Assistant Professor of Sociology - on leave for the 2021-22 academic year
Marcos López joined the faculty at Bowdoin College in 2013. His scholarly interests lie at the intersections of migration, labor and labor movements, political economy, decolonial thought, race/ethnicity, agrarian studies, and social theory.
López received his Ph.D in Sociology with a designated emphasis in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California. With support from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, he is working on a book-length manuscript, El Agua Calienta: Agrarian Landscapes, Water and the Undercurrents of Indigenous Farmworker Resistance that examines alienation within simplified agrarian landscapes in Baja California and how indigenous migrants, originally from southern Mexico, mobilize their cultural practices to organize for better working conditions and access to water in their settlements.
López takes great pleasure in his teaching. At Bowdoin he teaches Immigration and the Politics of Exclusion; Food, Agriculture and Social Justice; Latinx in the U.S.; Global Labor Politics; the Classics of Sociological Theory; Introduction to Sociology; and Current Controversies in Sociology. He also has mentored students who have received a number of fellowships, scholarships and awards, such as, the Mellon Mays Fellowship, the Marshall and Truman Scholarships, the Fulbright Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Hispanic Scholar of the Year, awarded by the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
The son of Mexican migrants, López grew up on a horse-breeding farm in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, where the daily temperature rarely drops to 32 degrees and snowfall is out of the question. He has learned to enjoy actual seasons; ironically, even winter in Maine. However, some things never seem to change. He continues to root for the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s.
Lopez, Marcos. nd. “Transborder Labor Solidarities: Labor Networks and Organizing Among Mestiza/o and Mixtec Farmworkers.” Revise and resubmit in Latino Studies
Lopez, Marcos. nd. ""Without la Gestión We Would Nothing": How Indigenous Practices Cultivate Resistance in Mexico's San Quintín Valley." Revise and resubmit in Cultural Dynamics
Lopez, Marcos. nd. “Redeveloping the Shaken City: Articulations of a Post-Earthquake City.” Under review in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Lopez, Marcos. 2017. “In Hidden View: How Water Became a Catalyst for Farmworker Resistance in Baja California, Mexico.” Pp. 188-202 in C. Ashcraft and T. Mayer’s The Politics of Fresh Water: Access, Conflict, and Identity. New York: Routledge
Lopez, Marcos. 2017. “Review of N. Flores-Yeffal’s book, Migration-Trust Networks: Social Cohesion in Mexican US-Bound Emigration.” Contemporary Sociology 46(1): 69-71
11/19 Department of Sociology, Texas A&M (rescheduled) Location: College Station, TX Presentation Title: Transborder Labor Resistance: Mexican Farmworkers and the Ethnoracial Networks that Inspire Protest
9/19 Ethnicity, Race and Indigenous Peoples Location: Spokane, WA Presentation Title: La Gestión: Practices that Inspire Protest in Indigenous Mexican Communities
8/19 American Sociological Association Location: New York, NY Presentation Title: Transborder Labor Resistance: Mestiza/o and Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers, and the Networks that Inspire Labor Protest
3/19 Eastern Sociological Society Location: Boston, MA Presentation Title: A Strike in the Making: The Politics of Indigenous Farmworker Organizing in Mexico
8/18 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting Location: Philadelphia, PA Presentation Title: Beyond Insurgent Indios: Practices That Inspire Protest in Indigenous Mexican Communities
7/18 Latino Studies Association Location: Washington, DC Presentation Title: Beyond Insurgent Indios: Practices That Inspire Protest in Indigenous Mexican Communities
2/18 Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting Location: Baltimore, MD Presentation Title: Waging for Water: Indigenous Farmworker Struggles of Water in an Arid Landscape
11/17 New England Council for Latin American Studies Location: Durham, NH Presentation Title: La Gestión: Hidden Transcripts in the Public Acts of Indigenous Farmworker Resistance
8/16 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Retreat for Career Enhancement Fellows Location: Tampa, FL Presentation Title: Insurgent Indios: Labor, Landscape, and Epistemologies of Resistance
3/16 Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting Location: Boston, MA Presentation Title: Unmaking the Mexican Strawberry: Science, Racial Anxieties, and New Borderland Futures
6/15 Postcolonial Natures: Landscapes of Violence and Erasure Location: Aarhus, Denmark Presentation Title: In Hidden View: How Water Became a Catalyst for Farmworker Resistance in Baja California
2/15 Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting Location: New York, NY Presentation Title: “Water Was Always Around Us”: Indigenous Farmworker Solidarities and Organizing in the San Quintín Valley, Baja California
