Skip to main content

Matthew Soener

Profile picture for Matthew Soener

Contact Information

702 S Wright Street
3120 Lincoln Hall
Urbana, IL 61801
M/C 454
Phone: 217-300-6396
Assistant Professor

Biography

Prior to joining UIUC, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po in Paris. I received my Ph.D. in sociology from the Ohio State University in 2018 and received a BA from the University of Kansas. 

Research Interests

Economic Sociology; Environmental Sociology; Race, Gender, and Class; Theory; Political Economy; Global and Transnational Sociology; Political Sociology

Research Description

My research combines classic themes from political economy, economic sociology, and inequality to understand contemporary socio-economic problems. I am broadly interested in the way global capitalism has transformed over the last half century. At the heart of this change is a major shift in the balance-of-power and material distribution. I follow these threads in three research tracks. First, I have studied "financialization" in relation to the restructuring of global production, corporate power, and state theory. Second, I have done research on inequality including between labor/capital and native, gender, and class wage gap dynamics in workplaces. Third, and more recently, I apply some of these themes to climate change. I am interested in forces driving in greenhouse gas emissions including exploitation, austerity, and stagnating growth. Going forward, I will explore the historical roots of some of these dynamics in a project on US state's economic and energy policies from the postwar period through the 1970s.

 

Courses Taught

Soc 200: Introduction to Social Theory

Soc 226: Political Sociology

Soc 500: Classical Social Theory

Soc 501: Contemporary Social Theory 

Soc 596: Political Economy

Soc 596: Political Sociology

Recent Publications

2024. "Are IMF Programs Raising Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Global South?" Socio-Economic Review. Pre-Print Online. 

(with Olivier Godechot and Mirna Safi) 2023. "Who Benefits from Migrant and Female Labor? Connecting Wages to Demographics Changes in French Workplaces." Sociological Forum. 38(4): 1198-1219.

2022. “Class Power in Hard Times: Excavating Nicos Poulantzas’s Theory of the Capitalist State through the History of the 2007-8 Crisis” Critical Historical Studies. 9(2): 195-220.

2022. “Financialization Goes South: Foreign Capital Flows and Financial Accumulation in Emerging Markets.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Available Online.

2021. “Did the ‘Real’ Economy Turn Financial? Mapping the Contours Financialization in the non-Financial Corporate Sector” New Political Economy. 26 (5), 817-831

2019. “Profiting in a Warming World: Investigating the Links between Capitalist Profitability and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in OECD States.” Sociological Forum. 34(4). 974-998.

(with Michael Nau). 2019. “Citadels Privilege: The Rise of LLCs, LPs and the Perpetuation of Elite Power in America.” Economy and Society. 48(3): 399-425.

(with Michael Nau). 2019. “Income Precarity and the Financial Crisis.” Socio-Economic Review. (17)3: 523-544.

(with Tim Bartley and Carl Gershenson). 2019. “Power at a Distance: Organizational Power Across Boundaries.” Sociology Compass. 13(10): Available Online.

2015. “Why Do Firms Financialize? Meso-Level Evidence from the U.S. Apparel and Footwear Industry, 1991-2005.” Socio-Economic Review. 13(3): 549-573.