Research Interests
- Urban Sociology
- Political Sociology
- Cultural Sociology
- Organizations
My research interests center on understanding dynamics of solidarity and conflict that emerge in moments of social change. Most importantly, I am interested in changes in contemporary urban governance that are prompted by state-spatial rescaling and emergent modes of citizen organization. I examine these transformations through the lens of community development organizations and community development policy.
My current research traces the separation of community development and community organizing, the articulation of networked governance arrangements that connect community development to the bureaucratic field and the economic field, the resulting competition over legitimate authority in community development, and the relationship between contemporary community development arrangements and the current foreclosure crisis.
I have also explored the dynamics of social change through original research on the emergent political public sphere in early nineteenth-century Britain, the changing nature of urban political authority, the role of nonprofit intermediary organizations in the reconstruction of contemporary governance, and examinations of the “organizer” as a political subject constituted by particular forms of political authority.
I was recently named a UC Davis Hellman Fellow and an Institute for Public Knowledge Poesis Fellow. My research has been funded by UC Davis, The Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Social Science Research Council. I am a member of the UC Davis Department of Human and Community Development Graduate Group.
Teaching
Winter 2013
- Soc 143A: Urban Sociology
- Soc 265A: Classical Social Theory
Spring 2013
- Soc 100: Classical Social Theory
- Soc 181: Social Change Organizations
Selected Publications
2013. "Community Organizations in the Foreclosure Crisis: The Failure of Neoliberal Civil Society." Politics and Society 41(1), pp. 73-101.
2013. "No Contest: Technologies of Participation and the Transformation of Urban Authority." Public Culture 25(1), pp. 143-175.
Forthcoming. (With Naresh Fernandes and Cassim Shephard), "The Field of Struggle, The Office, and the Flat: Protest and Aspiration in a Mumbai Slum." Public Culture 25(2).
Forthcoming. (With Caroline Lee and Edward Walker, eds.) Democratizing Inequalities: Pitfalls and Unrealized Promises of the New Public Participation. NYU Press.
"Community Organizing and the Renewal of Urban Political Authority in the Neoliberal Era." Forthcoming in Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett, eds. Creating Authority.
2013. (with Nicole Marwell) "People, Place, and System: Organizations and the Renewal of Urban Social Theory." ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 647, pp. 126-143.
2013. "Sexual Danger and the Indian Transformation." The Hindu (op-ed), January 11.
2012. "Beyond the Walls," Hindustan Times (op-ed), April 22.
2012. (edited with Michael Peter Smith) Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City. Transaction.
2012. (with Craig Calhoun) "The Reluctant Counterpublic," in Craig Calhoun, Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
2011. "Occupy UC Davis?" and "Who is Responsible for Police Violence at UC Davis?" Possible Futures (Social Science Research Council).
2011. (with Norman Krumholz) "Social Skill and the Rise of Mediating Organizations in Urban Governance: The Case of the Cleveland Housing Network." Housing Policy Debate, 21(3): 421-442.
2010. "Nonprofits and the Reconstruction of Urban Governance: Housing Production and Community Development in Cleveland, 1975-2005." In Elisabeth Clemens and Doug Guthrie, eds. Politics and Partnerships in American Governance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2010. "ESOP Rises Again." Shelterforce, 161 (Spring).
2009. (with Nicole Marwell) "The Missing Organizational Dimension in Urban Sociology." City and Community, 8(3): 247-268.
2008. (with Doug Guthrie) "Providing for the Public Good: Corporate Community Relations in the Era of the Receding Welfare State." City and Community, 7(2): 113-139.
2008. "Running on Empty." Shelterforce, 153 (Spring), pp. 19-21.
2007. (with Craig Calhoun) “Public Discourse and Political Experience: T.J. Wooler and Transformations of the Public Sphere in Early 19th Century Britain,” in Alex Benchimol and Willy Maley, eds. Spheres of Influence: Intellectual Publics and Public Intellectuals from Milton to Habermas. Frankfurt: Peter Lang AG.
2005. (with Doug Guthrie) "Privatization and Low-Income Housing in the United States since 1986." Research in Political Sociology 14, pp. 15-51.
Reviews
- Abdoumaliq Simone, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar
- Nina Eliasoph, Making Volunteers
- Mario Small, Unanticipated Gains
- Susan Fainstein, The Just City
- Thad Williamson, Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship
- David Imbroscio, Urban America Reconsidered
- Nicole Marwell, Bargaining for Brooklyn
- Caitlin Zaloom, Out of the Pits
- Jeremy Gilbert, Anticapitalism and Culture