Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons^™

The Search For Self-Fulfillment: How Individualism Undermines Community Organizing, Rachel Rybaczuk

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This paper focuses on the role of individualism in community organizing. My case study follows the organizing efforts of the Coalition for Affordable Northampton Neighborhoods (CANN) and residents’ attempts to save an affordable neighborhood from Smith College’s campus expansion. As a resident and co-founder of CANN I was particularly interested in identifying the reasons for our difficulty in organizing residents whose homes would be torn down. While attending community and city meetings, interviewing core activists and activists who left the organizing efforts, I observed individualism undermining community organizing and political involvement. People’s search for self-fulfillment was in conflict with the …