Edwin Amenta
· Professor and Co-Director, Graduate StudiesUniversity of California, Irvine · Sociology
Active 1985–2025
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About
Professor Edwin Amenta is a scholar with joint appointments in Sociology and Education, and a courtesy appointment in Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He directs the UCI-MUST (Measurement Undergraduate Success Trajectories) Project and his research applies insights from social stratification and the sociology of organizations to examine how schools and labor markets influence life course outcomes. His scholarship spans three interrelated areas: educational inequality and labor market stratification, youth socialization and school discipline, and experiences, trajectories, and outcomes in higher education. Amenta’s work on social stratification includes cross-national comparative studies of higher education access and completion, vocational education, and self-employment, and he co-directed the international project Stratification in Higher Education, which investigates how higher education expansion, differentiation, and privatization affect class-based access. His research also explores how school and neighborhood contexts mediate labor market transitions and social mobility. In the area of youth socialization, he has led major studies on school discipline, legal norms, and student rights, authoring the book Judging School Discipline and co-directing the School Rights Project, a multi-method study of law and student experience across diverse school settings. He directed a cross-national study of school discipline and student…
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Psychology
- Computer Science
- Social Science
- Data science
- Media studies
- Political economy
- Public administration
- Law
Selected publications
Sociological Forum · 2024-05-28 · 4 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingAbstract What determines the quality of coverage received by social movement organizations when they appear extensively in the news? Research on the news coverage of social movement organizations is dominated by case studies supporting the “protest paradigm,” which argues that journalists portray movement activists trivially and negatively when covering protest. However, movement organizations often make long‐running news for many different reasons, mainly not protest. We argue that some of this…
Russell Sage Foundation eBooks · 2024-09-18 · 3 citations
bookSenior authorPeople’s beliefs and values are subjective, but they are also shaped by a broader common sense about issues, such as abortion or climate change, as well as about questions that transcend single issues, such as the proper reach of government, the lines dividing us and them, and the boundaries of the self. Movements aim to appeal to that broader common sense and, crucially, to change it. In this book Francesca Polletta and Edwin Amenta argue that activists can maximize their ability to get their m…
2020 · 3 citations
1st authorCorrespondingResearch in social movements, conflicts and change · 2023 · 2 citations
1st authorCorrespondingUnder which conditions do social movements receive extensive attention from the mainstream news media? We develop an institutional mediation model that argues that combinations of the news-heightening characteristics of movements, including their disruptive capacities, organizational resources, and political orientation, and political contexts, including partisan regimes and benefiting from national policies, bring extensive attention to movements. It also holds that investigations will draw ext…
What Drives the News Coverage of US Social Movements?
Social Forces · 2023-05-13 · 1 citations
articleSenior authorCorrespondingAbstract What drives the news coverage of social movements in the professional news media? We address this question by elaborating an institutional mediation model arguing that the news values, routines, and characteristics of the news media induce them to pay attention to movements depending on their characteristics and the political contexts in which they engage. The news-making characteristics of movements include their disruptive capacities and organizational strength, and the political cont…
Recent grants
NSF · $83k · 2010–2012
NSF · $214k · 2017–2021
NSF · $152k · 2008–2010
Frequent coauthors
- 30 shared
Neal Caren
- 12 shared
Thomas Elliott
University of Guelph
- 10 shared
Amber Celina Tierney
Lake Tahoe Community College
- 6 shared
Drew Halfmann
Harvard University
- 5 shared
Sheera Joy Olasky
- 5 shared
Theda Skocpol
- 5 shared
Francesca Polletta
- 4 shared
Elisabeth S. Clemens
University of Chicago
Awards & honors
- Senior Fellow Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2013-2015)
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