Simeon J. Newman

Simeon J. Newman is a political and comparative-historical sociologist with broad interests across social theory, political economy, and the philosophy of the social sciences. He completed his BA in Sociology and History at the University of California-Berkeley, his PhD in Sociology at the University of Michigan, and a postdoc at the Max-Weber-Institut für Soziologie, Universität Heidelberg before starting as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto in 2024. His research represents an effort to revise theories of political domination in light of a keen sensitivity to change over time. He addresses questions of social processes and historical methodologies in his conceptual and epistemic work, and examines specific forms of authority and autonomization in his empirical work. In his current book project, he shows that the unprecedented wave of urban population growth and the proliferation of squatter settlements in 20th century Mexico City shaped politics in a non-linear pattern, initially helping to bolster the Institutional Revolutionary Party (which ruled the country for decades) and then helping to undermine it. His next book project is a comparative study of revolutions, counterrevolutions, and passive revolutions. In addition to teaching contemporary theory, he has taught courses on capitalism and on revolutions.

Recent Publications

Newman, Simeon J. 2024. “Aníbal Quijano’s Critical Sociology: From Dependency Theory to Coloniality.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

Newman, Simeon J. 2024. “Four Temporalities: Toward a Typology of Narrative Forms.” Sociological Theory.

Newman, Simeon J. 2024. “How Not to Lie with Comparative-Historical Sociology: A Realist Balance Sheet.” Pp. 238-60 in After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology, edited by Nicholas Hoover Wilson and Damon Maryl. New York: Columbia University Press.

For a full list of publications, see Professor Newman’s CV or Google Scholar page.