Daniel Cornfield

Professor of Sociology Vanderbilt University

  • Nashville TN

Expert in the American labor movement, the creative class, and work and occupation issues generally.

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Biography

Dan Cornfield is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and American Studies at Vanderbilt University, Editor-in-Chief of Work and Occupations, and a Fellow of the Labor and Employment Relations Association. His work on artist careers, labor, civil rights, and immigration addresses the formation of inclusive and expressive occupational communities and their impact on cultural pluralism. During his Fellowship year at the Curb Center, Cornfield and a team of sociology graduate students will examine the role of local arts agencies in promoting cultural equity and community engagement in the arts in the U.S.

His Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville (Princeton University Press) addresses how indie musicians strengthen their inclusive and diversifying peer community of artists in the contemporary era of the gig economy and heightened identity politics, based on his in-depth interviews with 75 Nashville popular-music musicians. Dan’s work has been widely published in social science journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and the ILR Review. Among his books are Becoming a Mighty Voice (Russell Sage Foundation) and Worlds of Work (Springer), co-edited with Randy Hodson. He has chaired the Metropolitan Nashville Human Relations Commission, advised WNPT (Nashville public television) in the production of its Emmy Award-winning documentary series on Nashville immigrants “Next Door Neighbors,” and presently advises the Future of Music Coalition on its artist revenue streams project and the National Endowment of the Arts on its research lab initiative, “The Arts, Creativity, Cognition and Learning.”

Cornfield earned his BA (1974), MA (1977), and PhD (1980) all in sociology from the University of Chicago.

Areas of Expertise

Labor & Employment
Creative Class
Unionization
Labor Unions
Musicians

Accomplishments

2008-09 Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award

Vanderbilt University

Award for Affirmative Action and Diversity Initiatives

Vanderbilt University, 2000

Excellence in Education Award

Labor and Employment Relations Association (formerly, the
Industrial Relations Research Association), 2000, for outstanding teaching in the academic area
of sociology (inaugural year of this award)

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Education

University of Chicago

Ph.D.

Sociology

1980

University of Chicago

M.A.

Sociology

1977

University of Chicago

B.A.

Sociology

1974

With honors

Affiliations

  • Sociological Research Association : Member
  • WNPT (formerly WDCN) Public Television Corporation : Chair, Community Advisory Board
  • American Sociological Association : Member
  • Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología del Trabajo : Member
  • Southern Sociological Society : Member
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Selected Media Appearances

‘Victories would be nothing less than an earthquake’: can UAW win in the south?

The Guardian  online

2024-04-17

“The UAW has clearly taken a very creative, grassroots, militant approach to organizing and collective bargaining,” said Daniel Cornfield, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “That’s a huge change.”

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Wynn Resorts reaches deal with Las Vegas unions, avoiding strike

Reuters  online

2023-11-10

"This union's gains in wage increases will certainly address the heightening income inequality that has been rising not only within this particular industry but also in the national service economy," said Daniel Cornfield, a Vanderbilt University sociology professor.

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Former Yellow drivers have trouble finding jobs in right-to-work Tennessee

Marketplace  

2023-10-03

Tennessee, along with 27 other states, has right-to-work laws, which forbid mandatory union dues. Such laws can also divide a workforce between union and nonunion members, according to Dan Cornfield, an expert on unionization at Vanderbilt University.

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Selected Articles

Occupational Activism and Racial Desegregation at Work: Activist Careers after the Nonviolent Nashville Civil Rights Movement

Race, Identity and Work

Daniel B. Cornfield, Jonathan S. Coley, Larry W. Isaac, Dennis C. Dickerson

2018

As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status hierarchies. Much sociological research has examined the reproduction of racial inequality at work; however, little research has examined how desegregationist forces, including civil rights movement values, enter and permeate bureaucratic workplaces into the broader polity.

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Randy Hodson, Agent of a New Sociology of Work: Remembrance, Reflection, and Celebration

A Gedenkschrift to Randy Hodson: Working with Dignity

Daniel B. Cornfield

2016

In eulogizing Randy Hodson, I reflect on and celebrate the development and deepening of Randy’s intellectual legacy as I have seen it unfold and intersected with it at different points over the years. Our careers commenced in 1980 as labor sociologists were turning their attention toward worker agency in an emerging post-bureaucratic era of neo-liberalism.

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Preparation Pathways and Movement Participation: Insurgent Schooling and Nonviolent Direct Action in the Nashville Civil Rights Movement

Mobilization: An International Quarterly

Larry W. Isaac, Jonathan S. Coley, Daniel B. Cornfield, and Dennis C. Dickerson

2016

Employing a unique sample of participants in the early Nashville civil rights movement, we extend the micromobilization literature by conceptualizing “preparation pathways” (or schooling channels) through which activists acquire insurgent consciousness and capital so crucial for committed, effective, high-risk activism. We identify two key pathways in which activists were “schooled” in nonviolent praxis—experience in nonviolent direct action prior to the Nashville movement and training through intensive, highly organized, and disciplined workshops on nonviolence praxis.

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