Grenier, Guillermo

Grenier, Guillermo Graduate Faculty

Positions

Professor, Global and Sociocultural Studies , Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs

grenierg@fiu.edu

biography

Throughout my work the interplay of culture, institutions and ideology can be seen. I ask how power operates in specific social environments—how people use it and how it shapes social life and individual behavior. My first book, Inhuman Relations, explored how managerial power and worker resistance were manifested during a time of crisis at a specific worksite. It's during crisis that many of the dynamics of power become most evident. As workers tried to exert power by organizing into a union, management responded with the structural control mechanisms provided by our capitalist system and our discourse on democracy (worker participation as control). In subsequent research I looked at the historical roots of managerial ideology in the U.S. and how managerial power expands as global forces a dialectical manner as technology and worker organizations change. My penchant for studying the interaction between culture, institutions and ideology is also evident in the research I've conducted with colleagues on Miami (Miami Now: Immigration, Ethnicity and Social Change, with Alex Stepick) and Cuban-Americans (Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States, with Lisandro Perez). The unstoppable force of the Cuban Revolution and the geopolitical trends of the 1960s set into motion social forces which shaped every element of Miami's social, political, economic and cultural environment. In the co-authored This Land is Our Land, we analyze arenas of interactions; the context where power, resistance and solidarity operate in a multiethnic urban system.

My most recent work, solo and with colleagues, is on the dynamic of ideology and identity in the Cuban-American (and Latino) populations of the United States. I am also working with colleagues in Cuba to expand our knowledge about the migratory patterns from the island as well as the impact of the newest arrivals on the development of island social, political, cultural and economic characteristics.

In recent years I've taught social theory, theory constructions and the sociology of Miami, and my interests increasingly return to my graduate work in sociology of knowledge, political sociology and Cuba. Representative Publications: Books

2003 This Land is Our Land: Newcomers and Established Residents in Miami. University of California Press. 2003. With Alex Stepick, Max Castro, Marvin Dunn.

2002 A Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States. Allyn and Bacon. With Lisandro Perez. 2002.

1994 Newcomers in the Workplace: Immigrants and the Restructuring of the U.S. Economy, with Louise Lamphere and Alex Stepick. Temple University Press, 1994. Winner of the Conrad Arensberg Award, American Anthropological Association.

1993 Employee Participation and Labor Law in the American Workplace, with Ray Hogler, Colorado State University. Quorum/Greenwood Publishing Co., 1993.

1992 Miami Now: Immigration, Ethnicity and Social Change, edited volume, with Alex Stepick. University Press of Florida, 1992.

2011 "Cuban Immigrants in the United States." In Ron Bayor Ed. Multicultural Americans: The Newest Americans. Greenwood.

2011 "Exile Politics and Republican Party Affiliation: The Case of Cuban Americans in Miami" with Chris Girard. Social Science Quarterly. Forthcoming, Spring 2012.

2010 "The Declining Symbolic Significance of the Embargo for South Florida Cuban Americans." Latino Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No.1., pp. 4-22. with Chris Girard.

2008 "Insulating Ideology: The Enclave Effect on South Florida's Cuban Americans" Hispanic Behavioral Science Journal. No. 30, 2008, p. 317. with Chris Girard.

2006 "The More Things Change: The Creation, Maintenance and Persistence of the Cuban-Exile Ideology in Miami," Journal of American Ethnic History. Winter/Spring. 2006: 209-224.

2007 "Balseros, Boteros: Tendances ideologique et vagues d'immigracion." Problemes d'Amerique Latine. Numero 61/62, Ete/Automne 2006: 131-148

2002 "Blacks and Cubans in Miami: The Negative Repercussions of the Cuban Enclave." in Governing American Cities: Inter-Ethnic Coalitions, Competition, and Conflict. Michael Jones-Correa, Ed. Russell Sage Foundation: New York. 2002. Pp. 137-157

2001 "Comparative Union Responses to Mass Immigration: Evidence from an Immigrant City." in Critical Sociology. Vol. 26, 1-2, 2000. pp. 82-105. With Bruce Nissen