Community and Urban Sociology

Jean Yen-Chun Lin, an Associate Professor at California State University – East Bay, was co-winner of the 2024 Outstanding Book Award. Jean’s innovative research agenda centers on social movements, community organizations, and civic participation. We reached out to ask her to discuss her award-winning book, and we’re including her responses below. Thanks to Jean for participating in our interview series!

What were the main findings of your research?

A Spark in the Smokestacks explores urban Chinese communities as what I describe as “schools of democracy.” These are spaces where residents learn and practice civic skills while creating opportunities for collective organizing. The book focuses on several residential communities in Beijing that were profoundly affected by a growing urban trash crisis and the city’s overflowing landfills. At the time, Beijing’s proposed solution was to construct waste incinerators adjacent to these communities.

When new homeowners began settling into these residential communities, they started interacting regularly—both in person and through online homeowners’ forums. These daily interactions became a foundation for collective action, as residents worked together to address shared concerns. Homeowners learned how to create petitions, defend property rights, foster community participation, and mobilize around housing-related grievances.

One particularly striking finding from my research was how middle-class homeowners employed citizen science strategies. They leveraged their professional networks, expertise, and fundraising capabilities to gather data and produce detailed environmental reports. These reports significantly boosted their legitimacy in city-level discussions about incinerator construction. In Beijing, this approach was far more effective than street protests, which were often swiftly quelled by the government.

What motivated you to study this particular topic?

When I first presented my research on how Beijing’s middle-class homeowners used citizen science and community data collection to engage with government officials on issues like trash incineration, I was placed on a conference panel titled “Authoritarian Repression.” That surprised me and really made me reflect on how easily stories of citizen learning and associational life can be overlooked in authoritarian contexts. There’s a prevailing assumption that democratic processes don’t exist in such settings—or, if they do, they’re constantly being limited.

With this book, I wanted to challenge that narrative and highlight a different dimension. A Spark in the Smokestacks examines Chinese communities at a critical juncture of urban transformation, marked by housing and environmental grievances—familiar challenges that cities face globally. These residential communities became what I call “schools of democracy,” where first-time homeowners cultivated associational life. They formed networks of sharing and trust, practiced community-based leadership, and developed the capacity for larger-scale organizing when collective grievances arose. My goal was to bring these stories to life and show how even in restrictive political settings, people find ways to participate and create meaningful change.

What surprised you the most when writing A Spark in the Smokestacks?

What surprised me were some of the responses to the cases – folks most frequently focused on how many out of the three incinerators were actually built. Two of the three incinerators were ultimately constructed, but I think this one-dimensional definition of “outcome” often overlooks something much more profound: the processes—both successes and failures—that led to community change. 

Consequences of organizing can be felt in so many different aspects of community life. That’s why the book emphasizes capacity building; it’s about the ability to cultivate community-level leadership, fundraise, mobilize for action, and sustain those efforts over time. For example, two of the three communities created durable (and eventually, officially registered) environmental organizations to continue working on environmental issues beyond trash incineration, long after anti-incinerator organizing efforts ended. To me, these lasting impacts on community life are just as significant.

What impact do you hope that your findings will have?

That mundane, everyday civic action can cultivate the skills needed for political organizing and advocacy work! 

Additionally, in academic research, housing is often viewed through the lens of inequality and instability, particularly in the context of urban challenges in the U.S., such as rising housing costs and gentrification. But elsewhere in the world, homeownership rates are increasing rapidly and, in some cases, are already much higher than in the U.S. For example, China has a homeownership rate of around 90%, compared to 65.8% in the U.S., according to recent data. So if housing stability is increasing in urban areas across the globe, this could signal positive and empowering changes for the civic lives of the middle class. 

What are you working on currently? 

I’m part of the Civic Life of Cities project at Stanford University, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying nonprofit organizations/community organizations, drawing from public policy, sociology, management, and urban studies. Globally, the nonprofit sector serves as the connective tissue of communities—linking citizens, government agencies, and businesses. Such connections strengthen local democratic participation, foster urban innovation, and help address community needs. Our work uses survey and interview data to explore how economic cycles, political climates, and evolving approaches to organizational management shape the nonprofit sector in different parts of the world. Specifically, we focus on cities such as San Francisco (Bay Area), Seattle, Shenzhen, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, and Vienna, aiming to understand how these above factors influence civic life and nonprofit resilience in diverse urban contexts.