Jamie McCallum

Biography

Jamie McCallum is an assistant professor of sociology at Middlebury College. His book, Global Unions, Local Power, won the best book award from the American Sociological Association in 2014. His academic work focuses on work, labor, and social movements. 

Abstract

“From Liberation to Recuperation: The legacy of Paris 1968 on Seattle 1999”

This talk will highlight the historical ligature between the May 1968 uprisings and the Seattle 1999 protests that inspired the US wing of the alterglobalization movement. It will also argue that some of the same forces inadvertently set in motion by the Left in ‘68 also sowed the seeds of the New New Left’s demise two years after Seattle. This talk examines various explanations for the rise and decline of the alterglobalization movement–9/11, repertoire exhaustion, shift to an antiwar frame–and offers an alternative narrative that emphasizes the recuperation of movement themes into mainstream political and economic discourse. If May ‘68 in some way helped set the stage for neoliberalism, what were the unintended outcomes of Seattle ‘99?