Talia Gordon @ USL
“On ‘doing’: Discourses and Enactments of
Civic Participation in Flint, MI”
Talia Gordon | PhD Candidate, Comparative Human Development
Discussant: Ali Feser | Harper Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences
Wednesday, January 19th, 4:30-6:00pm (Zoom)
To receive a copy of the pre-circulated paper or for the zoom link, please email zarrington@uchicago.edu
Paper Abstract: This chapter describes discourses and enactments of civic participation in Flint, MI, a community perpetually tasked with recovering from crisis. While crisis has been theorized as a context within which social and political formations are reconfigured, my dissertation focuses instead on recovery from crisis as an analytic frame through which to understand how people organize themselves in relation to one another, to place, to the state, and to other sites of institutional power. Drawing on 2 years of fieldwork in Flint from 2018-2020, this chapter theorizes “doing” as an expression of a cultural politics of civic participation shaped by the legacies and ongoing effects of government retrenchment, deindustrialization, and racial and political disenfranchisement.
*This convening is open to all invitees regardless of vaccination status and, because of ongoing health risks to the unvaccinated, those who are unvaccinated are expected to adopt the risk mitigation measures advised by public health officials (masking and social distancing, etc.). Public convening may not be safe for all and carries a risk for contracting COVID-19, particularly for those unvaccinated. Participants will not know the vaccination status of others, including venue staff, and should follow appropriate risk mitigation measures.