Daniel Y. Zipp
I am a Collegiate Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor in University Honors at the University of Maryland College Park. I am also an Affiliate of the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland College Park.
My research primarily focuses on the political economy of Chinese environmental policy implementation through in-depth qualitative methods. Specifically, my scholarship focuses on the myriad of interests (capital, labor, and other state bureaucrats) that mid-level bureaucrats navigate and create as they (fail) to implement environmental policies in Shanxi and Henan provinces, located on China’s largest coalfield, that are meant to curb coal production, consumption, and pollution. To investigate the interactions between mid-level officials and managers, workers, and other officials, I spent 12 months engaged in comparative ethnographic work, supplemented by 148 semi-structured interviews. The future of global climate change is dependent on whether or not Chinese mid-level officials can faithfully implement environmental policies, therefore understanding the ways that they actively resist implementation is crucial.
Experience & Education
Visiting Assistant Professor/Collegiate Fellow
Summer Instructor
Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology (Globalization & Asia and Asian America)
Ph.D, University of California, Los Angeles
Dissertation: Resourceful Bureaucrats: How Chinese Officials (Fail to) Implement Environmental Policies
Instructor, Fellow, & Teaching Assistant
M.A., University of California, Los Angeles
Masters Paper: Chinatowns Lost: The Life and Death of Urban Neighborhoods in an American City
B.A., Oberlin College
Honors Paper: Migrants and Mobilization: Sectoral Patterns in China, 2010-2013
City & Community (Podcast) - Daniel Y. Zipp. Chinatowns Lost? The Birth and Death of Urban Neighborhoods in an American City
City & Community (Featured Article, Dec. 2021) - Daniel Y. Zipp. Chinatowns Lost? The Birth and Death of Urban Neighborhoods in an American City
Global Labor Journal - Daniel Y. Zipp and Marc Blecher. Migrants and Mobilization: Sectoral Patterns in China, 2010-2013
Current & Future Projects
I am particularly interested in studying the ways in which individuals resist attempts by the state to impose its power, and in doing so I use various qualitative research methods and draw on political (including social movements), economic, and organizational sociology. Below I illustrate my interest in resistance through my ongoing research projects.
Compliance and Resistance at the Coalface: Resourceful Recoupling of Environmental Practice in China
I introduce the concepts of resourceful recoupling and decoupling to show that economic considerations, cultural ethos, bureaucratic positionality, and individual resourcefulness explain what proceeds and follows the instrumental decision to decouple or recouple, as well as how each process actually unfolds.
Constructing Legality: Evaluating China’s Rule of Law by Analyzing the Effectiveness of the Remedies Available under Labor Contract Law of 2008 for Migrant Construction Workers.
Despite the state attempts to disrupt a labor protest before it occurs, we find the state’s designs often have the opposite effect, as workers increasingly rely on extra-judicial methods to assert their newly given rights.
Future Research: Meso-level State Actors in the North Central China Rustbelt
This series of articles will examine how meso-level officials resourcefully provide stability, manage uncertainty, and develop new relationships with capital, labor, and other bureaucrats as they implement 'common prosperity' and restructured tax laws.
Future Research: Chinese Neighborhoods
This will investigate the experiences of Chinese migrants who created large Chinese neighborhoods in different countries and cities.
Future Research: Migrant Neighborhoods within Chinese Cities
These articles will investigate migrant neighborhoods within Chinese cities, following migrant workers from their inland homes in Shanxi and Henan to coastal cities.
Future Research: Migrant Workers and Aging
This series of articles examining how migrant gig and aging manufacturing workers and miners navigate the social welfare system in China.
Conference Presentations & Invited Talks
- Mobilizing Enduring Stability: Chinese Officials' Toolkit for Social Stability Maintenance, XX ISA World Congress of Sociology (2023)
- From Chinatown to Asiatown: The Evolution of Asian American Neighborhoods, Annual Meeting, Urban Affairs Association (2023)
- Entering the State as a “Foreign Friend:” Doing an Ethnography of the Chinese Party-State, 7th World Conference on Qualitative Research (2023)
- Manipulated Mobilizations: How Meso-Level Officials Subsume Labor Protests, Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association (2022)
- Mutually Constitutive Mobilizations: State-Worker Responses to Environmental Policies in Authoritarian Regimes, Annual Meeting, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (2022)
- Mutually Constitutive Mobilizations: State-Worker Responses to Environmental Policies in Authoritarian Regimes, Chicago Ethnography Conference (2022)
- Extracting Resistance: Coal, Environmental Policy, and Economic Development in the Chinese Hinterland, Annual Meeting, European Sociological Association (2021)
- Extracting Resistance: Coal, Environmental Policy, and Economic Development in the Chinese Hinterland, Round Table, Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association (2021)
- Extracting Resistance: Coal, Environmental Policy, and Economic Development in the Chinese Hinterland, Development Studies Association Conference, University of East Anglia (2021)
- The (Non)Coalescence of the State: Decoupling Environmental Policy in the Chinese Hinterland, First Doctoral Conference on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (2021)
- Confronting King Coal in China: The State, Capital, and Labor in a Dying Industry, IV ISA Forum of Sociology (2021)
- Shanxi and Henan’s Ecological Development Projects, Internet Conference on Regional Environment and Ecology, Henan University (2020)
- The (Non)Coalescence of the State: Decoupling Environmental Policy in the Chinese Hinterland, Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association, (2020)
- Confronting King Coal in China: The State, Capital, and Labor in a Dying Industry, Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association (2019)
- 山西河南两省农村发展比较 (Comparing Shanxi and Henan’s Rural Development Projects), 第十一届＂黄河学＂高层论坛暨＂古文字与出土文献语言研究＂国际学术研讨会 (The 11th “Yellow River Studies” High-Level Forum and Conference of “International Studies on Ancient Chinese Language and Unearthed Documents”), Henan University (2019)
- Chinatowns Lost: The Life and Death of Urban Neighborhoods in an American City, Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association (2018)
- With Marc Blecher: Migrants and Mobilization: Sectoral Patterns in China, 2010-2013, Conference on Governance, Adaptability and System Stability under Contemporary One-Party Rule: Comparative Perspectives (2014)
- Political Sociology and the Global South Working Group, UCLA (2021)
- Markets Organizations and Movements Working Group, UCLA (2021)
- Henan University (2019)
- Political Sociology and the Global South Working Group, UCLA (2019)
- Henan University (2018)
- Shanxi Agricultural University (2018)
- Political Sociology and the Global South Working Group, UCLA (2017)
Teaching
Visiting Assistant Professor/Collegiate Fellow in the Honors College, University of Maryland College Park
- Gateway Seminar (Fall 2023)
- Vantage Point Seminar
Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology (Globalization & Asia and Asia America), Oberlin College
- Sociology of Global China (Spring 2023)
- Introduction to Sociology (Spring 2023)
- Political Sociology (Fall 2022, Spring 2023)
- First-Year Seminar: Decolonizing Global Capitalism (Fall 2022)
Instructor, UCLA
- Global Histories of Racialized Economies (Spring 2022)
- Collective Behavior (Summer 2021)
- Political Sociology (Summer 2020)
Fellow, UCLA
- Interracial Dynamics in American Culture and Society (Winter 2022)
- Center for American Politics and Public Policy (Fall 2020-Spring 2021)
Teaching Assistant, UCLA
- Border-Crossing, Diasporic Formation, and Social Transformation in Asia (Winter 2022)
- Sociology of Mental Illness (Fall 2021)
- Environmental Sociology (Spring 2020)
- Economy and Society (Winter 2020)
- Political Sociology (Fall 2019)
- Development of Sociological Theory (Spring 2017)
- Sociology of Contemporary China (Winter 2017)
- Collective Behavior (Fall 2016)
Pedagogical Coursework, UCLA
- Teaching Preparation: Writing-Intensive Seminar Development (Winter 2022)
- Teaching Apprentice Practicum (Fall 2016)
Grants & Awards
- Undergraduate Research Assistant Grant, Oblerin College, $1330 (2023)
- Silton Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award, Sociology Department, UCLA, $350 (2021-2022)
- Silton Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award, Sociology Department, UCLA, $350 (2020-2021)
- Excellence in Teaching Award, Sociology Department, UCLA (2019-2020)
- Excellence in Teaching Award, Sociology Department, UCLA (2016-2017)
- Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, Graduate Division, UCLA, $20,000 (2017)
- Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, Graduate Division, UCLA $6,000 (2016)
service
- Student Co-Coordinator, Theory Supper Club, UCLA Department of Sociology (2020-2022)
- Graduate Student Member, PhD Admission’s Committee, UCLA Department of Sociology (2020-2021)
- President, Sociology Graduate Student Association, UCLA Department of Sociology (2016-2017)
- Student Co-Coordinator, Political Sociology and the Global South Working Group, UCLA Department of Sociology (2016-2017)
- President, Social Sciences Council, UCLA Graduate Student Association (2015-2017)
Other Information
- Political Sociology
- Economic Sociology
- Political, Economic, Environmental, and Organizational Sociology
- Ethnography, Interviews, and Historical/Comparative Methods
- Mandarin Chinese (Upper-level Conversational, Reading, Writing)
- French (Intermediate Reading, Writing)
- American Sociological Association
- European Sociological Association
- International Sociological Association
- Development Studies Association
- International Studies Association