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Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Professor
gb97@nyu.edu
(212) 992-6312
1 Wash Pl, Room 503

B.A., Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 1993
M.S., Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1996
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2001

Gianpaolo Baiocchi is a sociologist and an ethnographer interested in questions of politics and culture, critical social theory, and cities. He has written about and continues to research instances of actually existing civic life and participatory democracy.   His most recent work is Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation (Stanford University Press, 2016), which he co-authored with Ernesto Ganuza. The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life (co-authored with Elizabeth Bennett, Alissa Cordner, Stephanie Savell, and Peter Klein; Paradigm Publishers, 2014) examines the contours and limits of the democratic conversation in the US today. He is also the author, along with Patrick Heller and Marcelo K. Silva, of Bootstrapping Democracy: Experiments in Urban Governance in Brazil (Stanford University Press, 2011) and Militants and Citizens: Local Democracy on a Global Stage in Porto Alegre (Stanford University Press, 2005). He is the editor of Radicals in Power: Experiments in Urban Democracy in Brazil (Zed Press, 2003).   An engaged scholar, Baiocchi was one of the founders of the Participatory Budgeting Project and continues to work with groups improving urban democracy. He heads Gallatin’s Urban Democracy Lab, which launched in 2014 and which provides a space for scholars and practitioners to collaborate and exchange ideas for cultivating just, sustainable, and creative urban futures.   

Books

2018

We, The Sovereign

Gianpaolo Baiocchi's We, The Sovereign was published by Polity Press.  

2016

Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation

Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza's Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation was published by Stanford University Press.

2013

The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Elizabeth A Bennett, Alissa Cordner, Peter Klein, and Stephanie Savell's The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life was published by Paradigm Publishers.

Teaching and Research Interests

politics and culture; critical social theory; urban studies; Latin America   

Recent News

Professor Baiocchi's piece about deposed Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, "Bad News for Brazilian Democracy," appeared in the September 12, 2016 issue of the Boston Review.