About

Paul Lichterman is a Professor of Sociology and Religion at USC Dornsife. His specialty areas include culture, civic organizations and social movements, religion, morality, racial identity construction, qualitative methodology, and theory. Much of his research investigates how people work collectively to address social problems in a socially unequal and culturally diverse society. His work explores the social and cultural dynamics of civic organizations, volunteer groups, and social movements, aiming to understand how culture shapes action in everyday life and how individuals use culture in their social practices. Lichterman's notable contributions include his first book, The Search for Political Community, which examined grassroots environmentalism, and his second book, Elusive Togetherness, which compared experiences of religiously sponsored community service groups responding to welfare reforms in the U.S. His recent publication, How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles, offers an ethnographic study of collective action to promote affordable housing and assist unhoused populations, challenging traditional notions of strategic success and proposing a new framework for studying civic engagement. His research has been recognized with awards from the ASA and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and his work has been translated into multiple languages. Currently, he is studying the morality and politics of anti-racism in the U.S., especially among white people, supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Aesthetics
• History
• Physics
• Anthropology
• Psychology
• Environmental ethics
• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Visual arts

Selected publications

• Comment les individus s’engagent dans l’action civique

  Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales eBooks · 2023-01-01

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  De quel genre d’engagement parle-t-on quand on parle d’engagement civique ? Figurez-vous la scène : nous sommes en 2008, la Grande Récession accroît la précarité des habitants de Los Angeles. Nombre d’entre eux luttent déjà depuis des années contre la hausse du prix des loyers et la raréfaction des appartements à prix abordables. Un collectif de groupes militant pour l’accès au logement a invité ses soutiens influents à une réunion sur le thème de « l’unité ». L’objectif est que tous puissent...

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• Individual engagement in social activism

  2023-07-20

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Contemporary social movement research often treats individuals or groups as strategic entrepreneurs who seize opportunities to advance their agendas. Yet, to understand individual engagement in social activism, we need an approach that sensitizes us to distinct social settings and the way individuals sustain or shift involvement inside and between settings. This chapter offers a processual view of individual engagement. It begins with insights from cultural interactionism on how social settings coordinate individual action. Then, recently renovated concepts of interest and morality deepen our understanding of the individual in the process. Seen through this new interactionist account, the experiences of two housing advocates in Los Angeles illustrate the interplay between social settings and activists’ self-understandings. We need ethnographic research as well as depth-interviewing to track this interplay.

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• 13. Pragmatist Comparative-Historical Sociology

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2022-08-13 · 3 citations

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• Ethnography and Social Movements

  The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements · 2022-09-27

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Ethnography is a powerful means of researching the organizational, relational, and cultural dimensions of collective action over time. Ethnographic research illuminates the “meso”‐level processes that many social movement scholars have emphasized since the end of the 1980s. More than a tool for probing small, well‐bounded subcultures, ethnography reveals patterns of meaningful action that shape the potentials of social movements and span the boundaries between social movements, government, and commerce. This promising method of research continues to be underemployed in the social movements field.

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• Review Symposium

  Sociology of Religion · 2022-12-29

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  Journal Article Review Symposium Get access Resurrecting the Jew: Nationalism, Philosemitism, and Poland’s Jewish Revival, by GENEVIÈVE ZUBRZYCKI. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022, 288 pp.; $32.00 (paperback). Rhys H Williams, Rhys H Williams Loyola University Chicago, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Ruth Braunstein, Ruth Braunstein University of Connecticut, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Paul Lichterman, Paul Lichterman University of Southern California, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Geneviève Zubrzycki Geneviève Zubrzycki University of Michigan, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 84, Issue 2, Summer 2023, Pages 223–233, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srac045 Published: 11 May 2023

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• Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Political Participation

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022-08-18

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  Abstract Abstract: Ethnographic research gives access to distinct insights on political participation. Sensitized by classic and contemporary theoretical work, ethnographers follow political participation outside as well as inside the realm of institutionalized citizenship, focusing on activities that politicize or depoliticize in a wide range of institutional and everyday sites. This chapter argues that ethnographic research is especially good at illuminating three aspects of political participation: First and foremost, ethnographers uncover the meanings and practices that constitute different kinds of political participation. Second, ethnographic research clarifies relations between political ideas and political actors, in different settings. Third, ethnography illuminates the ambiguous and shifting boundaries between what is and is not political or politicized. In each of these areas, ethnographic work improves understandings based on assumptions that commonly drive non-ethnographic or non-empirical writings.

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• <i>Inventing the Ties That Bind: Imagined Relationships in Moral and Political Life</i>. By Francesca Polletta. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. vii+247. $95.00 (cloth); $27.50 (paper).

  American Journal of Sociology · 2022-06-16

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• 1 A New Sociology of Civic Action

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-03-20

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• 2 Placing and Studying the Action

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-03-20

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• “Qualitative Research” Is a Moving Target

  Qualitative Sociology · 2021-11-15 · 8 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Nina Eliasoph

  University of Southern California

  11 shared

• Daniel Céfaï

  7 shared

• Marion Carrel

  5 shared

• Rubina Raja

  Aarhus University

  5 shared

• Jörg Rüpke

  5 shared

• Éric Doidy

  Centre d'Economie et de Sociologie Appliquées à l'Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux

  4 shared

• Julien Talpin

  Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Administratives, Politiques et Sociales

  3 shared

• Anna‐Katharina Rieger

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award