Avery M. Guest

Social Ties at the Neighborhood Level Two Decades of GSS Evidence

Using the General Social Survey, the authors analyze trends in socializing with neighbors and with friends outside the neighborhood from 1974 to 1996. Consistent with arguments about a declining attachment to neighborhood, results show a linear trend toward less socializing within the neighborhood and more outside it. In addition, the data suggest that people are increasingly specializing in either neighborhood or extra neighborhood social ties. However, the evidence for less neighborhood socializing is slight. Also, inconsistent with some claims about neighborhoods, only mild evidence suggests that socializing at the neighborhood level is becoming more selective of certain social groups.

Mobilizing local religious markets : Religious pluralism in the Empire State, 1855 to 1865

Recent theoretical developments propose that when the state deregulates religion pluralism and competition will emerge and overall levels of religious participation will be high. In this essay we return to nineteenth century America when a religious free market was first emerging to examine how pluralism generated higher levels of church attendance. We use data from the state census of 1865 to explore the religious situation in 942 towns and cities of New York State. Our results strongly support the pluralism thesis demonstrate demographic effects on church attendance and explain the conflicting findings of past research on the relationship between pluralism and religious participation. (authors)

The ecology of race and socioeconomic distress: infant and working-age mortality in Chicago

We examine the effects of education, unemployment, and racial segregation on age-, sex-, and race-specific mortality rates in racially defined Chicago community areas from 1989 to 1991. Community socioeconomic factors account for large observed areal variations in infant and working-age mortality, but especially working-age mortality for the black population. For black men, the mortality consequences of living in economically distressed communities are quite severe. Segregation effects on mortality are more modest and largely operate through neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, although some direct effects of segregation on mortality for blacks are apparent.

Neighborhood Context and Neighboring Ties

This article analyzes whether neighborhood context or environment in Seattle influences dimensions of social ties among neighbors, independent of the individual attributes of residents such as home ownership and socio‐economic status. Three dimensions of neighbor ties are examined: interaction, organizing collectively, and knowing about neighbors. A number of environmental attributes are considered, including the age of the housing, residential stability, levels of affluence, the presence of blacks and foreign born, the concentration of commercial areas (heterogeneous land use), and the degree of upkeep in the area. While many are correlated with neighbor ties, few have a strong relationship with neighbor ties when individual attributes are controlled statistically. We find, in addition, that the importance of context varies with the type of neighbor tie. We discuss the implications of these findings for formulating a contextual theory of neighborhood life.

Suburban Social Status: Persistence or Evolution?

This paperfocuses on changes in socioeconomic structure of U.S. suburbs between 1920, 1950, and 1970. Persistence in suburban socioeconomic structure has been important in both time periods, but particularly so in the post-World War II period. Moderate evidence of suburban status evolution is found in the period between World War I and 1950. In the earlier time period, evolution was explained by characteristics of both the metropolitan area and the individual community; in the most recent time period, it related primarily to characteristics of the individual community. In both time periods, evolution in suburban socioeconomic structure has been related most strongly to community population growth.

Urban growth and population densities

Differences in the distribution of population within and across metropolitan areas are seen as a product of the development of the metropolis during different transportation epochs. Age cohorts of census tracts in Cleveland, Ohio, may be split into three groups of development patterns based on the time of their early development: (1) before the development of the automobile, (2) during the early period of the auto’s diffusion to the population, and (3) during the period of the mass diffusion of the auto. Patterns of population concentration and congestion across metropolitan areas are heavily selective of places with large population growth before the development of the streetcar and the automobile. More recent population growth has had little effect on population congestion but has led to a deconcentrated metropolis.

The changing racial composition of suburbs: 1950-1970

Central city patterns of racial change frequently involve an invasion-succession process in which blacks replace whites in a community. In contrast, suburbs with significant black and white populations have frequently been growing in numbers of both races. This pattern is consistent with the general areal and population growth of the suburban community which has occurred since World War II. Within the suburban ring, com munities with growth of both blacks and whites differ significantly in housing and popu lation characteristics from the Invasion-Succession communities.

Community Lost or Transformed? Urbanization and Social Ties

Sociological theorists have generally emphasized the destructive effects of urbanization on social ties through the community lost perspective. A counterview, which we call the community transformed, has begun to emerge on the basis of other theorizing and empirical research. Yet the relationship of urbanization to social ties is still not well understood. In this article, we explore the total number of social ties, the number of kin and nonkin ties, the density or interconnection, and frequency of contact between ties among individuals residing within various U.S. settlement types. The results indicate that urbanization especially encourages the segmentation of social ties by discouraging density or interconnectedness. In addition, urbanization does have noteworthy effects in encouraging exclusively nonkin ties, which are presumably highly voluntaristic. Of the three definitions of urbanization that are tested, we find that metropolitanization is the most efficacious for understanding variations in social ties, especially exclusively nonkin ties.

Informal Social Ties and Political Activity in the Metropolis

This article focuses on the question of whether localized friendship patterns in the metropolis have much relationship with individual propensity to take action on localized political issues. Scholars of the classical Chicago School claim a close relationship between the two, whereas more contemporary theorists argue that social ties should have little relationship to political activity; rather, rational investments in community such as home ownerships and child rearing should be the clearly dominant correlates of political activity. Overall, our results do not strongly support either perspective. We suggest and find support for a balance perspective: specifically, that the probability of localized political activity is maximized when the individual has significant friendship ties with both the local and extra-local communities. The overall importance of balanced ties does not vary across types of communities, but we find evidence that highly localized friendships do have varying import in communities with strong, as opposed to weak, community organizational structures.

Heterogeneity and Harmony: Neighbouring Relationships among Whites in Ethnically Diverse Neighbourhoods in Seattle

Does ethnic heterogeneity in neighbourhoods create co-operative or conflict-oriented relationships among residents? Social theorists have long noted both the positive and negative aspects of heterogeneity, but the limited research on large samples of neighbourhoods documents ambiguous or weak effects. In this survey-based study of Seattle, it is found that ethnic heterogeneity is among the strongest community characteristics that negatively predict the degree to which Whites view neighbour relations as calm, trusting and helpful. In addition, it is found that Whites in heterogeneous neighbourhoods are somewhat less likely than other Whites to report that they would miss the neighbourhood if they moved away. However, the negative effects of heterogeneity should be interpreted cautiously. Residents of heterogeneous areas do not view their neighbour relationships as unacceptable on an absolute scale. Moreover, much of the tendency for Whites to have low sentimental ties in diverse neighbourhoods is found to be due to the relatively lower level of affluence and newer age of these areas.