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This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member... more This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member to codesign and co-teach a graduate-level workshop-style qualitative methods course. The goal of co-designing and co-teaching the course was to involve advanced graduate students in all aspects of designing a syllabus and leading class discussions in a required course for first-year graduate students. The authors describe the multiple stages involved in designing and teaching the qualitative methods course and discuss the challenges of this type of collaborative teaching. This type of collaboration builds on the existing strengths of workshop-style methods courses to improve student learning by providing opportunities for grounded engagement with epistemological topics and ample opportunities for feedback, discussion, and reflection on the research process. This collaborative teaching model, although difficult and time-intensive, provides measurable improvements to existing qualitative workshop courses by overcoming some of the limitations of workshop courses and providing significant benefits for graduate students in the class, the student coteachers, and faculty.
The academic declining significance of race did not begin with William Julius Wilson's work in th... more The academic declining significance of race did not begin with William Julius Wilson's work in the late 1970s. In this paper, we take a broad look at the methods mainstream sociologists have used to validate Whites' racial common sense about racial matters in the post-civil rights era. Our general goal is to succinctly examine the major tactics sociologists have used to minimize the significance of racism in explaining minorities' plight. Specifically, we survey how (1) most work on racial attitudes creates a mythical view on Whites' racial attitudes, (2) the various demographic indices used to asses post-civil rights' racial matters miss how race affects minorities today, (3) perspectives on the culture of minorities are based on ethnocentric perspectives that tend to hide the centrality of racially based networks, and (4) the way most sociologists report their results distorts the significance of racial stratification. We conclude by suggesting that work on racial matters will need to be revamped if it is going to have any practical use for those at the "bottom of the well."
This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations ... more This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city's poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus-their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil.
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in... more Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features-its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation are by now well-known. In this paper, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely, the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. In this paper we thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
Over the last decade scholars of urban governance and deliberative democracy have produced large ... more Over the last decade scholars of urban governance and deliberative democracy have produced large literatures. Theorists of deliberative democracy have conceptualized the normative implications of 'deliberation' and explored real-world decision-making arrangements that approximate those ideals. Scholars of urban governance have theorized and explored the outcomes of different institutional arrangements for the governance of cities and regions. Whereas empirical democratic theory has increasingly been interested in local contexts, researchers of urban governance have been progressively more concerned about the implications of emerging patterns of urban governance for democratic accountability. However, despite the recent mutual interest among researchers in both fields, debates within these literatures frequently ignore each other and are not systematic. This introductory article reviews recent contributions that have fruitfully investigated the tension between deliberation and governance in a more systematic fashion, and concludes that our understanding of those issues is significantly improved by a research agenda that pursues an integrated approach.
Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), well into its second term in national office, is today h... more Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), well into its second term in national office, is today heavily criticized for its conservative economic policies when only a few years ago it was celebrated for re-invigorating the country's democracy and giving voice to its poor majority. In this essay, we discuss the role of participation in the party's politics since its inception, with a focus on the national administration. We argue that what is distinctive about the national administration is not so much the real or perceived transition of the PT to the ideological center or its economic policies per se, but the abandonment of one of the hallmarks of the PT in power: its creative forms of empowered popular participation. Even if these practices were translated to global forums, they were not translated to the national governance and this has locked the party into increasing conflict with, and isolation from, its base of support among social movements.
In this essay we explore Rancière's 'politics of equals' as an alternative conception of the poli... more In this essay we explore Rancière's 'politics of equals' as an alternative conception of the political. Central to this conception is a division between instances of political contestation that address fundamental questions of equality ('the politics of equals') and those that are part of the management of the division of resources and positions in society ('the police'). This distinction provides a new way of thinking about theoretical and empirical questions over logics of political action.
This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations ... more This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city's poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus—their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil. Brazil and the United States have long been compared to each other in terms of race relations within each nation, and Brazil continues to provide fodder for academic discussions about the nature of its racial structures (Silva 2001). Against the US's history of legal discrimination and visible movements like the Civil Rights Movement, Brazil's lack of both a history of legal segregation and of large-scale contestation of its racial system stands in stark contrast. For many years, Brazil was considered a " Racial Democracy " in which there was no racial discrimination, no " pure races, " and in which " racial
This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member... more This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member to codesign and co-teach a graduate-level workshop-style qualitative methods course. The goal of co-designing and co-teaching the course was to involve advanced graduate students in all aspects of designing a syllabus and leading class discussions in a required course for first-year graduate students. The authors describe the multiple stages involved in designing and teaching the qualitative methods course and discuss the challenges of this type of collaborative teaching. This type of collaboration builds on the existing strengths of workshop-style methods courses to improve student learning by providing opportunities for grounded engagement with epistemological topics and ample opportunities for feedback, discussion, and reflection on the research process. This collaborative teaching model, although difficult and time-intensive, provides measurable improvements to existing qualitative workshop courses by overcoming some of the limitations of workshop courses and providing significant benefits for graduate students in the class, the student coteachers, and faculty.
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted... more Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features-its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation-are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less wellknown features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion-and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member... more This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member to codesign and co-teach a graduate-level workshop-style qualitative methods course. The goal of co-designing and co-teaching the course was to involve advanced graduate students in all aspects of designing a syllabus and leading class discussions in a required course for first-year graduate students. The authors describe the multiple stages involved in designing and teaching the qualitative methods course and discuss the challenges of this type of collaborative teaching. This type of collaboration builds on the existing strengths of workshop-style methods courses to improve student learning by providing opportunities for grounded engagement with epistemological topics and ample opportunities for feedback, discussion, and reflection on the research process. This collaborative teaching model, although difficult and time-intensive, provides measurable improvements to existing qualitative workshop courses by overcoming some of the limitations of workshop courses and providing significant benefits for graduate students in the class, the student coteachers, and faculty.
The academic declining significance of race did not begin with William Julius Wilson's work in th... more The academic declining significance of race did not begin with William Julius Wilson's work in the late 1970s. In this paper, we take a broad look at the methods mainstream sociologists have used to validate Whites' racial common sense about racial matters in the post-civil rights era. Our general goal is to succinctly examine the major tactics sociologists have used to minimize the significance of racism in explaining minorities' plight. Specifically, we survey how (1) most work on racial attitudes creates a mythical view on Whites' racial attitudes, (2) the various demographic indices used to asses post-civil rights' racial matters miss how race affects minorities today, (3) perspectives on the culture of minorities are based on ethnocentric perspectives that tend to hide the centrality of racially based networks, and (4) the way most sociologists report their results distorts the significance of racial stratification. We conclude by suggesting that work on racial matters will need to be revamped if it is going to have any practical use for those at the "bottom of the well."
This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations ... more This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city's poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus-their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil.
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in... more Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features-its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation are by now well-known. In this paper, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely, the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. In this paper we thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
Over the last decade scholars of urban governance and deliberative democracy have produced large ... more Over the last decade scholars of urban governance and deliberative democracy have produced large literatures. Theorists of deliberative democracy have conceptualized the normative implications of 'deliberation' and explored real-world decision-making arrangements that approximate those ideals. Scholars of urban governance have theorized and explored the outcomes of different institutional arrangements for the governance of cities and regions. Whereas empirical democratic theory has increasingly been interested in local contexts, researchers of urban governance have been progressively more concerned about the implications of emerging patterns of urban governance for democratic accountability. However, despite the recent mutual interest among researchers in both fields, debates within these literatures frequently ignore each other and are not systematic. This introductory article reviews recent contributions that have fruitfully investigated the tension between deliberation and governance in a more systematic fashion, and concludes that our understanding of those issues is significantly improved by a research agenda that pursues an integrated approach.
Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), well into its second term in national office, is today h... more Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), well into its second term in national office, is today heavily criticized for its conservative economic policies when only a few years ago it was celebrated for re-invigorating the country's democracy and giving voice to its poor majority. In this essay, we discuss the role of participation in the party's politics since its inception, with a focus on the national administration. We argue that what is distinctive about the national administration is not so much the real or perceived transition of the PT to the ideological center or its economic policies per se, but the abandonment of one of the hallmarks of the PT in power: its creative forms of empowered popular participation. Even if these practices were translated to global forums, they were not translated to the national governance and this has locked the party into increasing conflict with, and isolation from, its base of support among social movements.
In this essay we explore Rancière's 'politics of equals' as an alternative conception of the poli... more In this essay we explore Rancière's 'politics of equals' as an alternative conception of the political. Central to this conception is a division between instances of political contestation that address fundamental questions of equality ('the politics of equals') and those that are part of the management of the division of resources and positions in society ('the police'). This distinction provides a new way of thinking about theoretical and empirical questions over logics of political action.
This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations ... more This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city's poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus—their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil. Brazil and the United States have long been compared to each other in terms of race relations within each nation, and Brazil continues to provide fodder for academic discussions about the nature of its racial structures (Silva 2001). Against the US's history of legal discrimination and visible movements like the Civil Rights Movement, Brazil's lack of both a history of legal segregation and of large-scale contestation of its racial system stands in stark contrast. For many years, Brazil was considered a " Racial Democracy " in which there was no racial discrimination, no " pure races, " and in which " racial
This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member... more This article describes an innovative collaboration between graduate students and a faculty member to codesign and co-teach a graduate-level workshop-style qualitative methods course. The goal of co-designing and co-teaching the course was to involve advanced graduate students in all aspects of designing a syllabus and leading class discussions in a required course for first-year graduate students. The authors describe the multiple stages involved in designing and teaching the qualitative methods course and discuss the challenges of this type of collaborative teaching. This type of collaboration builds on the existing strengths of workshop-style methods courses to improve student learning by providing opportunities for grounded engagement with epistemological topics and ample opportunities for feedback, discussion, and reflection on the research process. This collaborative teaching model, although difficult and time-intensive, provides measurable improvements to existing qualitative workshop courses by overcoming some of the limitations of workshop courses and providing significant benefits for graduate students in the class, the student coteachers, and faculty.
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted... more Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features-its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation-are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less wellknown features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion-and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
Contemporary Sociology, 2003
Поиск в библиотеке, Расширенный поиск. ...
'Decentralinzation of Government', like 'Participation in Government'and ... more 'Decentralinzation of Government', like 'Participation in Government'and 'Civil Society', has of late become a ubiquitous catchphrase for policy makers and scholars from a variety of perspectives. 1 The changes in government associated with decentralization are thought to hold the potential to deepen democracy, make for more accountable and efficient institutions, increase citizen input, and foster cooperation across the public-private divide. 2 Decentralization can have many different meanings, but in the context of policy-advocacy ...
Deliberation and Development: Rethinking the Role of Voice and Collective Action in Unequal Societies, 2015
Widening Democracy: Citizens and Participatory Schemes in Brazil and Chile, 2009
Rethinking Popular Representation, 2009
Economic and Political Weekly, Feb 25, 2006
The Civic Imagination provides a rich empirical description of civic life and a broader discussio... more The Civic Imagination provides a rich empirical description of civic life and a broader discussion of the future of democracy in contemporary America. Five researchers observed and participated, over the course of a year, in 7 civic organizations in a mid-sized US city. They draw on this ethnographic evidence to map the “civic imaginations” that motivate citizenship engagement in America today. The book unpacks how contemporary Americans think about and act toward positive social and political change. The authors’ findings challenge contemporary assertions of American apathy.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
ABSTRACT Across the political spectrum, people are continuously, actively engaged in prospective ... more ABSTRACT Across the political spectrum, people are continuously, actively engaged in prospective thinking about a better society and political system. The authors examine this dynamic meaning-making process in year-long collaborative, ethnography of civic engagement at the city level. Social scientists from three disciplines, including political science, engaged in participant-observation and conducted interviews with seven radically different civil society organizations, each working for political change in a single American city. Each researcher worked at all field sites, collaboratively coded field notes, and contributed to a collective writing process. This paper uses the story of a heated controversy about closing several public schools to show how citizen imaginations shape understanding and action in contemporary civic life.The paper introduces the concept of “civic imaginations,” and explains how these cognitive maps of the citizen-state relationship guide political participation. “Civic imaginations” are the ways in which people individually and collectively envision better political, social, and civic environments and work towards achieving those futures. We use "civic" because we are interested in imagination that is concerned with society, and not, for example, with individual aspirations for a better life. We use "imagination" because it implies thinking of things that do not (yet) exist, and thus is an act of bringing forth a possible future, or what philosophers have sometimes referred to as poiesis. As an act of bringing-forth, the civic imagination informs and guides action, directly bearing on how individuals think about diagnosing social problems and creating social change. Civic imaginations are fluid and in motion, constantly being created and recreated as people confront reality and seek out their visions of a normative “good” amidst changing circumstances. As people and civic groups develop visions of a better world, their imaginations lead them to act in particular, and extraordinarily diverse, ways.We make sense of the variability in civic imaginations by observing that they cluster around three strong sets of discourses: concern with inequality, prioritizing solidarity, and collective thinking to solve social problems. First, some civic imaginations cluster around the need to fight unequal distributions of power in society. Individuals and organizations with this imagination see themselves acting at the local level to contribute to a much broader struggle against systemic social inequalities, and prioritize the opinions, voices, and actions of those most affected by injustice. A second type of civic imagination clusters around the idea of promoting community solidarity, making claims for people to come together, to develop a sense of community and collective culture, and to strengthen neighborhoods and local spaces. A third type clusters around the belief that by simply coming together and communicating, people can generate creative solutions to social problems. We argue that listening for others’ civic imaginations is a way to gain clarity about the inspirations of engaged citizens and civic groups, their actions and their pitfalls. It is a means of understanding political culture, of examining civic life, of studying democracy in action.
Introduction to a co-edited special edition of Qualitative Sociology on Actor-Network Theory and ... more Introduction to a co-edited special edition of Qualitative Sociology on Actor-Network Theory and Sociological Ethnography.
Politics & Society, 2014
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in... more Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, and often celebrated, now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features -its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation are by now well-known. In this paper, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely, the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. In this paper we thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Temporary work has become a common phrase in the lexicon of today's worker... more EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Temporary work has become a common phrase in the lexicon of today's workers. In a survey commissioned by the North American Alliance For Fair Employment (www. fairjobs. org) in January 2000, 60% of the respondents had either been in nonstandard work arrangements or knew someone who had been in one while preferring a standard job. The working life of a “temp” has even been the subject of a number of movies, including the independently produced “Clockwatchers”(1998).
American Journal of Sociology, 2013
WorkingUSA, 2007
Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), well into its second term in national office, is to... more Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), well into its second term in national office, is today heavily criticized for its conservative economic policies when only a few years ago it was celebrated for re-invigorating the country's democracy and giving voice to its poor majority. In this essay, we discuss the role of participation in the party's politics since its inception, with a focus on the national administration. We argue that what is distinctive about the national administration is not so much the real or perceived transition of the PT to the ideological ...
La izquierda en la ciudad: participación en los gobiernos locales de América Latina, 2004
Cuando en enero de 2001 Tarso Genro asumió su segundo mandato en\ iiprefeitura (alcaldía) de Port... more Cuando en enero de 2001 Tarso Genro asumió su segundo mandato en\ iiprefeitura (alcaldía) de Porto Alegre, esta ciudad se convirtió en la primer anfitriona de un cuarto período de administración del Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). Y también de uno de los gobiernos consecutivos más prolongados de la izquierda latinoamericana.
Social Forces, 2003
It could be argued that modernization theory has experienced a revival of sorts in recent times. ... more It could be argued that modernization theory has experienced a revival of sorts in recent times. Some of today's enormously influential authors like Robert Putnam and Samuel Huntington and nonacademic authors like Fareed Zakaria share with earlier ...
Ethnography, 2017
Sociologists exhibit growing interest in the politics of expertise. Analyses of evaluations, econ... more Sociologists exhibit growing interest in the politics of expertise. Analyses of evaluations, economic paradigms, blueprints, censuses, policy instruments and the like have come to occupy an important position in recent research. While much of this emergent scholarship has drawn on historical methods, a growing number of scholars have turned to ethnography. A close reading of this work reveals that ethnographers have actively tailored rather than passively transposed ethnography to the study of expertise. Departing from traditional conceptions of ethnography, these works exhibit growing attentiveness to movement, mediation, and materials. We argue that this retooling of ethnography is not merely a response to empirical realities but rather stems, at least in part, from the influence of science and technology studies, specifically Actor-Network Theory. This case provides the occasion to make a broader point about ethnography as a ‘theory/method package’: theory does not only shape what ethnographers study, but also how they conduct research.