Cornell University

Cornell University Mann Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

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COMMColloquium

Navigating Complex Systems of Inequality: How Local Organizations Build Knowledge and Power

Jamila Michener, Associate Professor, Government and Public Policy, Cornell University

2pm in 102 Mann

Reception to follow in the Hub

 

Civil law is the channel through which many Americans adjudicate the (non-criminal) legal challenges that emerge in everyday life. Core functions of the civil legal system include preventing evictions, securing the rights of public assistance beneficiaries, safeguarding women from domestic violence, and resolving disputes between creditors and debtors. Civil legal protections are especially critical to low-income denizens, people of color, women, and people at various intersections of these categories. Despite the clear importance of civil legal institutions, public knowledge about how to navigate civil courts, lawyers, and legal problems is very limited. Moreover, civil legal processes are highly complex and public resources for formal legal representation are minimal. In this context, low levels of information among people facing civil legal problems leads to a range of damaging outcomes (e.g., eviction, loss of public benefits, difficulty obtaining lifesaving orders of protections). Community organizations can play a vital role in mitigating such outcomes. By communicating crucial information to otherwise vulnerable and hard to reach populations and doing so in novel and responsive ways, local organizations act as equity enhancing institutions. Drawing on extensive ethnographic observation and in-depth qualitative interviews with tenant organizations, this research demonstrates the unique role of such community groups in communicating information about complex and inequitable systems. Crucially, these organizations go beyond simply sharing information. Instead, they engage in dynamic relational processes to build knowledge and power in communities that are too often excluded from social and political opportunities. 

Jamila Michener is an associate professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University. She studies poverty, racism, and public policy, with a particular focus on health and housing. She is author of the award-winning book, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics. She is Associate Dean for Public Engagement at the Brooks School of Public Policy, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, co-director of the Politics of Race, Immigration, Class and Ethnicity (PRICE) research initiative, and board chair of the Cornell Prison Education Program

 

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