Daniel Belback

Hello! I’m a sociology PhD student at UC San Diego with research interests in culture, politics, symbolic power, migration, law, climate activism, and civic life. My work examines how symbolic performances, cultural codes, and institutional discourses shape processes of political inclusion and exclusion.

I study how civic actors respond to exclusion—political, symbolic, or legal—and how ideologies like libertarianism and nationalism reconfigure civic life and public institutions. I'm also interested in how climate activists make sense of their actions, especially when those actions diverge from their expressed beliefs. Across projects, I focus on how cultural narratives, ritualized authority, and contested meanings structure collective action, institutional resilience, and the boundaries of belonging.

My current research includes:

• Sense-making and contradiction within climate activism
• Libertarian attempts to dismantle public infrastructure in participatory democratic towns
• The collective identity and mobilization strategies of Reddit’s WallStreetBets community during the GameStop short squeeze
• Methodologically, I use qualitative and interpretive approaches, including discourse and content analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and case study methods. I draw from traditions in political sociology, cultural sociology, symbolic interactionism, and the sociology of boundaries.

Education
M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Chicago (2022)

Joint M.Sc. in Sociology, Social Research & Cultural Sociology, University of Trento and Masaryk University (2021)

B.A. in Sociology, Anthropology, and International Studies, Loyola University Chicago (2017)

Research Interests
Cultural Sociology · Political Sociology · Symbolic Power · Social Movements · Civic Life · Law and Exclusion · Ecologies & Fields · Group Integration · Participatory Democracy · Libertarianism · Relativism

Selected Publications
Belback, Daniel Joseph. 2025. “The Civil Sphere and Its Resilient Tribalist Discontents: A Muslim Ban Cloaked in Sacralized Binaries.” Philosophy and Society 36(1): 63–98. https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2501063B

Pitt, Richard, Lucas S. Sharma, Daniel J. Belback, and Samuel R. Smith. 2025. “The Social Fabric of Faith: The Interconnectedness of Community Influence and Authentic Religious Expression.” Review of Religious Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0034673X251330352

Bison, Ivano, and Daniel Joseph Belback. 2024. “Chapter 12: Diversity and Super-Diversity.” In Research Handbook on the Sociology of Migration. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839105463.00019