes (e.g. individualism, proprietary ownership, science as the way of knowing). Individual and collective historical trauma is present in all of the more than 500 federally recognized tribes in the United States of America, and a lack of trust further compromises the validity and positive impact of most research. This chapter describes the roots and foundations of flawed and successful research and identifies practical resources and approaches that are valid and beneficial for conducting research with indigenous people. The processes described in this chapter are grounded in the experiences of tribes in the United States of America; however, parallel experiences of indigenous populations that have a continuing legacy of trauma are found in many other countries (such as in Brazil and New Zealand) and the insights and approaches found in this chapter may be applicable to some degree.

This paper is the initial published report of an ongoing research project focused on the occupational world and culture of the real-estate developer. 1 Data sources include intensive interviews with (mostly) California developers and associated occupational groups (e.g. architects, planners), participant observation of developer-oriented workshops and conferences, and diverse publications including: (1) the work of social science colleagues who have dealt – sometimes directly, mostly tangentially, with the topic; (2) biographies and autobiographies of contemporary and historic individuals who are “captured” by my classificatory scheme, that is, who I can clearly categorize as being in the development business or who are, at minimum, fellow travellers; (3) newspaper articles, columns, and op-ed pieces dealing with individual developers, with development projects and with support of or opposition to either; (4) social histories which capture the “who did what and when” details of growth and patterning of specific human settlements; (5) information available on the internet (and there is a great deal of it) dealing with both individual developers and with developer-related organizations; (6) publications (newsletters, journals, and so forth) of organizations which either directly represent or are enmeshed with or are in opposition to this occupational group; and (7) fictional works (films, short stories, TV, novels, newspaper and magazine cartoons, etc.) in which one or more of the characters is a developer.1 It is perhaps not surprising that this first report should deal with matters of symbolism, of imagery: As a self-identified symbolic interactionist and, more tellingly perhaps, as a student of Anselm Strauss, 2 Strauss’ Images of the American City (1961) and his edited, The American City: A Sourcebook of Urban Imagery (1968) were among the first works I encountered by him and they continue to be major influences on my thinking about urban matters of all sorts.2 these are the sort of issues that come most readily to mind whenever I am surveying data on almost any phenomenon. And while there are many, many other “stories” to be told about this occupation, I think it is fair to assert that all of them – or at least those dealing with the contemporary situation – will have to be understood against the backdrop of what I have come to think of as the developers’ “image problem.”

In what follows, I will first, overview my rationale for undertaking this study; second, provide some data to support the claims made by the title of the piece, i.e. that developers are seen as villains and that theirs is reasonably captioned a “stigmatized occupation” and then offer other data to question the accuracy of that image; third, propose a triplet of (among, undoubtedly, many other) reasons for this apparent mis-match between image and “reality”: and finally, in a concluding section, speculate a bit about consequences of this occupational stigmatization.

Following Philip Selznick’s lead in using pragmatist social science to understand issues of public concern we conducted a study of failed innovation in the commercial construction industry (CCI). We find that social heuristics – collectively constructed and maintained interpretive decision-making frames – significantly shape economic and non-economic decision-making practices. Social heuristics are the outcome of industry-based “institutionalization processes” and are widely held and commonly relied on in CCI to reduce uncertainty endemic to decision-making; they provide actors with both a priori and ex post facto justifications for economic decisions that appear socially rational to industry co-participants. In the CCI – a project-centered production network – social heuristics as shared institutions sustain network-based social order but in so doing discourage novel technologies and impede innovation. Social heuristics are actor-level constructs that reflect macro-level institutional arrangements and networked production relations. The concept of social heuristics offers the promise of developing a genuinely social theory of individual economic choice and action that is historically informed, contextually situated, and neither psychologically nor structurally reductionist.

Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General Theory that ‘practical men […] are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,’ we might be wont to dismiss such a push from below. While it is sometimes true that grassroots movements channel preexisting economic thought, I wish to argue that grassroots economic thought can also precede developments subsequently elaborated by economists. This paper considers such a case: by women at the intersection of the women’s liberation movement and the claimants’ unions movement in 1970s Britain. Oral historical and archival work on these working-class women and on achievements such as their succeeding to establish unconditional basic income as an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement forms the springboard for my reconstruction of the grassroots feminist economic thought underpinning the women’s basic income demand. I hope to demonstrate, firstly, how this was a prefiguration of ideas later developed by feminist economists and philosophers; secondly, how unique it was for its time and a consequence of the intersectionality of class, gender, race, and dis/ability. Thirdly, I should like to suggest that bringing into the fold this particular grassroots feminist economic thought on basic income would widen the mainstream understanding and historiography of the idea of basic income. Lastly, I hope to make the point that, within the history of economic thought, grassroots economic thought ought to be heeded far more than it currently is.