Lichterman, Paul 1959–

PERSONAL:

Born September 8, 1959; son of Harold M. and Edith B. Lichterman; married Nina Eliasoph; children: Olivia, Leo. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1981, M.A., 1983, Ph.D., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Sociology, University of Southern California, 3620 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angels, CA 90089. E-mail—lichterm@email.usc.edu.

CAREER:

University of Madison, Madison, WI, assistant professor, 1992-2004, associate professor of sociology, 2004-06; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, associate professor of sociology and religion, 2004—. Princeton University, Center for the Study of Religion, visiting fellow, 2001-02; University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication, Annenberg Scholar, 1994-95.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

American Sociological Association best article award, 2001; National Society in Discipline fellow, Center for Study of Religion, Princeton University, 2001-02; American Sociological Association best article award, 2005; distinguished book award, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2006-07; National Science Foundation grant, 2007-08; grant from Pew Charitable Trust.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Search for Political Community: American Activists Reinventing Commitment, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America's Divisions, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2005.

Consulting editor, American Journal of Sociology, 2004-06. Lichterman's work has been translated into Italian and French.

SIDELIGHTS:

Paul Lichterman is a professor of sociology and religion at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His areas of specialty include politics, religion, qualitative methodology, as well as civic organizations and social movements. Underlying much of his research are questions about the nature of citizenship and social ties. In his first published book, The Search for Political Community:American Activists Reinventing Commitment, Lichterman takes a close look at the different types of environmental movements that exist in the United States, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. In his second book, titled Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America's Divisions, the author compares the responses to the subject of welfare reform by nine faith-based community service groups. All of the groups came from the tradition of Protestant Christianity, but they represented various mainline and evangelical sectors. All of them sought to establish ties with other community-service organizations, and to reach out to low-income populations, but they frequently failed to reach their goals. Lichterman's commentary explores questions about how community can be fostered in a society that is fundamentally diverse and unequal. Elusive Togetherness presents ideas about the ways cultural elements, such as church, media, and so forth, are used by people and how they influence people's actions in everyday life.

In The Search for Political Community, Lichterman shows how relationships between individuals and their communities act as a force for the common good by providing the impetus for collective political action. In response to the belief that political commitment is on the wane in the United States because Americans are becoming increasingly self-interested, Lichterman states that even self-interested concerns about personal needs can naturally lead to political involvement on the behalf of one cause or another, such as maintaining a clean environment for healthy living. For background, Lichterman uses studies on two years of participant observation and thirty-two interviews: some from two groups associated with the environmentalist movement, and others from two associated with grassroots environmental justice activism. Catherine M. Simile, reviewing The Search for Political Community for Gender and Society, found it "well-grounded in relevant and current literature" and a source of "theoretical insight." She concluded that the book would make "a welcome addition to undergraduate classes in social movements or gender."

Lichterman's Elusive Togetherness was based on the author's observations in a real-life town whose name he fictionalized to "Lakeburg." His study took place not too long after former U.S. President Bill Clinton had enacted welfare reforms that shifted much of the responsibility for care of the poor from the government to volunteer groups. This fundamental change in policy gave the volunteers of Lakeburg real motivation. As Lichterman describes it, the faith-based social reform groups in Lakeburg were all eager to bring about community improvement, and to find ways to connect the public and private sectors in new ways that would provide fresh answers to persistent problems. Yet, as it turned out, the very different perspectives and interests of various groups and individuals created considerable barriers to the formation of a unified and just society.

"In many ways his book is one more version of a very old tale about American civil society that begins with Tocqueville and runs through contemporary classics such as Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart and Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, stated Arthur E. Farnsley II in a Christian Century review of Elusive Togetherness. "But Elusive Togetherness makes a sobering contribution all its own. It recognizes that we place too much emphasis on the form of social interaction, as if civil society will surely emerge if people get together in voluntary groups and participate in something. Lichterman argues that content, not form, is the real and underappreciated key."

Commenting on Elusive Togetherness in the Sociology of Religion, Brian Steensland noted that, in analyzing why so many well-intentioned community efforts fall short and fail to reach their goals, Lichterman points out that "a group's interpersonal customs constrain or enhance its ability to spiral outward into the broader community." Lichterman notes the importance of a group's willingness and ability to critically analyze its own place in the wider social fabric. This sort of honest self-examination can often lead to painful discussions among members and thereby weaken the solidarity of the group. "In considering the failures and frustrations" experienced by many of the groups, said Steensland, Lichterman "suggests it is not enough for groups to have the ‘right’ values. They must also have the right group-building customs." As an example, Lichterman cites one group whose collective style included a great deal of social criticism and stating difficult truths plainly. While it may have been part of their identity, this style typically distanced them from potential partners within the community. In Steensland's opinion, "Lichterman has written an ambitious book that should be seminal for future studies of civic engagement…. It casts immediate light on its subject and illuminates a promising direction for future research."

Courtney Bender, a writer for Social Forces, said of this book: "Drawing judiciously on the political writings of Jane Addams and John Dewey, Lichterman argues throughout this volume that the way to understand how social democracy works depends on our ability to listen to how people talk to each other about things that matter." The lone group that did have good success in meeting its goals was the one that undertook projects that went outside the standard concepts of volunteerism. Instead, they took on roles that were more readily defined as partnerships with the neighborhoods in which they worked. Even so, they encountered difficulties and their connections with their target communities were fragile. One of the lessons of Lichterman's book, said Bender, is that "building bridges across social divisions—while arguably necessary to our society's sense of itself—is much more difficult, and takes much more work, than simply volunteering and participating from time to time in community action."

"Elusive Togetherness demonstrates that in order to know what associational life brings about, we have to understand the nature of the communication within it," noted Katherine Cramer Walsh in the Political Science Quarterly. "This book is a thorough, insightful ethnography that is an important contribution to our understanding of civic engagement, social capital, and the place of religion in civic life." Another positive assessment came from Jerry Z. Park, a writer for the Review for Religious Research, which called Elusive Togetherness a "well-articulated argument using two major Christian traditions that are key contributors to the civic engagement enterprise. Elusive Togetherness is an important work and will be useful for those interested in using its findings to consider reflexively how their own religious community uses its customs to connect with society. If Lichterman is correct, many of our church groups' habits of service and servanthood often leave much to be desired, and uncovering the root causes may challenge some of our basic notions of who we are as religious observers in a nation bereft of caring."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Sociology, March 1, 1998, Ira Silver, review of The Search for Political Community: American Activists Reinventing Commitment, p. 1467; May 1, 2006, Richard Madsen, review of Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America's Divisions, p. 1950.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 1997, J. Heyrmen, review of The Search for Political Community; June 1, 2006, D.A. Chekki, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 1908.

Christian Century, April 18, 2006, Arthur E. Farnsley II, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 36.

Contemporary Sociology, November 1, 1997, Eric L. Hirsch, review of The Search for Political Community, p. 710; September 1, 2006, John P. Bartkowski, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 489.

Gender & Society, December 1, 1998, Catherine M. Simile, review of The Search for Political Community, p. 757.

Political Science Quarterly, March 22, 2006, Katherine Cramer Walsh, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 171.

Review of Religious Research, September, 2006, Jerry Z. Park, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 115.

Social Forces, March 1, 2006, Courtney Bender, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 1850.

Social Service Review, September 1, 1998, James Midgley, review of The Search for Political Community, p. 426.

Sociology of Religion, March 22, 2007, Brian Steensland, review of Elusive Togetherness, p. 118.