The Occupy Wall Street Movement on September 17, 2011 that involved public protest and the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City’s financial district, is an important example of mass public dissent in American history. The conflict that lies at the heart of the protests is between two parties identified in the data as the 99% and the 1%. An abductive, grounded research strategy to explore the language used in interpreting the circumstances and details of the event, is used in conjunction with a theoretical framework provided by C. Wright Mills (1959) and Jock Young (2011), to uncover the motivations behind the 99%’s decision to protest. What is revealed upon completion of the analysis are two broad motivations for public protest by the 99% related to issues of fairness and access, set within an historical context of growing dissent against corrupt economic institutions and the governments that sustain them.

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / Esta Tese objetiva analisar a relação entre a imaginação sociológica brasileira e os problemas públicos do país. Tomando como base a análise da produção de livros de sociologia publicados no Brasil entre 1940 e 2012, partimos da hipótese segundo a qual a imaginação sociológica brasileira tem, desde seu processo inicial de institucionalização, se mostrado responsiva e normativa em relação aos problemas públicos mais prementes colocados em cada conjuntura política. Em diálogo com a proposta da sociologia pública formulada originalmente por Michael Burawoy, nos Estados Unidos, procuramos demonstrar que uma experiência sociológica periférica, como a brasileira, marcada pela forte interdependência entre sociologia profissional e sociologia pública, possibilita repensar diferentes formas de imaginação sobre a noção de sociologia pública, tanto analítica quanto normativamente, ampliando suas bases teóricas e práticas. Objetivamos, nesse sentido, propor uma agenda intelectual em torno da sociologia pública voltada para a construção de um cosmopolitismo de conexões, que procure articulações entre o nacional e o universal na compreensão e enfrentamento de problemas públicos, para a qual a experiência sociológica brasileira tem muito para contribuir. / This Thesis aims to analyze the relationship between the sociological imagination and public problems in Brazil. Based on an analysis of the editorial output of sociology books in Brazil between 1940 and 2012, we suggest that the Brazilian sociological imagination has, since its initial process of institutionalization, proved responsive and normative regarding the most relevant public problems in each political conjuncture. In dialogue with the proposal of a public sociology, as originally formulated by Michael Burawoy in the United States, we demonstrate that a peripheral sociological experiment, such as the Brazilian one, characterized by the strong interdependence between professional sociology and public sociology, could provide a contribution in the process of rethinking different forms of imagination concerning the notion of public sociology - in both analytical and normative terms - broadening its theoretical and practical basis. To this end, we propose an intellectual agenda around public sociology focused on building a cosmopolitanism of connections, which seeks to connect the national and the universal in understanding and facing public problems, to which the Brazilian sociological experiment has much to contribute.

Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / Esta Tese objetiva analisar a relação entre a imaginação sociológica brasileira e os problemas públicos do país. Tomando como base a análise da produção de livros de sociologia publicados no Brasil entre 1940 e 2012, partimos da hipótese segundo a qual a imaginação sociológica brasileira tem, desde seu processo inicial de institucionalização, se mostrado responsiva e normativa em relação aos problemas públicos mais prementes colocados em cada conjuntura política. Em diálogo com a proposta da sociologia pública formulada originalmente por Michael Burawoy, nos Estados Unidos, procuramos demonstrar que uma experiência sociológica periférica, como a brasileira, marcada pela forte interdependência entre sociologia profissional e sociologia pública, possibilita repensar diferentes formas de imaginação sobre a noção de sociologia pública, tanto analítica quanto normativamente, ampliando suas bases teóricas e práticas. Objetivamos, nesse sentido, propor uma agenda intelectual em torno da sociologia pública voltada para a construção de um cosmopolitismo de conexões, que procure articulações entre o nacional e o universal na compreensão e enfrentamento de problemas públicos, para a qual a experiência sociológica brasileira tem muito para contribuir. / This Thesis aims to analyze the relationship between the sociological imagination and public problems in Brazil. Based on an analysis of the editorial output of sociology books in Brazil between 1940 and 2012, we suggest that the Brazilian sociological imagination has, since its initial process of institutionalization, proved responsive and normative regarding the most relevant public problems in each political conjuncture. In dialogue with the proposal of a public sociology, as originally formulated by Michael Burawoy in the United States, we demonstrate that a peripheral sociological experiment, such as the Brazilian one, characterized by the strong interdependence between professional sociology and public sociology, could provide a contribution in the process of rethinking different forms of imagination concerning the notion of public sociology - in both analytical and normative terms - broadening its theoretical and practical basis. To this end, we propose an intellectual agenda around public sociology focused on building a cosmopolitanism of connections, which seeks to connect the national and the universal in understanding and facing public problems, to which the Brazilian sociological experiment has much to contribute.

The prevailing discourse of “resistance vs. acceptance” in IT implementation research mostly personalizes the issue as “users” versus IT implementers (e.g., managers, CIOs, CMIOs, etc.). This kind of discourse has created an IT-implementer-centric attitude among IS scholars and practitioners. The IT-implementer-centric attitude, while embraces “acceptance” as a desirable reaction almost unconditionally, frequently holds for minimizing or more conservatively suppressing “resistance” to IT implementation. In other words, the mainstream IT implementation research, almost completely, treats “users” as passive recipients whose choices, as they face pre-developed/pre-designed/pre-rolled-out technology being implemented, can only be defined on a spectrum from “acceptance” to “resistance.” The current research study, however, offers an alternative perspective that views the “resistance vs. acceptance” duality “from the other side,” i.e., from the perspective of the supposed “resistors” or “acceptors” themselves. Through a review of the literature, this study first identifies major drawbacks of the extant theories and models of IT implementation research. Next, drawing on an interpretive paradigm of research (more specifically, phenomenological sociology), this study investigates a real world case of healthcare IT implementation. The results of the aforementioned literature review and case investigation subsequently form the basis for the study’s proposed theoretical account, which provides an unprecedented understanding and explanation of how actors representing different stakeholder groups, among which people who are routinely called “users” are but one group, experience IT implementation as they live their everyday lives. The proposed theoretical account is lastly used as a guide for crafting both practical and research prescriptions with respect to managing IT-involved change occasions.