A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-read for the next generation of organizers seeking to learn from the successes, failures, and contradictions of the past.
The community organizing tradition is long overdue for reexamination. In Occupation: Organizer, scholar and activist Clément Petitjean traces that history from its roots in the Progressive movement to its expansion and diverging paths during the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s, when Saul Alinsky became the most popular “professional radical” in the US while groups like Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panthers recast organizers as horizontal, antihierarchical spadeworkers—those who do the work as part of the community, rather than standing apart from it.
But in the years since, the professionalization of organizing work has only increased, despite the critiques. Only by grappling with its limitations and pitfalls, Petitjean insists, can we learn to build durable, effective organizations for change.
Clément Petitjean is an associate professor of American studies at the Université Panthéon Sorbonne in Paris. He holds a PhD in sociology. His writing has appeared in academic journals and popular outlets like Jacobin, Contretemps, and Le Monde diplomatique.
ISBN: 9781642599558
Publication date: April 18, 2023
"What Petitjean’s book offers...is the importance of being alert to, and shifting away from, the anti-political tendencies of both horizontalism and management consulting, and towards a clearer practice of political representation and contestation." —Emma Tai, Convergence
“In left-wing circles and right-wing fever dreams, the professional organizer has recently been a key protagonist. Occupation: Organizer casts a sympathetic yet rigorously critical light on that position. Petitjean’s contribution is vital to figuring out what the barriers are to remaking our world into the more democratic, just, and peaceful place we know it can be.” —Micah Uetricht, coauthor of Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism
“An essential read for everybody interested in the history and contradictions of community organizing in the US.” —Eric Blanc, author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics
"Occupation: Organizer’s intellectual promise is to sweep away the dust and lay bare what is often covered, especially in more romantic accounts of organizing and organizers. Organizing may culminate in mass political action, but its day-to-day work is painfully slow and hyperlocal. Organizers may refer to themselves as sparks that set off movements, but, day-to-day, they are also workers, grinding through tasks. Organizing may have radical goals, but its daily practice is objectively technical. Should all of this change? Petitjean makes no prescriptions. He raises questions. As organizers might say, the rest is up to “the people” to take on." —Journal of Urban Affairs
“Occupation: Organizer is a deeply thought-provoking book that approaches community organizing—and critically, the role of the organizer—from the standpoint of the development of a profession, with all the ironies and difficulties that entails. With a sharp and unsparing sociological eye, Cl.ment Petitjean asks how the job of “community organizer” emerged over decades and how identifiable but unstable boundaries formed around it. It is a story that highlights both key figures and strategies in the professionalization process and the movements and institutions that made them effective. Petitjean leaves the reader with both an appreciation of the work organizers do and a deep unease about the profession itself. Occupation: Organizer brings new perspectives to current thinking about nonprofits, foundations, and the weakening of grassroots movements and challenges us to think more clearly about present contradictions and the real futures that may emerge from them.” —John Krinsky, City College of New York Occupation
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