My research engages political sociology, the sociology of culture, and comparative-historical analysis. I apply a sociological lens to classical political economy questions about power, institutions, and social change. Below is an overview of my ongoing research projects, with methods, keywords, and selected work.
I study distributive conflict and progressive policy innovation in cities under budgetary and political pressure, focusing on Seattle’s business tax reform and homelessness governance. This research also includes work on democratic financial governance beyond the urban scale.
Methods: Case study; archival analysis; key informant interviews
Keywords: Tax reform; urban coalitions; homelessness; affordable housing; the state; symbolic power; iterative problem-solving; policy learning
[R&R] Güler, Selen, and Devin Collins. “A Prolonged State of Emergency for Homelessness? The 2015 Proclamations in Seattle and the Exercise of Symbolic Power.” (Co-first authors.)
[in progress] Güler, Selen. “Building the State from Below: Taxation and Subnational State Formation.”
[in progress] Güler, Selen. Book manuscript, tentatively titled Tech Boom to Tax Boom: Urban Power and Redistribution in Seattle.
Quinn, Sarah, Mark Igra, and Selen Güler. “A Modern Financial Tool-kit: Lessons from Berle for a More Democratic Financial System.” In Democratizing Finance: Restructuring Credit to Transform Society, eds. Fred Block and Robert Hockett. Verso. 2022. [preprint], [book].
This work comes out of a research-practice partnership supporting and doing research with a community of STEM faculty across institutions of higher education, who work to improve their undergraduate education programs.
Methods: Participatory action research; interviews; focus groups; digital ethnography
Keywords: Movement pedagogies; communities of practice; team formation; institutional context; nsf-funded
Margherio, Cara, Anna L. Swan, and Selen Güler. “From Individual Change Agents to ‘Revolutionary’ Teams: The Search and Selection Process of Team Formation within a Community of Practice.” Innovative Higher Education, 1–20. 2024.
[in progress] Güler, Selen, Elizabeth Litzler, and Cara Margherio. “‘We all signed on to this grant for the revolution’: From the Ivory Tower into a Community of Change Agents.”
[in progress] Beach, Michael, Rae Jing Han, Selen Güler, Elizabeth Litzler, Alan Cheville, and Teodora Shuman. “Creative Changemaking within Complex Institutional Contexts.” [conference proceedings version]
I study how moral judgments take shape in contexts related to healthcare and consumption. I am especially interested in how moral evaluations intersect with race, class, and gender, and how these judgments relate to institutional trust.
Methods: Mixed methods; factorial survey experiment
Keywords: Situational morality; health & consumption; cultural classifications; race, class & gender; ideological fault lines; symbolic boundaries
[R&R] Güler, Selen. “The Good, the Bad, and the Healthy: A Factorial Survey Analysis of Situational Morality in Consumption and Healthcare.”
ASA Section on the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption, Student Paper Award (2025 Honorable Mention)