Douglas Hartmann

American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto

In a typically thoughtful commentary on Loic Wacquant’s stirring (1997) attack on academic treatments of the American ghetto, Sharon Zukin (1998) wonders what has actually changed inside and outside the ghetto since the 1960s, and argues that ‘a more rigorous social science is needed ... to trace the historical failures of communal and public institutions, deal with metatheoretical issues of space and time, and analyze contemporary cultures of materialism and violence’ (p. 514). Sudhir Venkatesh’s remarkable and important American Project is exactly the sort of work that Zukin and no doubt many others were waiting for. Since the 1960s, there have been numerous, lengthy accounts of public housing in the US, both academic and journalistic; countless articles debating the existence and dubious terminology of an African-American ‘underclass’, and vast amounts of time and ink devoted to issues of urban segregation, ‘concentrated poverty’, violent crime and the drug economy, welfare retrenchment, gang formation and tactics, the spatial mismatch of housing and employment, and so on. This book is the most readable, balanced and sensitive piece of scholarship I have come across in this vast literature; a landmark study based on several years of meticulous research that I hope will prove instructive and valuable to scholars and students of housing, of sociology, of ethnography, of geography and of the changing American inner city. American Project is about the birth, life and impending death of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago’s South Side, the largest and perhaps most notorious housing project in the United States. There is a common misconception among urban scholars and their students that all housing projects in American cities have discriminatory origins, but Venkatesh reminds us that the Robert Taylor Homes were a massive Le Corbusian experiment in social reform with admirable intentions. Built ‘to provide Chicago’s overcrowded black population with decent, affordable housing’ (p. 15), a stepping-stone to permanent detachment from poverty and slum malaise, 28 identical 16-storey ‘towers in the park’ housed over 27 000 people when they were completed in the early 1960s, and were opened amidst a fanfare of progress and celebration of American ideals. The author carefully documents the history of the housing development’s fall from grace; it is astonishing how quickly optimism eroded, how hope was displaced by despair, how promise evaporated as neglect set in. The explanation for what went wrong is a familiar one to scholars of public housing and ghetto formation in American cities: decades of municipal negligence; mismanagement by the Chicago Housing Authority (woefully left to their own meagre devices by successive federal governments, particularly the Reagan administration’s ‘New

Diversity in everyday discourse: The cultural ambiguities and consequences of "happy talk"

Few words in the current American lexicon are as ubiquitous and ostensibly uplifting as diversity. The actual meanings and functions of the term, however, are difficult to pinpoint. In this article we use in-depth interviews conducted in four major metropolitan areas to explore popular conceptions of diversity. Although most Americans respond positively at first, our interviews reveal that their actual understandings are undeveloped and often contradictory. We highlight tensions between idealized conceptions and complicated realities of difference in social life, as well as the challenge of balancing group-based commitments against traditional individualist values. Respondents, we find, define diversity in abstract, universal terms even though most of their concrete references and experiences involve interactions with racial others. Even the most articulate and politically engaged respondents find it difficult to talk about inequality in the context of a conversation focused on diversity. Informed by critical theory, we situate these findings in the context of unseen privileges and normative presumptions of whiteness in mainstream U.S. culture. We use these findings and interpretations to elaborate on theories of the intersection of racism and colorblindness in the new millennium.

Sport and Development: An Overview, Critique, and Reconstruction

“Development” has become both a watchword and a fascination in sporting circles worldwide. Yet sport officials, policy makers, and advocates often have relatively unsophisticated understandings of development and the role of sport therein. This can result in programs and initiatives that are unfocused, ineffective, or even counterproductive. Drawing on critical theory and informed by our own research on sport-based social programs, the authors attempt to impart clarity by distinguishing two different approaches to sport and development: a dominant vision, in which sport essentially reproduces established social relations, and an interventionist approach, in which sport is intended to contribute to more fundamental change and transformation. The authors develop a critique of the former and elaborate on the latter, focusing on normative visions of the social status quo and the role of sport as an educational tool for otherwise disempowered, marginalized young people. The overarching objective is to show that practitioners interested in using sport for development however defined must recognize these theoretical issues and create appropriate programming if their intended outcomes are to be achieved.

Dealing with Diversity: Mapping Multiculturalism in Sociological Terms

Since the 1960s, a variety of new ways of addressing the challenges of diversity in American society have coalesced around the term “multiculturalism.” In this article, we impose some clarity on the theoretical debates that surround divergent visions of difference. Rethinking multiculturalism from a sociological point of view, we propose a model that distinguishes between the social (associational) and cultural (moral) bases for social cohesion in the context of diversity. The framework allows us to identify three distinct types of multiculturalism and situate them in relation to assimilationism, the traditional American response to difference. We discuss the sociological parameters and characteristics of each of these forms, attending to the strength of social boundaries as well as to the source of social ties. We then use our model to clarify a number of conceptual tensions in the existing scholarly literature and offer some observations about the politics of recognition and redistribution, and the recent revival of assimilationist thought.

Theorizing Sport as Social Intervention: A View From the Grassroots

Sport and recreation-based approaches to the social problems of “at-risk” urban youth have become very popular in recent years. Yet the lack of a proper theoretical understanding of these initiatives threatens to minimize their effectiveness and could generate a backlash against them. To begin to fill this void, this paper presents a case study—based upon several years of intensive fieldwork—of a Chicago teacher, coach, and grassroots activist and the community-based sports-oriented organization he heads. An examination of this sustained, grassroots attempt to use sport to keep urban youth in and interested in school and education is used to sketch the outlines of a deeper, more multifaceted theory of the possibilities and challenges of using sport as a mode of social outreach and intervention.

Notes on Midnight Basketball and the Cultural Politics of Recreation, Race, and At-Risk Urban Youth

A decade ago, dozens of American cities began to organize late-night basketball leagues for young men in mostly minority, inner-city neighborhoods. These so-called midnight basketball leagues initially enjoyed widespread public support; however, in the mid-1990s, they became the focus of intense controversy and debate. This article offers a grounded, critical overview. Midnight basketball is first described as part of the “social problems industry” that emerged in public recreation provision in the 1990s. The author then suggests that these programs are best understood in the context of contemporary political discourse and public policy regarding at-risk urban youth, and crime, delinquency, and public safety more generally. Midnight basketball’s racial roots and contours become central with respect both to the ideological consensus underlying contemporary American conceptions of crime and risk as well as the multiple and competing visions of cause and intervention. The article concludes by noting the starkly different perceptions of program participants themselves.

Rethinking sports-based community crime prevention: a preliminary analysis of the relationship between midnight basketball and urban crime rates.

The authors conducted a preliminary empirical test of the claim—dismissed by most scholars—that midnight basketball programs lower city-level crime rates. Results show cities that were early adopters of officially sanctioned midnight basketball leagues experienced sharper decreases in property crime rates than other American cities during a period in which there was broad support for midnight basketball programs. Although likely associated with a variety of confounding factors, these rather-surprising results suggest the need to reevaluate the deterrent effects of popular sports- and recreation-based prevention programs with a new emphasis on more diffuse, indirect mechanisms such as positive publicity and community trust. Further substantiation and refinement of these ideas could significantly reshape how these popular and wellestablished initiatives are implemented and evaluated.

Reassessing the Relationship Between High School Sports Participation and Deviance: Evidence of Enduring, Bifurcated Effects

Despite its long-standing popular appeal, the idea that athletic activity is a deterrent to crime and delinquency suffers from a distinct lack of empirical support. This article tests the hypothesis that the relationship between high school sports participation and deviance varies by both type of deviant behavior and level of athletic involvement. The analysis is based upon longitudinal data focusing on the effects of involvement in high school sports, the countrys largest institutional setting for youth sports participation, in early adulthood. We find that the relationship between athletic involvement and deviance varies significantly depending upon the deviant behaviors examined. Specifically, we find that shoplifting decreases with sports participation, while drunken driving increases. Moreover, these effects extend further into the life course (age 30) than has been demonstrated in any previous study and hold across all our measures of sports participation. Several potential explanatory mechanisms are evaluated. The implications of these enduring, bifurcated effects are discussed.

Rush Limbaugh, Donovan McNabb, and “A Little Social Concern” Reflections on the Problems of Whiteness in Contemporary American Sport

This article offers an interpretative case study of the controversy that surrounded Rush Limbaugh’s comments about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb near the beginning of the 2003 National Football League season. Informed by critical race theory, the analysis argues that Limbaugh’s remarks were a textbook example of how the rhetoric of Whiteness operates to assert the cultural normativity of the dominant group and legitimate its privilege. That sport leaders and commentators roundly rejected Limbaugh’s comments and pushed for his removal gives the impression that the sporting establishment was unusually progressive and enlightened on these issues. However, closer reading and basic content analysis suggests that the ideas mobilized to put Limbaugh in his place—specifically those involving the supposed sanctity and colorblindness of sport—were in many ways complicit with Limbaugh’s own White supremacy. Consideration of the market forces that allowed Limbaugh’s hiring implicates sport even further. Lessons for Whiteness theory, White supremacy, and the relationships between them are discussed.

The New Adulthood? The Transition to Adulthood from the Perspective of Transitioning Young Adults

Abstract The discovery that the transition to adulthood is increasingly complicated and extended has prompted many social scientists to see it as a distinct phase in the life course. But while scholars have learned a great deal about the objective dimensions of this new “young” or “emerging” adulthood, we know very little about how it is understood and experienced by young people themselves. This paper begins to fill that gap, drawing on a new battery of intensive interviews with selected participants in the University of Minnesotas Youth Development Study (YDS). Focusing on respondents’ subjective conceptions of adulthood, understandings of conventional milestones, and visions of aging and success, we suggest that young people today see themselves entering a new phase of life – a dynamic, constantly unfolding package of social roles and personal qualities. This “new adulthood” is seen as an alternative to and improvement on the static, stoic, and stagnant adulthood of their parents’ generation, although whether it is seen as a new and distinct phase in the life course remains open to question. These findings not only capture the expressed understandings of adulthood emerging among those in their late twenties, but also allow us to reflect on recent economic and cultural transformations in the postindustrial United States.