Crime, Social Capital, and Community Participation

Social disorganization at the neighborhood and community levels has been consistently linked to various forms of criminal activity. However, a very much smaller body of literature addresses the effects of crime on community organizations. In some studies, crime appears to energize communities while in others, crime leads to withdrawal from community life. Using department of health crime victimization data and interviews with 2,985 low-income inner city residents living in 487 multi-family dwellings, a multi-level model examined the relationships among crime victimization, social organization, and participation in neighborhood organizations. Social organization at the individual and building levels was measured using recent formulations of social capital theory. Findings regarding crime suggested more signs of a chilling effect on participation than of an energizing effect, especially at the building level. Social capital at the building level was more strongly and consistently related to participation in community organizations than was crime.     

The Space of Argumentation: Urban Design, Civic Discourse, and the Dream of the Good City

In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit in three theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), and Peter Katz's The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1994). I then propose a set of settlement issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude by suggesting that the good city be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space; and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public discourse.     

Navigating Social Class Roles in Community Research

This paper describes the first author's attempt to collect data in a homeless shelter without attending to her role in the social class hierarchy of the organization. The author's egalitarian approach towards the homeless clients, and her lack of involvement in "staff-only" activities, transgress the social class norms within the organizational structure. While the author is successful in gaining the trust of the homeless clients, her approach alienates shelter staff, especially those in the higher echelons of the social hierarchy. The concepts of classism, world views, and Social Identity Theory, are utilized to discuss the dilemma faced by researchers who want to challenge, or work outside, a setting's status quo.     

外来工子女与父母养育方式关系的研究

摘要本研究以1128名四到六年级的外来工与城市居民子女作为被试,以儿童孤独感问卷(CLS)与父母教养方式评价量表(EMBU)为研究工具,对外来工与城市居民子女的社会孤独感与父母养育方式的关系进行研究。运用多因素方差分析与回归分析等统计方法对研究数据进行处理,结果表明:(1)儿童孤独感性别差异显著,男生的孤独感显著高于女生;(2)儿童孤独感年龄差异显著,随着年龄增长,孤独感强度呈现出显著的下降趋势;(3)外来工子女的孤独感显著高于城市居民子女的孤独感,父惩罚因子、父偏爱因子与母关心理解因子对儿童孤独感影响显著,能较好的预测儿童孤独感。     

公益组织课外辅导对流动儿童领悟社会支持的影响

通过对选自北京市打工子弟小学的159名流动儿童进行问卷调查,探讨公益组织的社会干预对流动儿童领悟社会支持能力及情绪情感的影响。结果表明:(1)在公益组织实施课外团体辅导后,干预组流动儿童领悟社会支持得分与积极情感得分均显著高于对照组流动儿童。(2)在消极情感得分上,干预组与对照组不存在显著差异。(3)领悟社会支持与积极情感存在显著正相关,与消极情感存在负相关。这表明,通过公益组织实施课外辅导方式进行的社会干预能够有效提高流动儿童的领悟社会支持水平。     

Recasting Stigma as a Dialogical Concept: A Case Study of Rural‐to‐Urban Migrants in China

The present study explores stigma against rural‐to‐urban migrants in China, drawing on a dialogical approach. It investigates the processes of stigmatization from two sides: that of the stigmatizer and that of the stigmatized. Open‐ended individual interviews were conducted with 138 participants (60 urban residents and 78 rural‐to‐urban migrants) in Tianjin, China. Findings from this study indicate that migrants were stigmatized by urban residents as having an unattractive physical appearance, potential perils of disease or crime, and discredited places of origin. Such stigma was embedded in China's unique hukou system and generated from a social categorization of superior and inferior groups. Migrants reported a number of coping strategies to counter such stigma: blaming fate, stigma reversal and upward mobility. However, migrants did not view themselves contemptuously and expressed positive feelings about their lives as migrants. They regarded internal migration as a way of pursuing happiness. Overall, urban residents stigmatized migrants legitimated by the hukou system, while migrants were surprisingly resilient against stigma, and did not internalize it, due to their economics‐driven internal migration. This study underscores that stigma in a given society is dialogically interdependent with its socio‐cultural context and that the perspectives of both the stigmatizer and the stigmatized need to be taken into consideration. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SCHOLARS,AMATEURS, AND ARTISTS AS PARTNERS FOR THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

We recommend that the future of religion and science involve more partnerships between scholars, amateurs, and artists. This reimagines an underdeveloped aspect of the history of religion and science. Case studies of an undergraduate course examining religious ritual and technology, seminarians reflecting on memory and identity in light of Alzheimer's disease, environmentalists responding to their guilt and shame about climate change, and Chicagoans recognizing the presence of nature in the city show how these partnerships respect insights and experiences of our varied partners, identify and resolve community problems, and advance scholarship. Sourdough starter, a new metaphor, describes these collaborative, nourishing partnerships.     

Adolescents’ perceptions of health and well-being: Influences of urban contemporary music

The study aimed to explore adolescents’ perceptions of how urban contemporary music influences health and well-being among them. Data on health and well-being effects of music consumption were gathered from a convenience sample of 16 participants (male = 50%, females = 50%) between the ages of 15 and 17 in a series of two focus group interviews. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings suggest the adolescents to perceive both positive and negative influences of contemporary music on their health and well-being. Positive influences included emotional well-being and sense of social belongingness. Negative influences included promotion of risky behaviours, including substance use, misogyny, sexual behaviour and violence. The findings suggest that urban contemporary music serves as a tool of normalisation as well as a catalyst for encouraging risky behaviour in adolescence.     

Urban American Indian Youth Spirituality and Religion: A Latent Class Analysis

This article explores the interconnected spiritual, religious, and cultural worlds of the majority of American Indian (AI) youth who live in urban areas: their patterns of involvement in religion and Native spirituality and associated well‐being. Latent class analysis of data from 205 AI middle school students identified five distinctive classes using survey measures of religious affiliation, attendance at services, adherence to Christian and traditional spiritual beliefs, Native spirituality, and Native cultural practices. Two classes were Christian groups: one attending Christian churches and following Christian beliefs but uninvolved with Native beliefs, spirituality, or cultural practices; and a nominal Christian group affiliated with but not attending church and unattached to belief systems. Two groups followed Native beliefs and spiritual practices, one affiliated with the Native American Church and another unaffiliated with any church. The fifth, nonreligious group, had no religious affiliation, followed neither Christian nor traditional beliefs, and was uninvolved in Native spirituality and cultural practices. The two groups embracing AI spirituality reported better academic performance, more reservation contact, higher AI enculturation, and stronger bicultural orientations.     

Pedagogy Beyond Piracy: Un‐Learning the White Body to Recreate a Body of Learning

This essay highlights a range of questions that arise when white suburban students engage urban neighborhoods of poverty and color in the United States. How can involvement in an “other” context move beyond “educational tourism”? The essay presents a pedagogical style that raises questions of the kind of socialized body one inhabits: either one shaped by presumptions of control and rights of academic observation, or one mobilized to risk involvement in a differently communalized episteme. And while the pedagogy described may not be replicable by faculty who do not share the author's background or cross‐cultural orientation, the rhetorical style of the essay itself enacts the tensions that this pedagogy contends with: the efforts of a white male educator – altered by decades of inner city involvement – to open “white” space in the classroom to other norms of embodiment and other modes of learning. Here is the necessity and impossibility of moving beyond “educational tourism.”