Wes Markofski
Wes Markofski (Ph.D. sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an assistant professor of sociology in the department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton College. He has degrees in molecular biology, philosophy, and sociology and spent several years conducting basic science research in a medical immunology laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School before turning his attention to the social sciences. An ethnographer and social theorist, his research centers on the study of politics, culture, science, and public religion.
He has published and lectured widely on the topic of American evangelicalism, exploring the racial, religious, cultural, and social sources of evangelical public and political engagement. His work can be found in Political Power and Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, Religion & American Culture, and The Immanent Frame.
His first book, with Oxford University Press (2015), New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism, utilizes textual analysis, historical research, and five years of ethnographic fieldwork on the new monasticism—an urban communitarian religious movement involving young progressive evangelicals and others—to analyze recent political and religious transformations in the field of American evangelicalism.
His second book (in progress), Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America, draws on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with faith-based community organizing, community development, political advocacy, and public service groups in Portland, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Boston, including over 90 in-depth interviews with racially diverse evangelical and non-evangelical activists, community leaders, and neighborhood residents. This work aims to advance our understanding of ideas, habits, and institutions with potential to enhance ethical democracy in America, and of the possibilities and limits of multicultural evangelicalism’s role in such efforts.
A new project in the sociology of science and religion explores the mobilization of scientific and spiritual beliefs, identities, and discourses by American Indian activists and allies opposing construction of an oil pipeline through Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) territory in northern Minnesota. Markofski serves on the editorial board of Sociological Theory. At Carleton, he teaches courses in social theory, diversity and democracy, urban ethnography, sociology of religion, and introductory sociology.
