Carving out the Commons: book talk today at American University (and tomorrow in Baltimore)

Unbeknownst to me, independent research Amanda Huron has written a book about DC's limited equity low income housing co-ops, which is opportune given my recent writings on the topic, including "Not particularly radical: housing ideas from Right to the City."

From the book's website at the University of Minnesota:

Amanda Huron will be at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center on Wednesday, April 4 at 4:00 p.m. for a reading and signing of her new book, Carving Out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Cooperatives in Washington, D.C..

Carving Out the Commons theorizes the practice of urban “commoning” in Washington, D.C., through an investigation of the city’s limited-equity housing cooperatives. It asks whether a commons can work in a city where land and resources are scarce and how strangers who may not share a past or future come together to create commonly held spaces in the midst of capitalism.

"Through interviews and historical research, Amanda Huron gives us an in-depth description of the formation of a housing cooperative in Washington, D.C. in the ’70s and develops a theoretical structure enabling us to generalize this experience to other cities. It is an incisive book that speaks to a vital issue in contemporary politics and social theory."—Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

"Amanda Huron illuminates new ways of thinking what social justice in the city can look like. Her writing is rigorous yet upholds the dignity of the people she studies and their attempts to stake out a right to their city. Carving Out the Commons will be a go-to both for academics and organizers in the coming years."—James Tracy, author of Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes from San Francisco's Housing Wars

She's also speaking in Baltimore tomorrow, at Red Emma's Bookstore and Café. Coincidentally, Red Emma's is a workers cooperative.