Andy Junker

Research interests: Andrew Junker’s research interests concern political sociology and religion, with regional foci on China and Chinese diaspora. His work cuts across several sociological subfields, including social movements, politics, comparative religion, transnational sociology, culture, theory, and comparative historical sociology. Andrew’s dissertation investigates a historical case comparison of two post-1978 transnational Chinese protest movements, the Chinese democracy movement and the religious sectarian movement called Falun Gong. Contrasting the historical trajectories of these two diaspora-based opposition movements reveals differences in the ways that Chinese sub-cultural traditions have facilitated or obstructed the diffusion of the democratic social movement form of collective action among Chinese transnational activists. The findings have implications for understanding the intersection of religion and popular protest in Chinese cultural contexts and for better specifying how religion and migration can influence the diffusion of protest repertoires. Andy’s dissertation employs several methodologies, including field research, interviews, textual analysis and interpretation, and a hybrid quantitative/qualitative method called quantitative narrative analysis (QNA). He is the recipient of a dissertation improvement grant from the Methodology, Measurement and Statistics Program of the National Science Foundation. Andy uses Chinese and Japanese in his research, and has studied, researched, or worked in Japan, China, Thailand, India, and Nepal. For more information, see http://yale.academia.edu/AndrewJunker.

Education: B.A. East Asian Studies (Wesleyan University); M.A. Religious Studies (Indiana University)

Additional Information:
E-mail:	andrew.junker (at) yale.edu