Faculty & Staff

Sahan Savas Karatasli

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

Office: Graham 318
Email: skaratasli@uncg.edu

Research Interests

  • Global and transnational sociology
  • Political economy of the world-system
  • Sociology of development, globalization, financialization
  • Social movements, labor, and nationalism
  • Comparative-historical methods
  • Big data; complex systems analysis; quantitative methods

Personal Statement

Dr. Şahan Savaş Karataşli examines the dynamics of historical capitalism, inequality, social movements, labor, and nationalism from a global and long-historical perspective. He uses theoretically informed, empirically sound, quantitative and comparative-historical research to examine serious challenges facing the world, and prospects for social justice in the 21st century.

Dr. Karatasli’s research on the historical dynamics of capitalism and social movements has received many awards including the 2021 and 2018 Distinguished Article Awards by the Political-Economy of the World-systems section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), 2017 Best Faculty Article Award by the Sociology of Development Section of the ASA (Honorable mention), and the 2014 Theda Skocpol Dissertation Award by the Comparative-Historical Section of the ASA.

His research has also been translated into many world languages including Portuguese, Spanish, Hungarian, Persian, and Turkish.

Before joining the Sociology department at UNCG, Dr. Karatasli worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and an Associate Research Scholar at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University; and as an Assistant Research Scientist and Lecturer at the Department of Sociology and the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Karatasli received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University; and his B.A. degrees in International Relations and Sociology at Koc University, Turkey.

For more information about his research, please visit his website.

Recent Publications

Karatasli, Sahan Savas (2023). “Hegemonic world orders, distributional (in)justice and global social change. International Affairs, 99(1), pp.23-29. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac312

Karatasli, Sahan Savas and Sefika Kumral (2022). “Crisis of capitalism and cycles of right-wing populism in contemporary Turkey: The making and unmaking of Erdoganist hegemony”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 23(1), pp.22-46 doi: 10.1111/joac.12501 (open access).

Karatasli, Sahan Savas. (2022). “Surplus Populations, Working-Class Struggles and Crises of Capitalism: A World-Historical Materialist Reconceptualization”, in “Marxism, Social Movements and Collective Action”, (eds) Adrian Piva and Agustin Santella, Palgrave/MacMillan, pp.207-250.

Karatasli, Sahan Savas (2020), “Capitalism and nationalism in the longue durée: Hegemony, crisis, and state-seeking nationalist mobilization, 1492–2013”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 61(2):1-31, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715220946473

  • Winner, 2021 Distinguished Publication Award, Political Economy of the World-Systems Section of the American Sociological Association.
  • (Portuguese translation) Karatasli, S. S. Capitalismo e nacionalismo na longa duração: Hegemonia, crise e mobilização nacionalista em busca de Estado, 1492-2013, ReOriente 1(2), pp.89-134.

Kumral, Sefika and Sahan Savas Karatasli (2020), “Capital, Labour and the Global Populist Radical Right”, Global Labour Journal 11(2): 152-155

Karatasli, Sahan. (2020). “Global Inequality and Capitalist World-Economy, 1500-Present: A Critique of Neo-Modernization Theories”, in “Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-Civilizational World Order” (ed) Ino Rossi. Springer, pp.307-330.

Karatasli, Sahan Savas (2019), “The Political Economy of Erdogan’s Syria Gamble“, Middle East Report 292/293, Fall/Winter 2019, pp.56-62

Karatasli, Sahan Savas (2019) “The Twenty-First Century Revolutions and Internationalism: A World-Historical Perspective”, Globalizations 16(7): 985-997

  • Reprinted as Karatasli, Sahan S. (2021) “The Twenty-First Century Revolutions and Internationalism: A World-Historical Perspective” in Barry K. gills and Christopher Chase-Dunn (eds) Unity on the Global Left: Critical Reflections on Samir Amin’s Call for a New International. London: Routledge.
  • Karatasli, Sahan S. (2019) “The Twenty-First Century Revolutions and Internationalism: AWorld-Historical Perspective”, Journal of World Systems Research 25(2): 306-320

Karatasli, Sahan Savas & Sefika Kumral. (2019) “Capitalist Development in Hostile Conjunctures: War, Dispossession and Class Formation in Turkey”, Journal of Agrarian Change 19(3): 528-549.

Karatasli, Sahan Savas (2018) “Political Economy of Secession: Global Waves of State Seeking Nationalism, 1492-Present”, in Albert Bergesen and Christian Suter (ed). Return of Geopolitics. (New York: LitVerlag), pp.69-96.

Karatasli, Sahan Savas & Sefika Kumral (2018) “Great Convergence or the Third Great Divergence?: Changes in Global Distribution of Wealth, 1500-2008”, in Immanuel Wallerstein and Patricio Korzeniewicz (ed.) Global Commodity Chains, Social Inequalities and Social Movements. New York: Routledge, pp. 36-49

Karatasli, Sahan Savas  (2017) “The Capitalist World-Economy in the Longue Durée: Changing Modes of the Global Distribution of Wealth”. Sociology of Development 3(2):163-96.

  • Winner, 2018 Distinguished Publication Award, Political Economy of the World-Systems Section of the American Sociological Association.
  • Honorable Mention, 2017 Best Faculty Article Award, Sociology of Development Section of the American Sociological Association

Karatasli, Sahan Savas & Kumral, Sefika. (2017) “Territorial Contradictions of the Rise of China” Journal of World Systems Research 23(1): 5-35

Recent Courses Taught

  • SOC 101 – Introduction to Sociology
  • SOC 301 – Introduction to Data Analysis
  • SOC 497 – Special Problems in Sociology
  • SOC 618 – Advanced Data Analysis
  • SOC 644 – Sociology of Globalization

Curriculum Vitae: Click here to download.