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Charles Price
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
UNC-Chapel Hill
Courses Links
* Action Research Center for Integrating Research & Action
* Anthropology & Community Development Social Movements Working Group
* Ethnography & Life Stories Highlander Research & Education Center
* General Anthropology Howard Samuels State Management & Policy Center
* Racial Formation in Jamaica National Community Development Institute
Southern Funding Collaborative
Selected Publications:
Becoming Rasta Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica (2009)
Collaborations Count: Promoting Community Organizing (Ford Foundation, 2009)
A New Generation of Southerners: Youth Organizing in the South (Funder's Collaborative on Youth Organizing, 2004)
Welfare Reform and Postsecondary Education:
Welfare reform closed off welfare recipients to perhaps the most valuable pathway out of poverty: getting a college degree. President Clinton’s Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (1996) rolled back supportive policies such as the Family Support Act, and the laws of the vast majority of states that up to that point allowed participation in at least two years of postsecondary education (many states allowed more than two years).
I have an established record of both traditional and action research on issues involving welfare reform and
access to higher education. The Howard Samuels State Management & Policy Center @ The City
University of New York Graduate Center is where I learned about the issue and how to tackle it in
terms of reforming the policies.
My work in this area has included work with individual groups, consulting senior Senate staff on welfare
reform, and organizing a national conference on the issue (all under the aegis of the Howard
Samuels Center).
Some selected publications on the subject include:
o “Coalition-Building and State TANF Policy” (1999), “Proceedings of the National Conference:
Welfare Reform and the College Option” (Report, 1999)
o “Welfare Reform and the College Option: Perspectives on the Issues” (Video documentary, 2002)
o “Still Committed to the Higher Education Option: Model State, College and Advocacy
Organizations that Support Welfare Recipients Going to College” (Report, 2003)
o “Making it Harder for Welfare Students to Attend College: Interrupting Oppression by Reforming
Welfare Reform's Postsecondary Education Policies,” International Center for Cooperation and
Conflict Resolution Working Papers (2004)
o "Reforming Welfare Reform Postsecondary Education Policy: Two State Case Studies in Political
Culture, Organizing, and Advocacy,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 32(3): 81-106. (2005)
o “Using the Conference to Inform Public Awareness and Public Policy," Practicing Anthropology
29(2):36-39 (2007)
Community Organizing & Community Organizations
Community organizing involves diverse strategies of collective action. Common to the varieties are the centrality of ordinary citizens in guiding the process of collective action. Community organizing can serve many purposes, including strategies and opportunities for citizens to learn through experience, to practice and refine civic participation skills, to build new relationships and nurture existing ones, and to localize democratic practice. And of course, there is changing the status quo! Community organizing is a means for ordinary citizens to challenge vested interests, especially those of political, economic, and social elites.
I gradually came to see the value of community organizing by reflecting on my own experience with the shortcomings of the “vanguard intellectual” organizing efforts, such as a focus on mobilizing large numbers of people for short periods of time. Community organizing offers an alternative that builds local, networked, leadership and power in ordinary citizens, while allowing for vanguardist strategies such as mass mobilization and confrontational protest.
My interest in community organizing and community building as important elements of a change strategy
and important elements of a change strategy and important areas of study has continuously grown
since 2001.
o I served as one of three evaluators for the Fund Community Organizing Initiative (2003-2007),
a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative evaluated by the Howard Samuels State Management &
Policy Center. The Fund for Community Organizing Initiative focused on building capacity in
community organizing organizations and philanthropic organizations interested in supporting
community organizing. The multi-site project involved community organizing groups and
foundations in seven southern states (Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas,
Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida), and three cities (Los Angeles Chicago, Denver). I coordinated
the Southern component.
o I helped develop and lead an active learning component of the National Community Development
Institute's Transforming Philanthropy project employing participatory evaluation (and funded by
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the National Community Development Institute). The project
involved re-conceptualizing the practice of philanthropy in locally-relevant ways with six
community organizations, three from Southeastern North Carolina and three from the Bay
Area of California.
o I helped develop and lead a participatory evaluation of the Community Builder's Learning Project
(CBLP), an effort spearheaded by the North Carolina Community Solutions Network and the National
Community Development Institute (Oakland, CA), and funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The
CBLP sought to help develop a North Carolina-based network of consultants, organizational
leaders, and community residents trained in skills and practices needed to work with communities
of color and low wealth communities.
o I have conducted field and oral history research with the Community Farm Alliance, a statewide
organization of family farmers and food users in Kentucky. The Community Farm Alliance offers a
exemplary model of what a locally-integrated food economy can look like (see their web site:
http://www.communityfarmalliance.org/)
o Kim Diehl and I co-authored a research report, A New Generation of Southerners, for the Funders
Collaborative on Youth Organizing (2004; published also in Social Policy, December 2004). During
2004 Kim and I visited and interviewed some of most visible youth organizing groups in the
American South.
Center for Integrating Action & Research (CIRA), UNC-Chapel Hill
Since June 2008 I have been the Co-Director of CIRA, a newly forming center that supports and
promotes engaged scholarship in the areas of collective action, cultural heritage, alternative
economies, alternative energy, and food justice.
Social Movements Working Group, UNC- Chapel Hill
o The Social Movements Working Group (SMWG) is an interdisciplinary collective of professors,
graduate students, and activists interested in and/or active in social movements. The SMWG
organizes conferences and study groups around social movement concerns. In particular, the
SMWG has focused on the “knowledge production” aspects of social movements. I have been
actively involved in SMWG as a faculty member through 2007.
* Highlander Research & Education Center, New Market, TN
Beginning in 2006, I have served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Highlander Research and Education Center (HREC). Beginning November 2009, I will Chair the Resource Committee, Co-Chair the Nomination Committee, and participate as a member of the Executive Committee. The HREC is one the South's (and America's) storied social justice organizations, incubating and nurturing groups involved in the Labor, Civil Rights, Environmental Justice, Brown Lung, Mountaintop Removal, LGBT, Youth, and other movements and organizing efforts.