Community and Social Change

From rural villages and rapidly expanding cities across the world, to the diverse urban and suburban landscapes of South Florida, we investigate a wide range of topics at the intersection of community and social change. with an eye towards how groups of people are working to make a fairer, better world.

Emerging technologies, social and cultural movements, policies and means of making a living bring continuous churn to the ways people relate to one another. Given this rapid circulation, questions about how groups do and do not come together to remake and contest shared meanings, values, practices, spaces and systems of power become even more important to understand. Topics GSS researchers have focused on include gentrification, homelessness, land rights, indigeneity, cultural revitalization, digital communities, and the local impacts of major economic and political trends.  In sites across the globe, we investigate how disparities in wealth, political representation, and access to resources shape community development, as well as how historically marginalized groups— marked by differences such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, religious affiliation, and sexuality — mobilize to challenge exclusion and advocate for equity.  These varied projects demonstrate how much of what we see as “local” is shaped by the global forces, and how global processes and possibilities can be influenced by the actions of groups of people working towards shared goals.