From the Ground Up: Translating Geography into Community Through Neighbor Networks - Hardcover

Grannis, Rick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691140251 ISBN 13: 9780691140254

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Where do neighborhoods come from and why do certain resources and effects--such as social capital and collective efficacy--bundle together in some neighborhoods and not in others? From the Ground Up argues that neighborhood communities emerge from neighbor networks, and shows that these social relations are unique because of particular geographic qualities. Highlighting the linked importance of geography and children to the emergence of neighborhood communities, Rick Grannis models how neighboring progresses through four stages: when geography allows individuals to be conveniently available to one another; when they have passive contacts or unintentional encounters; when they actually initiate contact; and when they engage in activities indicating trust or shared norms and values.


Seamlessly integrating discussions of geography, household characteristics, and lifestyle, Grannis demonstrates that neighborhood communities exhibit dynamic processes throughout the different stages. He examines the households that relocate in order to choose their neighbors, the choices of interactions that develop, and the exchange of beliefs and influence that impact neighborhood communities over time. Grannis also introduces and explores two geographic concepts--t-communities and street islands--to capture the subtle features constraining residents' perceptions of their environment and community.


Basing findings on thousands of interviews conducted through door-to-door canvassing in the Los Angeles area as well as other neighborhood communities, From the Ground Up reveals the different ways neighborhoods function and why these differences matter.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rick Grannis is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"This engaging book usefully articulates the geographic constraints on the formation of neighboring relations and the centrality of child-related activities to neighboring. It presents data from innovative empirical research and will interest those working in community and urban studies."--Peter V. Marsden, Harvard University

"With insight, Grannis conceptualizes neighborhoods as a chain of networks that form along predictable geographic boundaries linking local residents to one another. The data collected is extraordinarily rich and unique."--George E. Tita, University of California, Irvine

Aus dem Klappentext

"This engaging book usefully articulates the geographic constraints on the formation of neighboring relations and the centrality of child-related activities to neighboring. It presents data from innovative empirical research and will interest those working in community and urban studies."--Peter V. Marsden, Harvard University

"With insight, Grannis conceptualizes neighborhoods as a chain of networks that form along predictable geographic boundaries linking local residents to one another. The data collected is extraordinarily rich and unique."--George E. Tita, University of California, Irvine

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

From the Ground Up

TRANSLATING GEOGRAPHY INTO COMMUNITY THROUGH NEIGHBOR NETWORKSBy Rick Grannis

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2009 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-14025-4

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables..............................................ixPrologue......................................................................xvChapter One Neighborhoods and Neighboring....................................1Chapter Two The Stages of Neighboring........................................17Chapter Three Reconceptualizing Stage 1 Neighboring..........................28Chapter Four Reconceptualizing Stage 1 Neighbor Networks.....................37Chapter Five Selection and Influence.........................................48Chapter Six Respondents, Interviews, and Other Data..........................59Chapter Seven Selecting Stage 1 Neighbors....................................73Chapter Eight Unintentional Encounters.......................................93Chapter Nine Stage 3 Neighbors and Tertiary Streets..........................109Chapter Ten The Importance of Neighbor Networks..............................129Chapter Eleven Network Influence Theory......................................148Chapter Twelve Influence Networks in a College Town..........................162Chapter Thirteen Influence Networks in a Gang Barrio.........................178Chapter Fourteen Implications................................................192Appendix Survey Instrument...................................................201Notes.........................................................................207References....................................................................219Index.........................................................................237

Chapter One

Neighborhoods and Neighboring

Geography and Community

Human behavior necessarily occurs within (or must transcend) physical space. Nowhere is this truer than in residential life. As real-estate agents and homeowners (especially those with children) often declare, where one makes one's home matters almost as much as what one does inside it. In the rapidly shrinking world of the twenty-first century, psychologists, economists, political scientists, and sociologists still acknowledge the importance of the neighborhood context.

Not all neighborhoods are alike, however. Some neighborhoods are characterized by high levels of effective community. They offer social capital to their residents, a social organization that facilitates and coordinates cooperative action for mutual benefit, which allows them to deal with daily life, seize opportunities, reduce uncertainties, and achieve ends that would not otherwise be possible. This social organization is a resource that is not individually attainable because social capital is not a characteristic of individuals; it is a supraindividual property of social structure, and it seems to be particularly well grounded in neighborhood communities. Sources of social capital tied to the neighborhood community are analytically distinct from, and are as consequential as, the more proximate family processes and relationships occurring in the home. Some neighborhoods develop a further layer of mutual trust and shared norms, values, and expectations, beyond the resource potential of neighbor networks, which allows them to use these networks to achieve desired outcomes. Collective efficacy occurs when members of a collectivity, with social capital resources, believe they are mutually able and willing to use them to achieve an intended outcome. The distinction is a subtle, but important, one. A neighborhood may have social capital resources available for its constituent residents to use, but they may not trust the willingness or ability of their fellow residents to use these resource networks for the collective good, or they may not even be certain that they agree on what the collective good is.

From a less positive perspective, neighborhoods show remarkable continuities in patterns of criminal activity. For decades, criminological research in the ecological tradition has confirmed the concentration of interpersonal violence in certain neighborhoods, especially those characterized by poverty, the racial segregation of minority groups, and the concentration of single-parent families. Even in neighborhoods with less socioeconomic or racial isolation, crime rates persist despite the demographic replacement of neighborhood populations. In addition, neighborhoods not only determine one's exposure to crime and violence, but also a host of less tangible deleterious factors that contribute to the development of an urban underclass, signs of social disorder that lead residents to perceive their neighbors as threats rather than as sources of support or assistance.

Researchers have taken a growing interest in the role of neighborhoods in shaping outcomes for children, families, and neighborhood residents in general. These "effects" have included phenomena ranging from child and adolescent development (e.g., abuse and maltreatment, school completion and achievement, drug use, deviant peer affiliation, delinquency and gangs, adolescent sexual activity and pregnancy, childbearing and parenting behaviors, etc.) to concentrated disadvantage and its many corollaries (restricted economic attainment and labor market failure, crime and violence, physical disorder, the perpetuation of racism, to name just a few). The conclusion reached by all of these studies is that neighborhoods influence our behavior, attitudes, and values. They shape the types of people we will become and expose us to or shield us from early hazards that might restrict the opportunities available to us later in life. After our homes, and in conjunction with them, neighborhoods are where we first learn whether the world is safe and cooperative or inchoate and menacing. The neighborhood one lives in matters.

Neighborhoods matter, but different neighborhoods matter in different ways. Different neighborhoods have different effects, of different magnitudes. Some neighborhoods have almost no effect. For the researcher, neighborhoods cluster outcomes that cannot be accounted for in terms of the characteristics of the individuals or households currently residing in them. It is as if neighborhoods have personalities, enduring characteristics that survive the replacement of their constituent residents. These neighborhood effects, however, necessarily involve a geographic context. Thus, to analyze and understand them, neighborhoods necessarily require a geographic equivalent.

Researchers have used a wide variety of such equivalents. In fact, "urban social scientists have treated 'neighborhood' in much the same way as courts of law have treated pornography: a term that is hard to define precisely, but everyone knows it when they see it."

Apparently, however, researchers often don't know it when they see it. Miller's (1999) survey suggests that the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) exists primarily because analysts decide beforehand on the spatial units they will use when they study a phenomenon. Having done so, they reach conclusions about the phenomenon that are hopelessly prejudiced by their choice of spatial unit.

While many statistical techniques and error-modeling approaches have been used to counteract, reduce, or remove the effects of MAUP, Miller argues that the ultimate solution has to involve a behaviorally oriented definition of neighborhood for use in the practical measurement of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691140251
• ISBN 13: 9780691140254
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 242
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland