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Martha Gomez
Sociology

Jean Stockard, Mentor

Streetwise Economics: The Role of Popular Education in a Social Justice Campaign

New social movement theorists emphasize the necessity to embrace community knowledge and to employ it to build stronger social movements. In addition, they promote the importance of generating popular ideologies in community organization and mobilization efforts. Focusing on the Eugene-Springfield Jobs with Justice Living Wage Campaign, this research asks how such popular ideologies will be allowed to emerge within this particular social justice campaign. The research specifically explores the role of economic education in the Living Wage Campaign. The central hypothesis of the research is that economic education sessions, in the style of Freirian, dialogical education, will build the notions of solidarity, principle, and confidence (Fireman and Gamson: 1979) among community members and stimulate the popular ideologies integral to collective action (Fisher and Kling 1996). Through participant observation and in-depth interviews, the findings from this research will shed light on the extent to which critical educational experiences can direct the future of social justice movements.