Kim Voss - Research Focus

Research Focus

Voss' research focus is the American labor movement, the nature and culture of work, social movements, and comparative sociology.

Much of Voss' early work analyzed why American labor unions were conservative and weak vis-a-vis their European counterparts. In The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century, Voss argued that the formative period for the American labor movement was the 1870s and 1880s, and that the creation and collapse of the Knights of Labor was a critical factor in determining the future of the American labor movement. Voss examined whether American exceptionalism was the cause of or an outcome of the collapse of the Knights. She concluded the latter, and argued that strong business resistance to unions, weak government and legal protections for worker rights (two sides of the same coin) explained the subsequent politics and culture of unions in America. Voss also argued, however, that the Knights had adopted an ideology which was not resilient in the face of organizational collapse.

More recently, Voss has explored the factors which cause the rise of transnational social movements. She is also studying the power of story-telling and narrative song in social movements.