Nina Eliasoph, University of Southern California, Dornsife. I am interested in civic and political organizations in a diverse society, ranging from grassroots civic associations and activist groups, to nonprofits and NGOs. While being sure to analyze the “big” picture from all sorts of methodological approaches, I am especially interested in interpretive approaches that take the structures of ambiguity into account. For articles, see my list of publications.
My first book, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life, and the articles that came from it, describe how participants of various small civic groups talked–or did not talk–about politics, both within their groups and in their encounters with government, media and corporate authorities. Making Volunteers: Civic Life After Welfare’s End, and the articles that draw on it, portray and theorize a newly prevalent kind of organizational form that aims to cultivate the grassroots from the top down: I call them “empowerment projects.” These nonprofits and NGOs have paid staffs and have to justify their existences, to many funders, with many missions: to promote civic engagement, to cultivate deep appreciation of unique cultures, to get diverse people to mix and get out of their “comfort zones,” to help raise up disadvantaged people, and more. The missions look nice on paper, but often don’t match in everyday practice, especially when all require constant assesment. The Politics of Volunteering, compares volunteering and political activism, and aims to put these kinds of organizations in a broader historical and comparative perspective. I’ve also taught and lectured abroad, and enjoy collaborating on cross-national ethnographic projects.
Recently, I helped launch a new major, NGOs and Social Change.
My sociological subfields include: political sociology andcommunication, cultural sociology, ethnography, sociolinguistics, social theory, emotions, organizations, and nonprofits/NGOs.