COMMUNITY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE

The SSSP Community, Research, and Practice Division promotes scholars, activists, researchers, practitioners, students, and other individuals whose work supports social justice and liberation efforts in communities.  Our work shares an attention to how power operates within and between communities: we ask action-oriented questions about what makes communities healthy and what breaks them down, the determinants and consequences of inequality in communities, collective identities and lived realities of communities, and how those identifications and experiences affect well-being and quality of life. Our interests span physical and virtual communities (i.e., urban, rural, suburban, global, temporal, longstanding, and other place-based communities) as well as identity, cultural, and interest-based communities.  Our division encourages community based participatory action research, public sociology, and work that is leveraged towards advancing justice and liberation. 

Why join?

  • Connect with others studying and acting to advance justice and liberation in communities.
  • Participate in discussion and inquiry with others who share an interest in the interplay of scholarship and activism.
  • Engage in dynamic exchange of ideas and perspectives related to community based research and action. 
  • Get support and recognition for producing rigorous academic work that has practical implications for members of diverse communities.

Graduate students and junior faculty: we encourage you to take an active role in the division! This is a great way to get experience working within a professional organization and to develop relationships with more senior scholars and activists. Don’t forget the annual Community, Research, and Practice Division Graduate Student Paper Competition and Community Partner Paper Competition!

Divison mission statement reviewed in November 2023 by Teresa Irene Gonzales, Loyola University Chicago, Community, Research, and Practice Chair, 2023-2025. No edits were made. Division mission statement revised May 2023 by mission statement committee chaired by Amie Thurber (chair) and including Annette Mackay, Michael O. Johnston and Thomas Piñeros Shields. Edited and approved by Thomas Piñeros-Shields, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Community, Research, and Practice Division Chair, 2021-2023.

Readings Related to Community, Research, and Practice

  • Addams, Jane. (1910) Twenty Years at Hull-House. 
  • Anderson, Elijah, Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. University of Chicago Press, 1990.
  • Anderson, Elijah, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. W.W. Norton and Company, 2011.
  • Bookman, Ann and Sandra Morgan (eds.), Women and the Politics of Empowerment: Perspectives from Communities and Workplaces. Temple University Press, 1988.
  • Bourgois, Philippe, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  • Cashin, Sheryll, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream. Public Affairs, 2004.
  • Davis, John Emmeus, Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood. Cornell University Press, 1991.
  • Desmond, Matthew, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown Publishers, 2016.
  • Duneier, Mitchell, Sidewalk. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999.
  • Erikson, Kai, Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. Simon and Schuster, 1976.
  • Fine, M. (2018). Just research in contentious times: Widening the methodological imagination. Teachers College Press.
  • Fine, Michelle and Maria Elena Torre. (2021) Essentials of Critical Participatory Action Research (Essentials of Qualitative Methods) 1st Edition. American Psychological Association.
  • Gans, Herbert, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans. The Free Press, 1962 (1982).
  • Gonzales, Teresa Irene. (2021) Building a better Chicago: race and community resistance to urban redevelopment. New York University.
  • Grazian, David, Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  • Hayden, Dolores, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. MIT Press, 1995.
  • Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, 1961.
  • Kornblum, William, Blue Collar Community. University of Chicago Press, 1974.
  • Kotlowitz, Alex, There Are No Children Here. Doubleday, 1991.
  • Ledwith, Margaret. Community development: A critical approach. The Policy Press, 2011.
  • Lees, Loretta, Hyun Bang Shin, and Ernesto Lopez-Morales, Planetary Gentrification. Polity Press, 2016.
  • Lenette,Caroline (2022) Participatory Action Research: Ethics and Decolonization. Oxford University Press.
  • Logan, John and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. University of California Press, 1987.
  • Medoff, Peter and Holly Sklar, Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood. South End Press, 1994.
  • Moskowitz, P. E. (2017). How to kill a city: Gentrification, inequality, and the fight for the neighborhood. Hachette UK.
  • Ohmer, Mary L. and Karen DeMasi, Consensus Organizing: A Community Development Workbook, A Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Community Change Initiatives. Sage, 2009.
  • Patillo, Mary, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
  • Putnam, Robert, and Lewis Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community. Simon and Schuster, 2003.
  • Putnam, Robert, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster, 2000.
  • Sampson, Robert J., Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
  • Sanchez-Jankowski, Martin, Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods. University of California Press, 2008.
  • Saracino-Brown, Japonica, A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
  • Small, Mario Luis, Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
  • Smith, Neil, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. Routledge, 1996.
  • Smith, Robert Courtney, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. University of California Press, 2005.
  • Stack, Carol, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. Basic Books, 1974.
  • Stoecker, Randy (Editor) and Adrienne Falcón (Editor). (2022)  Handbook on Participatory Action Research and Community Development Edward Elgar Publishing. Northampton, MA.
  • Stoecker, Randy, Defending Community. Temple University Press, 1994.
  • Stoecker, Randy. Research methods for community change: A project-based approach. Sage, 2012.
  • Stone, Michael E., Shelter Poverty: New Ideas on Housing Affordability. Temple University Press, 1993.
  • Wacquant, Loic, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Polity Press, 2008.
  • Williamson, Thad, David Imbroscio, and Gar Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era. Routledge, 2002.
  • Wilson, William Julius, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
  • Wilson, William Julius, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. Vintage, 1996.
  • Zhou, Min, Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Ethnic Enclave. Temple University Press, 1991.

  • Zukin, Sharon, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.