The ways that social advocates organize to fight unaffordable housing and homelessness in Los Angeles, illuminated by a new conceptual framework for studying collective action 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.

"This book develops a new way to think about how social advocacy works in everyday life. Varied scholarly approaches to social advocacy over the past four decades have tended to highlight skilled actors who craft rhetorical appeals and pursue resources and opportunities strategically to win their ends. Lichterman argues that this approach presents a thin view of culture and oversimplifies action as a product of collective actors whose speech and action do not vary by setting. In this study of housing advocacy, he turns the analytic lens away from the actors to the social settings and the cultural contexts of unfolding action, which allows him to develop a more precise explanation of success and failure. Lichterman draws on four years of ethnographic research on four campaigns, three coalitions, and twelve organizations that took up affordable housing, homelessness, and related problems in Los Angeles. The author follows how the actors' identities, claims and strategies unfold in specific settings as they promote new legislation, oppose gentrification, build affordable housing, and pursue health and environmental issues alongside housing problems. He finds that the discursive fields are crucial contexts that influence the work and that organization style powerfully shapes civic action. How Civic Action Works offers a new conceptual framework and research agenda for studies of social advocacy"--

Civic Work, Civic Lessons explains how and why people of all ages, and particularly young people, should engage in public service as a vocation or avocation. Its authors are 57 years apart in age, but united in their passion for public service, which they term “civic work.” The book provides unique intergenerational perspectives. Thomas Ehrlich spent much of his career in the federal government. Ernestine Fu started a non-profit organization at an early age and then funded projects led by youth. Both have engaged in many other civic activities. An introductory chapter is followed by seven key lessons for success in civic work. Each lesson includes a section by each author. The sections by Ehrlich draw mainly from his experiences. Those by Fu draw on her civic work and that of many young volunteers whom the co-authors interviewed. The concluding chapter focuses on leveraging technologies for civic work. All profits received by the authors from the sale of this book will be donated to philanthropic organizations.

This works explores ways to embed civic action into the college student experience at MICA and in Baltimore City. This project is the beginning of a larger research project seeking to incorporate more opportunities to increase levels of civic engagement among young people in Baltimore City through art and design.

A modern democratic society depends on the civic engagement of its citizens. Growing cultural pluralism and economic globalization have brought greater complexity to all areas of life. Young people in particular need diverse opportunities in order to enrich their experience, to learn about civic responsibility and to strengthen their communities. Furthermore, the topic is important since it shapes a path to overcome social inequalities in education and to use the untapped potential for-and declining interest in-political participation among youth. With the 2007 Carl Bertelsmann Prize for Civic Engagement as an Educational Goal the Bertelsmann Stiftung presents approaches in diverse countries and discusses how they meet the challenge to promote civic engagement in schools and early childhood education and care. The report also gives a short overview of the status quo of civic engagement in Germany and suggests some reforms for the future.

This volume provides an original and powerful contribution to debates about the civic purpose of higher education. It suggests that universities can best realize their civic mission by making it central to their policy and practice. Bringing together researchers from three continents, the book offers an international perspective based primarily upon first-hand pedagogical experience. A transatlantic overview of the purpose, place and practice of one such pedagogy (service learning) is provided and its potential as a foundation for civic engagement assessed. In its last section the book moves from the theory of citizenship to practical considerations. In doing so, the book offers advice on establishing civic engagement to all those involved in teaching and learning within higher education.