David A. Westbrook

Westbrook has researched on political economy and discussed the contextual changes in politics and highlighted how globalization affected the law.[4] In the early 2010s, he authored a paper discussing the economy of North Atlantic countries and highlighted the presented approaches for collective thinking and decision making. Westbrook focused on three movements and discussed the various methods for forming an elite consensus along with the relevant major conceptual obstacles.[5]

Westbrook published his book, City Of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent in 2003. The book was reviewed as "a powerful demonstration of the limits at which global capitalism may be seen as an effective and efficient way of organizing economic interaction in our cosmopolitan society."[6] According to E. Fuat Keyman, "In City of Gold, Westbrook makes a significant contribution to the literature on globalization by going beyond a purely market-based or a state-centric analysis of social change".[7]

After the Global Financial Crisis, Westbrook focused on the failures of classical economic thought, and discussed new ways to regulate financial markets[8]

In 2010, Westbrook published his book, Out of Crisis: Rethinking Our Financial Markets', which was reviewed as "a fascinating new book" which "is a compelling and entertaining diatribe against some of the sacred cows of finance."[9] Mae Kuykendall reviewed that "Westbrook draws on his wide knowledge of law, finance, literary theory, cultural anthropology, and political history to guide us through our recent disaster."[10]

Westbrook's work on corporations and finance also includes his book, Between Citizen and State: An Introduction to the Corporation.[11]

Westbrook also considers what it means to be an intellectual under contemporary circumstances. His book, Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters (2009), considers the refunctioning of ethnography to address modern life, and was written out of conversation with the anthropologists George Marcus and Douglas Holmes. Werner Kraus wrote: "The transition from admiration of the ethnographic method per se to an exploration of multisited fieldwork and the paraethnographic is fluent and often enough brilliant." According to Tobias Rees, "the book is the result of the anthropologists' effort to engage the paraethnographer in a discussion about anthropology and its current dilemma."[12]

In "Critical Issues for Qualitative Research", Westbrook discussed changes in the institutional meaning of the University, and consequences for the humanities and the social sciences.

Westbrook has also conducted research on international law, focusing especially on security, environment, and Islam. He focused on sustainable development and discussed the visions of history and the pragmatism of environmentalists. He presented his ideas regarding sustainability and stressed upon sustainable development as a pragmatic concept.[13]

In 2011, Westbrook published Deploying Ourselves: Islamist Violence, Globalization, and the Responsible Projection of U.S. Force.[14]

• City Of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent (2003) ISBN 9780203493809
• Between Citizen and State: An Introduction to the Corporation (2007) ISBN 9781594514043
• Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters (2009) ISBN 9780226887531
• Out of Crisis: Rethinking Our Financial Markets (2010) ISBN 9781594517266
• Deploying Ourselves: Islamist Violence, Globalization, and the Responsible Projection of U.S. Force (2011) ISBN 9781317261322
• Welcome to New Country: Music for Today's America (2017) ISBN 9781549976988
• Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern (2020) ISBN 9781000217513

• Westbrook, A. D., & Westbrook, D. A. (2018). Snapchat's Gift: Equity Culture in High-Tech Firms. Fla. St. UL Rev., 46, 861.
• Westbrook, D. A., & Maguire, M. (2019). Those People [May Yet Be] a Kind of Solution Late Imperial Thoughts on the Humanization of Officialdom. Buff. L. Rev., 67, 889.
• Westbrook, A. D., & Westbrook, D. A. (2017). Unicorns, Guardians, and the Concentration of the US Equity Markets. Neb. L. Rev., 96, 688.
• Westbrook, D. A. (2017). The paradigm sways: Macroeconomics turns to history. Westbrook, DA (2017), The Paradigm Sways: Macroeconomics Turns to History. Int Finance, 20, 2016–047.
• "Critical Issues for Qualitative Research," last chapter in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 5th ed., (Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds.), ch. 41, pp. 915-922 (2017).
• Westbrook, D. A. (2016). Losing our manners: The current crisis and possible durability of liberal discourse.