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.

Teaching

Winter 2010

• Soc 143A: Urban Sociology
• Soc 248: Social Movements

Spring 2010

• Soc 100: Classical Sociological Theory
• Soc 181: Social Change Organizations

Selected Publications

• with Nicole Marwell. 2009. "The Missing Organizational Dimension in Urban Sociology." City and Community, 8, 3.
  
• "Community Organizing and the Renewal of Urban Political Authority in the Neoliberal Era." Forthcoming in Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett, eds. Creating Authority.
  
• with Doug Guthrie. 2008. "Providing for the Public Good: Corporate Community Relations in the Era of the Receding Welfare State." City and Community, 7:2.
• "Nonprofits and the Reconstruction of Urban Governance: Housing Production and Community Development in Cleveland, 1975-2005." Forthcoming in Elisabeth Clemens and Doug Guthrie, eds. Politics and Partnerships in American Governance.
  
• 2008. "Running on Empty." Shelterforce, 153 (Spring), pp. 19-21.
  
• with Craig Calhoun. 2007. “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.
  
• 2006. "Knowledge Production, Publicness, and the Structural Transformation of the University: An Interview with Craig Calhoun." Thesis Eleven, 84, pp. 103-114.
  
• 2006. With Doug Guthrie, “Houses for the Poor and New Business for Banks: The Creation of a Market for Affordable Housing.” In Business Solutions for Addressing Global Poverty, John Quelch and Kash Rangan, eds. Hoboken: Jossey-Bass.
  
• with Doug Guthrie. 2005. "Privatization and Low-Income Housing in the United States since 1986." Research in Political Sociology 14, pp. 15-51.