Michael McQuarrie

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

Spring 2012

• Soc 181: Social Change Organizations
• Soc 265B: Contemporary Social Theory

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

• "Community Organizing and the Renewal of Urban Political Authority in the Neoliberal Era." Forthcoming in Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett, eds. Creating Authority.
• Forthcoming. "No Contest: Technologies of Participation and the Transformation of Urban Authority." Forthcoming in Public Culture.
• 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. (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.