Tuesday, November 9, 2021 12pm to 1pm
About this Event
Levan Institute for the Humanities, Book Chats
Paul Lichterman, How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles
A discussion of Paul Lichterman's recent book, How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles (Princeton University Press, 2021). The author will be joined in conversation by Florence Faucher (Sciences Po) and Gary Alan Fine (Northwestern University), moderated by Patricia Riley (USC).
Co-sponsored by the USC Equity Research Institute.
About the Book:
How Civic Action Works renews the tradition of inquiry into collective, social problem solving. Paul Lichterman follows grassroots activists, nonprofit organization staff, and community service volunteers in three coalitions and twelve organizations in Los Angeles as they campaign for affordable housing, develop new housing, or address homelessness. Lichterman shows that to understand how social advocates build their campaigns, craft claims, and choose goals, we need to move beyond well-established thinking about what is strategic. Lichterman presents a pragmatist-inspired sociological framework that illuminates core tasks of social problem solving, both contentious and noncontentious, by grassroots and professional advocates alike. He reveals that advocates’ distinct styles of collective action produce different understandings of what is strategic, and generate different dilemmas for advocates because each style accommodates varying social and institutional pressures. We see, too, how patterns of interaction create a cultural filter that welcomes some claims about housing problems while subordinating or delegitimating others. These cultural patterns help solve conceptual and practical puzzles, such as why coalitions fragment when members agree on many things, and what makes advocacy campaigns separate housing from homelessness or affordability from environmental sustainability.
Lichterman concludes by turning this action-centered framework toward improving dialogue between social advocates and researchers. Using extensive ethnography enriched by archival evidence, How Civic Action Works explains how advocates meet the relational and rhetorical challenges of collective action.
About the Author:
Paul Lichterman is professor of sociology and religion at the University of Southern California. Lichterman’s specialty areas include culture, religion, civic organizations and social movements, politics, qualitative methodology, and theory.
Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. REGISTER
This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.
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