How could civic actions respond to capitalism? In this study, I investigate the civic actions in urban and rural Taiwan initiated by the ‘Snail without Shells’ movement, including the advocating affordable housing price by the Citizen Solidarity against Urban Speculation (無住屋者團結組織), the tenants’ service by the Tsuei Ma-Ma (崔媽媽), the practice of community architecture by urban reformers from the ‘Snail without Shells’ movement, and the rural dwelling practice by young rural civic dwellers, finding that these civic actions exercise their power to capitalism through the mechanism of “dwelling.” More specifically, as a mediator between civic actors and capitalism, “dwelling” shows variations: dwelling as the “problem” and dwelling as the “method.” On the one hand, those advocating affordable housing price and the tenants’ service take dwelling as the “problem” while they respond to capitalism. On the other hand, the practice of community architecture and the rural dwelling practice take dwelling as the “method” while they respond to capitalism. Based on the empirical investigation, the study also attempts to address a theoretical question deriving from Envisioning Real Utopias: How could civil society serve as alternatives to capitalism? I point out that civil society exercises social power to capitalism through specific civic actors. While the civic actors exercise power to capitalism, “capitalism” is metamorphosed by civic action. In this context, civic action could be seen as the so-called “alternatives.” In this way, “alternatives” defined by civic action through “dwelling,” as the “problem” and as the “method,” present a double meaning: the practice of problem-solving in capitalism and the practice of experimenting/testing possibilities under capitalism. In addition to answering empirical and theoretical questions, the study examines the characteristics of civic actions in urban and rural Taiwan in a diachronic view, finding that, as “dwelling” has been transited to the “method” from the “problem,” four components, including squatting in a territorial site, the countryside, the knowledge of envisioning possibilities, and the local based civic field for the youth, have emerged in the civic action, in particular, the rural dwelling practice by young rural civic dwellers; furthermore, four transformations have been found in the meaning of dwelling (from “housing” to “living there”), the logic of organization work (from quantity to quality), the medium of alternatives (from housing policy, tenant, community, to the body), and the civic actors’ way of empowerment to others (from center-periphery relationship to cooperative relationship).