Abstract
Paul Lichterman’s book How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles presents an interesting inquiry into the study of collective action by proposing to focus on the patterns of action in the study of civic action. Lichterman goes against the inclination of social movement scholars to focus on the actors and the impacts of their collective efforts, treating collective actors as entrepreneurs acting strategically at every step. The book’s focus is instead on how civic action is articulated and given meaning by the social advocates, how it is coordinated, how it is embedded in culture and relationships, and what trade-offs and dilemmas it entails.
Lichterman positions his work within cultural sociology and the pragmatist approach. By emphasizing that civic action is strategic as much as it is negotiated and a product of relationships, the focus is shifted from actors and their ideas prominent in the accounts of social movements, to the processes, cultural and relational contexts in which actions develop – the how of civic action; that is, how claims are articulated, how they are embedded in relationships and relationship building, and how actions unfold. Nonetheless, the author is not content here but goes a step further and proposes a comprehensive terminology for how we can understand civic action from this perspective with concepts of style, scene, and discursive field, as central in the analysis.
How Civic Action Works proposes to study collective action in terms of civic action, instead of defining it in terms of social movements, non-profit organizations, or volunteering. The proposal is compelling if we want to safeguard that our perspective on collective action is broad, process-oriented, culturally embedded, less normative (not all civic action is progressive) and non-dichotomous. By focusing on what civic action means and how it is done we can escape the inclination to stress the form of collective actors/actions and the attributes of collective actors, and acknowledge that collective actors are complex, act differently in different situations and can be involved in different organizations and networks simultaneously, identifying differently depending on the setting and the audience.
The ethnographic work this book is based on is comprehensive and impressive. The author has for several years followed different housing campaigns, coalitions and organizations fighting for better housing conditions in Los Angeles. Following the action has made it possible to go beyond the predisposition of media and research to concentrate on extraordinary events that social movements have been involved in and to give attention to the everyday and ordinary way of organizing collectively. The ethnographic approach encourages researchers to take on a more sensitive and less top–down perspective on collective actors and their actions, taking into account how these actions become meaningful to the actors and emphasizing their relational character.
The book’s focus on housing advocacy in times of global housing crisis is timely. Examining how housing advocacy works, what dilemmas the advocates encounter, how they solve them and what they find successful is a welcome contribution to the studies of collective action in the field of housing. Not least for the social advocates themselves, the book provides important knowledge on problem-solving and coordination of civic action. Additionally, the attempt at connecting the issues of housing advocacy and issues of homelessness is refreshing and thought-provoking for both researchers and housing activists. Why have these two so intimately interconnected issues been separated?
My point of critique would be directed to the western-centric references in the book. To my knowledge much interesting work has been done on civic action, raising similar points that this book is raising and developing theories of collective action outside of the West, in the post-socialist contexts of Central and Eastern Europe and the Global South. Whether the research is focusing on urban activism, resistance to urban displacement or forced eviction or grassroots mobilizations, it could provide important insights, nuanced perspectives, and points of reference in the conceptualization of civic action.
Also, by focusing on the action and less on the actors, a more critical class or intersectional analysis of the question of how civic action unfolds, and in particular who, what, and when is appropriate to claim, was lost in the conceptualization of styles, scenes, and discursive fields, but also in relation to housing inequality in general and the question of who is marginalized, discriminated, excluded, and displaced in current housing systems. It would be interesting to see how gender, race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity influence how discursive fields of civic action develop, and especially given that all these categories are crucial for understanding housing advocates’ position and reasons for engaging in civic action to begin with.
