Todd Wolfson
www.toddowolfson.org twolfson@rci.rutgers.edu
Todd Wolfson is currently researching the transformations in social movement organizing from World War II to the present. Building on his recently published book, Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left, the goal of this research is to map and theorize the changing logic of social movement-based resistance in relation to the shifts in the strategy and practice of capitalism as well as the correspondent evolution in information and communication technologies. The foundational research question that guides this projects is how have the transformations in capitalism, the state and technology impacted the strategies, goals and social horizon of social movement based organizing across the 20th and 21st century. The research focuses specifically on the transformations in democratic governance, organizational structure, (social) media strategy and the composition of social movements from the 1940s to the present with the goal of further refining our understanding of the Old Left, New Left and the Cyber Left. Currently Todd is working on an National Science Foundation grant proposal to further this research. He is also collaborating with Drs. Peter Funke, Paolo Gerbaudo and Emiliano Treré to host a panel that examines social movements from this diachronic perspective for the 2016 International Sociological Association meeting. The panel will lead to a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal that looks at social movements across the last thirty years.
