August 24, 2010 at 11:08 am | Posted in amenities, grocery stores, neighborhoods, social organization, social service agencies, supermarkets, what to read | Leave a comment
In a new study published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, Alexandra Curley studies social capital levels among participants in a Boston housing relocation program. From the abstract: “This article examines the social capital available to low-income households which were relocated to different types of neighborhoods with the HOPE VI program, an initiative aimed at redeveloping U.S. public housing developments into mixed-income communities. Along with improving the living environment, HOPE VI is thought to improve residents’ access to social capital by changing the economic mix of their neighborhoods. This article contributes evidence from multivariate analyses of survey data of Boston HOPE VI residents in their post-HOPE VI neighborhoods. Findings indicate that rather than neighborhood socioeconomic mix, neighborhood resources, such as libraries, recreation facilities, parks, grocery stores, and social services, followed by place attachment and feelings of safety,were the strongest predictors of social capital….”
December 16, 2009 at 3:33 pm | Posted in non-profits, race, social organization, youth | Leave a comment
Tags: youth
Around the country, African American males are still feeling empowered by President Obama’s election, believing that the Head of State affects change through legislation and by serving as a powerful role model.
But he may also be serving as an inspiration for renewed community engagement and connection through non-profit organizations.
Three of the nation’s largest black fraternities have formed a partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. The fraternities — Omega Psi Phi, Alpha Phi Alpha and Kappa Alpha Psi — recently held a summit in Atlanta, Georgia to decide how to recruit more black men as mentors.
The number of black men volunteering at Big Brothers Big Sisters has increased. About 800 more African-American men have become big brothers since Obama’s election, compared with the same time last year, a group spokeswoman says.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” David Miller, co-founder of the Urban Leadership Institute in Baltimore, Maryland said of the President’s impact on civic engagement among black men.
Black men cite President Obama’s choice not to use his struggles as excuses as inspiration do the same. A year later, his speech calling men to step up still echoes for many as they explore ways to reach the country’s youth. Existing community organizations serve as the conduit through which to get involved.
To read more on CNN about the connection between the increased in mentoring among Black men, President Obama, and developing partnerships between civic organizations, please click here.
June 5, 2009 at 12:12 am | Posted in amenities, immigrants, neighborhoods, new books, organizational density, social organization, what to read | Leave a comment
Min Zhou, a sociologist of immigration who has written on immigrant entrepreneurship and on schools as community institutions, has published a new book, Contemporary Chinese America. From the book description: Contemporary Chinese America is the most comprehensive sociological investigation of the experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States—and of their offspring—in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In this volume, [Zhou] collects her original research on a range of subjects, including the causes and consequences of emigration from China, demographic trends of Chinese Americans, patterns of residential mobility in the U.S., Chinese American “ethnoburbs,” immigrant entrepreneurship, ethnic enclave economies, gender and work, Chinese language media, Chinese schools, and intergenerational relations.
January 5, 2009 at 12:54 am | Posted in amenities, childcare centers, grocery stores, neighborhoods, news, non-profits, organizational density, organizational networks, poverty, social organization, what to read | Leave a comment
The latest issue of the journal City and Community (December 2008 ) features several articles that explore analytic assumptions, international perspectives, and new directions in the study of communities commonly referred to as ghettos. In one of the pieces, “Four Reasons to Abandon the Idea of ‘The Ghetto,’” Mario Small questions the common use of the concept “the ghetto” to theorize conditions in poor, predominantly black urban neighborhoods in the United States. He argues, among other things, that poor black neighborhoods differ dramatically from place to place in their organizational density, the number of banks, childcare centers, pharmacies, and other everyday organizations.
Papers in the symposium:
The Ghetto: Origins, History, Discourse (p 347-352)
Bruce Haynes, Ray Hutchison
Involuntary Segregation and the Ghetto: Disconnecting Process and Place (p 353-357)
Herbert J. Gans
A Century of Harlem in New York City: Some Notes on Migration, Consolidation, Segregation, and Recent Developments (p 358-365)
Andrew A. Beveridge
Barrio Geneology (p 366-371)
Diego Vigil
From the Outside Looking in: A “European” Perspective on the Ghetto (p 372-377)
Talja Blokland
Enclaves, Condominiums, and Favelas: Where Are the Ghettos in Brazil? (p 378-383)
Circe Monteiro
Reconsidering the “Ghetto”1 (p 384-388 )
Anmol Chaddha, William Julius Wilson
Four Reasons to Abandon the Idea of “The Ghetto” (p 389-398 )
Mario Luis Small
City and Community Volume 7, Number 4, December 2008
December 15, 2007 at 6:00 am | Posted in neighborhoods, new books, social capital, social organization, what to read | Leave a comment
Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City (University of Chicago Press). The poor neighborhoods of today’s American cities are home to tens of thousands of nonprofit community-based organizations, which work diligently on tight budgets to provide assistance to some of our most vulnerable citizens. Scholars and policymakers have touted the role of CBOs in fostering neighborhood networks of trust and collective action, building “social capital” to combat school drop-out, crime, and other negative dynamics often found in poor places. This book draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in eight CBOs in Brooklyn to open up a wider lens on the organizational life of poor neighborhoods, showing how CBOs are embedded in complex and contentious systems of economic and political action, the outcomes of which determine the limits of CBOs’ ability to bring opportunity to the poor residents of
their neighborhoods.
