Peer Reviewed Journal Articles/Book Chapters
McDermott, J.L. Forthcoming. “Own-Account Work in Africa’s Informal Economy: A Class Analysis of Petty Trading in Sierra Leone.” In: Anwar, M.A., H. Dawson, N. Oppong. eds. African Labour Studies: Conceptual Shifts and Empirical Realities. Bristol University Press.
McDermott, J.L. 2026. “A Marxist Critique of Informality and the Informal Economy Paradigm: The Realities of Irregular Labor in the New Peripheral Capitalism.” In: Das, R., R. Latham, D. Fasenfest. eds. The Power of Marxist Thought. Brill and Haymarket. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004746015_007.
McDermott, J.L. 2025. “Reclaiming the Class Struggle in Africa Today.” International Critical Thought 15(2): 268-294. https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2025.2514615.
McDermott, J.L. 2024. “Difference between Global South Cities: Mexico City, Freetown, and the Global Division of Urban Informal Labor.” Urban Studies 62(5): 932-953. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241269659.
McDermott, J.L. 2024. “The Class Foundations of Anti-Marxism Today: Why the Specter Persists.” Portuguese Journal of Philosophy (Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia) 80(1-2): 555-584. https://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2024_80_1_0555.
McDermott, J.L. 2024. “The Dilemma of Consumerist Masculinity in Capitalist West Africa: Men Navigating Gender, Class, and Romance in Sierra Leone’s Informal Economy.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 53(6): 723-757. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241269890.
McDermott, J. L. 2023. “Searching for the Informal Labor Movement: Theorizing Class Location and Collective Action among Informal Workers in the Global South.” Review of Radical Political Economics 55(2): 333-352. https://doi.org/10.1177/04866134221134548.
McDermott, J. L. 2021. “Understanding West Africa’s Informal Workers as Working-Class.” Review of African Political Economy 48(170): 609-629. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2021.1967734.
McDermott, J. 2019. “Towards an Icon Model of Gentrification: Global Capitalism, Policing, and the Struggle for Iconic Spaces in Mexico City.” Urban Studies 56(16): 3522-3539. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018813065.
Book Reviews
McDermott, J.L. 2023. Book Review: Changes in Care: Aging, Migration, and Social Class in West Africa (by Cati Coe). Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 52(3): 227-228. https://doi.org/10.1177/00943061231172096d
Select Public-Facing Scholarship
McDermott, J.L. “The Age of Supraliberalism: A Requiem for Neoliberalism, Capitalist Democracy, and the American Unipolar World.” Hampton Institute. Online.
McDermott, J.L., and G. Kamara. 2025. “Revitalizing Mani in Sierra Leone.” Endangered Languages Project Blog. Online. https://www.endangeredlanguages.com/blog/.
McDermott, J.L. 2024. “How Informal Economies are Shaped by Global Capital: A Comparison of Informal Work and Urban Life in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Mexico City, Mexico.” Urban Studies Online. Online.
McDermott, J.L. 2024. “For a Broad Conception of the Working Class and Against Factory-Workerism.” Cosmonaut Magazine. Online.
McDermott, J.L. 2024. “Informal Workers in the Global South and the Global Labor Movement. Marxist Sociology Blog. American Sociological Association. Republished by Sage Perspectives and by Monthly Review. Online.
McDermott, J.L. 2023. “Two Myths about the Working Class.” Cosmonaut Magazine. Online.
McDermott, J.L. 2016. “Extracting Democracy.” Jacobin Magazine. Online.