Fields

Urban Sociology, Middle Classes, Sociology of Consumption, Labor and Labor Movements, Latin America

Courses

• Introduction to Sociology
• Social Problems
• Urban Sociology
• Sociological Theory
• Sociology of Community
• First Year Seminar (Culture, Power and Inequality), Sociology of Consumption, Inequality by the Numbers (Honors)

Current Research Interests

Middle classes and Political Polarization in Chile and Latin America 

Curriculum Vitae

Click here for C.V.

Selected Publications

Books
Stillerman, Joel. 2023. Identity Investments: Middle Class Responses to Precarious Privilege in Neoliberal Chile. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Stillerman, Joel. 2015. The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Perspective. London: Polity Books.

Cárdenas, Ana, Felipe Link, and Joel Stillerman, eds. 2012. ¿Qué significa el trabajo hoy?: Continuidad y cambio en una sociedad global. (“What Does Work Mean Today? Continuity and Change in a Global Society”). Santiago, Chile: Editorial Catalonia.

Articles

Llanos, Claudio, José Antonio Gonzalez, and Joel Stillerman. 2021. “Desempleo y flexibilización: Alemania Federal y Chile Frente a las transformaciones del capitalism (décadas de 1970 y 1980) [Unemployment and Flexibility: The German Federal Republic and Chile in the Face of the Transformations of Capitalism (1970s and 1980s].” Revista CUHSO (Cultura - Hombre - Sociedad). 31, 1: 200-226.

Stillerman, Joel. 2017. “Explaining Strike Outcomes in Chile: Structural Power, Associational Power, and Spatial Strategies.” Latin American Politics and Society. 59, 1 (Spring): 96-118.

Stillerman, Joel. 2017. “Housing Pathways, Elective Belonging, and Family Ties in Middle Class Chileans’ Housing Choices.” Poetics. 61 (April): 67-78.

Stillerman, Joel. 2016. “Educar a niñas y niños de clase media en Santiago: Capital cultural y segregación socioterritorial en la formación de mercados locales de educación.” (“Educating Middle Class Children in Santiago: Cultural Capital and Socio-territorial Segregation in the Making of Local Education Markets.” EURE 42, 126 (mayo): 169-186.

Stillerman, Joel and Rodrigo Salcedo. 2012. “Transposing the Urban to the Mall: Routes, Relationships and Resistance in two Santiago, Chile Shopping Centers.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41, 3: 309–336.

Stillerman, Joel. 2010. “The Contested Spaces of Chile’s Middle Classes.” Political Power and Social Theory 21: 209-238.

Stillerman, Joel. 2006. “The Politics of Space and Culture in Santiago Chile’s Street Markets.” Qualitative Sociology 29, 4 (December): 507–530.

Stillerman, Joel. 2004. “Gender, Class, and Generational Contexts for Consumption in Contemporary Chile.” Journal of Consumer Culture 4, 1 (March): 51-78.

Stillerman, Joel. 2003. “Space, Strategies and Alliances in Mobilization: The 1960 Metalworkers’ and Coal Miners’ Strikes in Chile.” Mobilization: An International Journal 8, 1 (February): 65-85.

Stillerman, Joel. 2003. “Transnational Activist Networks and the Emergence of Labor Internationalism in the NAFTA Countries.” Social Science History 27, 4 (Winter): 577-602.

Chapters

Stillerman, Joel. 2021. “Class Conflict and the Ascent of Globalized Business Groups under Chile’s Dictatorship: A Case Study of the Copper Manufacturing Industry.” In Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America: A Transnational History of Profits and Repression, Victoria Basualdo, Hartmut Berghoff, and Marcelo Bucheli, eds. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan: 263-290.

Stillerman, Joel. 2012. “Chile’s Forgotten Consumers: Poor Urban Families, Consumption Strategies, and the Moral Economy of Risk in Santiago.” Pp. 67-80 in John Sinclair and Anna Pertierra, eds. Consumer Culture in Latin America. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave.

Stillerman, Joel and Catherine Sundt. 2007. “Embeddedness and Business Strategies among Santiago, Chile’s Street and Flea Market Vendors.” Pp. 180-200 in Street Entrepreneurs: People, Place and Politics in Local and Global Perspective, edited by J. Cross and A. Morales. London and New York: Routledge Press.

Stillerman, Joel. 2004. “Disciplined Workers and Avid Consumers: Neoliberal Policy and the Transformation of Work and Identity among Chilean Metalworkers.” Pp. 164-208 in Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973-2002, edited by P. Winn. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Edited collections

Mosoetsa, Sarah, Joel Stillerman, and Chris Tilly, eds. 2016. Special issue, Precarious Labor in Global Perspectives. International Labor and Working-class History 89 (Spring).

Stillerman, Joel and Peter Winn, eds. 2007. Special Issue, New Studies/New Organizations; Labor Organization in Latin America and Beyond. International Labor and Working-Class History 72 (Fall).

Stillerman, Joel and Peter Winn, eds. 2006. Special Issue, Globalization and the Latin American Workplace. International Labor and Working-Class History 70 (Fall).

Biography

Professor Stillerman received his PhD in Sociology and Historical Studies in 1998 from the New School for Social Research. He joined the Department of Sociology at GVSU in 2002 after teaching for four years at the University of Arizona. He has also served as Director of the Latin American Studies program, taught in the Honors College, and worked in Chilean universities. He has conducted mixed method (ethnography, interview, visual, and archival) research in Chile on a) trade union protest and the effects of military rule on working-class culture; b) consumption in alternative (street and flea markets) and standard (shopping malls) retail formats and its relationship to the character of urban public life; c) the moral and cultural foundations of middle class adults' market decisions; and d) middle class political identities. He has also published on transnational labor activism in Latin America.