Joshua Murray

Josh Murray is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Before joining Vanderbilt University in 2012, he received his PhD in Sociology from the State University of New York Stony Brook. Murray's research focuses on corporate elites and class conflict. The scope of his work is broad and encompasses many different cases, including federal campaign finance, ballot initiatives, and the production decisions of the auto industry. The shared point of departure for much of his work is an abiding interest in the interaction of structure and agency in class conflict. For example, the way that corporate elite agency has shaped the structures in which both elites and workers operate; how collective worker agency can take advantage of and shape those structures; and in what ways structure acts to constrain and/or facilitate elite agency. His research has appeared in academic journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, and Critical Historical Studies. Most recently, he and his coauthor (Michael Schwartz) published Wrecked: How the American Automobile Industry Destroyed Its Capacity to Compete with the Russell Sage Foundation (2019).