Guest lecturer Linzi Berkowitz presenting “Corporate Money in Politics” on April 26 as part of DMC Cultural Program Series
Public invited to attend free lecture in Wolfe Recital Hall
Article by: Rosa Linda Reynoso
Her presentation addresses the influence of large corporations in U.S. politics. Today, wealth is centralized and highly concentrated in a few corporations and is only continuing to grow.
On Tuesday, April 26, the Del Mar College Social Sciences Department and the DMC Cultural Program Series present “Corporate Money in Politics” with guest speaker Linzi Berkowitz, who will discuss the link between corporate money and U.S. politics using her research on single-family homebuilding corporations as empirical evidence. Her lecture will also provide thoughtful insight that can be informative for all audience members regarding the country’s current state of politics.
The free lecture begins at 5:30 p.m. in Wolfe Recital Hall located in the Fine Arts Center Building on the DMC Heritage Campus at Ayers and Kosar. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the DMC Assistant Professor Dr. Kelly Vinson, at 361-698-1651 or kvinson3@delmar.edu.
Berkowitz’s lecture refers to the way in which large corporations share their wealth by financing political campaigns. Following the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision in 2010, corporations are now permitted to donate unlimited amounts of funds to political action committees, who are unrestricted in how they advertise for their cause. Though corporations cannot directly contribute to politicians, they can spend large sums of money in advertisements to sway voters, which is one way corporate money impacts U.S. politics.
As a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department at Texas A&M University, Berkowitz’s research interests include political economy, political sociology, social class, organizational sociology and social theory. Her current research examines the political economy of the American single-family homebuilding industry with specific interest in the decline in construction standards. Additionally, her dissertation focuses on changes in labor laws and building codes that increase production output at the expense of buyers. She argues that the movement to unskilled labor and decrease in regulatory sanctions under neoliberalism allows builders to regularly violate building codes and produce houses with major structural issues.
Among her credits, Berkowitz co-authored the chapter on conflict theory in the New Handbook of Political Sociology as well as the chapter on regulation in A Modern Guide to Economic Sociology, both with Dr. Harland Prechel.
Berkowitz received her master’s degree in sociology from San Diego State University where she participated in public policy research focused on wages and working conditions of local taxi drivers prior to the creation of ride sharing.
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