In a new line of research, I am examining occupational activism among professional workers in the United States. Specifically, I am examining how some professional workers enact their job responsibilities in ways that contribute to wider social change. Abstracts of articles and chapters from this project can be found below.
Coley, Jonathan S., and Jessica L. Schachle-Gordon. 2026. “Occupational Activism: Conceptual Distinctions and Theoretical Frameworks.” Work and Occupations 53(1): 3-24. (external link)
Occupational activism refers to socially transformative action pursued through one’s occupational role or community. In this introduction to Work and Occupations’ special issue on “Working for Social Change,” we clarify how occupational activism is distinct from other concepts such as social movement activism, labor movement activism, institutional activism, and professional activism. We also identify several theoretical frameworks from adjacent fields that can be repurposed and applied to the study of occupational activism, including social movement theory, organizational inequality theories, and street-level bureaucracy theory. Altogether, our article offers a foundation for future research on activism in and through the world of work.
Coley, Jonathan S., and Joseph Anthony. 2026 (Forthcoming). “Faithfully Queer: Pathways to Occupational Activism within Nonaffirming Religious Traditions in the United States.” In Jonathan S. Coley and Golshan Golriz (eds.), LGBTQ Religious Activism: Rethinking Identity, Faith, and Social Change. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
This chapter examines how and why some LGBTQ people decide to enter into positions of leadership within nonaffirming faith traditions and engage in “occupational activism” on behalf of other LGBTQ people of faith. Drawing on in-depth interviews with LGBTQ faith leaders from several religious traditions, we show that LGBTQ people frequently report experiences with formal discrimination and exclusion within nonaffirming faith traditions. Nevertheless, the nonhierarchical structure of some of those religious traditions still allows them to become leaders of places of worship and other religious organizations. Additionally, the same conservative and/or individualist doctrines that led to their marginalization within these religious traditions ironically gives them a cultural toolkit with which to justify careers within these religious traditions. Specifically, these leaders emphasize how their readings of scriptures, their reported direct conversations with God, and their “calls” into religious ministry allow them to formulate identities as LGBTQ persons of faith and justify their pursuit of leadership positions within religious organizations. These findings thus shed light on how LGBTQ people of faith become change agents even in religions that marginalize them. They also strengthen our understanding of the factors that facilitate people’s decisions to become activists more generally.
Coley, Jonathan S., and Jessica L. Schachle-Gordon. 2023. “Occupational Activism and the New Labor Activism: Illustrations from the Education Sector and an Agenda for Future Research.” Work and Occupations 50(3): 420-427. (external link)
The United States is currently witnessing a surge in labor activism that will likely embolden many workers to engage in occupational activism and thus enact their jobs in socially transformative ways. We illustrate this argument through a case study of K-12 educators who participated in a teachers’ walkout and subsequently became engaged in efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their schools. We then outline an agenda for future research on occupational activism.
Coley, Jonathan S., Daniel B. Cornfield, Larry W. Isaac, and Dennis C. Dickerson. 2022. “Social Movements as Schooling for Careers: Career Consequences of the Nashville Civil Rights Movement.” Social Movement Studies 21(3): 255-273. (external link)
Scholarship on social movement schools shows that movements often facilitate the schooling of their participants, while scholarship on the biographical consequences of social movements demonstrates that movements influence their participants’ subsequent careers. To date, however, few studies consider whether and how the schooling functions of social movements shape participants’ later careers. In this pilot study, through a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of the careers of 23 student participants in the Nashville civil rights movement of 1958-1961, we show that participants who enrolled in James Lawson’s workshops in nonviolence and who served in the core cadre of the movement’s Student Central Committee – two important forms of social movement schooling – pursued careers in organizing and electoral politics. In contrast, participants who did not enroll in Lawson’s workshops and who were not part of the core cadre of the Student Central Committee tended to pursue careers as social service workers or businesspeople. The article extends our knowledge of the impacts of social movement schools and suggests directions for future research on the biographical consequences of social movements.
Cornfield, Daniel B., Jonathan S. Coley, Larry W. Isaac, and Dennis C. Dickerson. 2018. “Occupational Activism and Racial Desegregation at Work: Activist Careers after the Nonviolent Nashville Civil Rights Movement.” Research in the Sociology of Work 32(1): 217-248. (external link)
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. Our purpose in this paper is to introduce and typologize what we refer to as “occupational activism,” defined as socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community. We empirically induce and present a typology from our study of the half-century-long, post-mobilization occupational careers of over 60 veterans of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The fourfold typology of occupational activism is framed in the “new” sociology of work, which emphasizes the role of worker agency and activism in determining worker life chances, and in the “varieties of activism” perspective, which treats the typology as a coherent regime of activist roles in the dialogical diffusion of civil rights movement values into, within, and out of workplaces. We conclude with a research agenda on how bureaucratic workplaces nurture and stymie occupational activism as a racially desegregationist force at work and in the broader polity.