Edward L. Kick

The Construction Of The Local And The Limits Of Contemporary Community Building In The United States

With new relationships between state and civil society, community building has arisen as a preferred mechanism to ameliorate urban poverty. Community building is a much-supported but undercriticized paradigm, especially with respect to questions about the benefits that impoverished neighborhood residents actually acquire from these initiatives. The authors examine community building as a process that is related to larger agendas meant to enact certain productions of urban space and challenge many taken-for-granted notions about the realized benefits of this form of antipoverty work. Moreover, they argue that community-building initiatives occur in an increasingly globalized context, providing opportunities for stakeholders other than residents to promote certain productions of space and place. A case study is presented of an initiative occurring in a southern city in the United States to highlight the theoretical framework presented.

World-System Structure and Change An Analysis of Global Networks and Economic Growth across Two Time Periods

The authors establish in an empirical way structure and change in world-system structure in two periods, 1960 to 1965 and 1970 to 1975, as that structure is operationalized by key international networks. The interplay between global and national domains of analyses is examined with respect to the national-level consequences of strong, weak, and intermediate ties for the noncore countries of the world. When taken together, the dynamics studied permit an examination of the central themes of world-system theory and network approaches in general, while identifying future agendas for sociological theorizing and research.

The Interpretive Repertoires of Whites on Race-Targeted Policies: Claims Making of Reverse Discrimination

Drawing on the accounts of white men and women, we examine the role that discourse plays in the formation and reinforcement of ideals that perpetuate social disadvantaging. In addition, using discourse analysis we examine the redefinition of race-targeting policies from being a social remedy into being a current social problem. We collected interview and questionnaire data from a sample of 310 students and faculty at a predominantly white university, regarding their attitude toward race- and income-targeted social policies in the United States. We find that the majority of respondents who oppose race-targeting policies (1) frame racial discrimination as a problem of the past; (2) define race-targeting as a subversion of meritocracy; and therefore, (3) devalue programs that seek to provide differential opportunity to those groups that have been structurally disadvantaged in American society. We conclude that the “American stratification ethos” can be employed for disadvantaging purposes.

World System, Anthropogenic, and Ecological Threats to Bird and Mammal Species: A Structural Equation Analysis of Biodiversity Loss

Biodiversity is essential for human well-being, the functioning of ecosystems, and the sustained flow of benefits from ecosystems to individuals and societies. An important component of biodiversity is “species richness,” the number of species in an ecological unit. Loss of species richness contributes to worsening health, lower food security, and the increasing vulnerability of human and animal populations. This article examines the effects of relevant global, anthropogenic (human caused), and ecological factors on nations’ relative shares of the global total of threatened bird and mammal species for 139 countries. Using structural equation models, the authors tested hypothesized predictions from human ecology, ecological modernization, and global political-economic approaches. The findings indicate that the structure of the global system directly affects local anthropogenic factors (modernization, population), which, in concert with ecological characteristics, are direct and indirect predictors of the loss of species. This research emphasizes the importance of informed sociological analyses that account for both the direct and indirect effects of global forces and the conjoint importance of anthropogenic and ecological processes that contribute to a key form of environmental degradation.

Performance Management, Managerial Citizenship and Worker Commitment: A Study of the United States Postal Service with Some Global Implications

This exploratory study of the US Postal Service examines worker perceptions of ‘management citizenship’ in a high performance workplace, and assesses the impact of management citizenship on worker commitment. Qualitative data from employee narratives show many workers view performance management practices as unjust and at a disjuncture with perceived organizational and broader societal goals. Especially salient are issues of worker voice, equity and the non-universalistic treatment of employees by managers. Worker perceptions vary across race and gender. Effects of such perceptions on the organizational commitment of workers have been insuf.ciently studied, but regression analyses show that net of other predictors, worker perceptions of management citizenship are consequential to organizational commitment, as are the intersection of their gender and race for black women, and worker views of workplace heterogeneity, colleague citizenship and personal citizenship in the organization. The implications of these .ndings are drawn out generally and globally, with a focus on ameliorative management citizenship strategies.

Understanding Community Building in Urban America

Abstract Neighborhood-based community building has been positioned as an effective strategy for combating urban poverty in America. This paper considers three predominant models of community building in America, and focuses particularly on a contemporary derivative of these–community-building initiatives that claim to address the circumstances of urban poverty through people- and place-based neighborhood revitalization. The empirical evidence shows that the impacts of community building on poverty often are left undocumented. Community-building initiatives can increase neighborhood organization, connect neighborhood actors with existing political-economic structures at the city level, enhance neighborhood-level infrastructural development, increase community surveillance of crime and provide new homeownership opportunities. Yet tensions appear to exist around economic, political and land-use issues, in part due to “consensus-based” planning that actually limits residential involvement in a variety of ways. Further, when taken as a whole, community-building initiatives in some respects serve the already advantaged, instead of being a new agenda for political-economic changes that aid the urban poor.

Neighborhood Revitalization and the Practice of Evaluation in the United States: Developing a Margin Research Perspective

The dominant framework of neighborhood revitalization in the United States that emerged in the 1990s is the comprehensive community‐building approach based on a “theory of change” model. This framework posits that to improve neighborhoods and the quality of life of residents, programmatic efforts are needed that are “resident‐driven” and holistic in their focus. While these types of initiatives flourish, neighborhood revitalization often results in the displacement of low‐income families and marginal return for existing residents. Why this occurs in the context of initiatives purporting to aid existing residents is underexamined in the evaluation literature. We argue that researchers engaged in documentation and evaluation of revitalization initiatives need a broader framework to examine heretofore marginalized issues. We use a “margin research” methodology to demonstrate how this alternative form provides a more expansive representation of revitalization activities and outcomes.

Governing urban restructuring with city-building nonprofits

Urban restructuring efforts aimed at redeveloping inner-city neighborhoods are common across the US. They typically involve coalitions of public and private actors that play complementary roles in promoting investments in locales that have been sites of disinvestment, rendering these geographies ripe for economic development and profitmaking (ie, gentrification). Nonprofits are not generally regarded as central players in these initiatives, although they often serve community-development functions for low-income populations living in impoverished city spaces. In this paper we draw on the concept of the shadow state and Foucaults theory of governmentality to examine a city-building nonprofit created by a public–private growth coalition to execute the redevelopment of urban space and, as an integral part, manage neighborhood resident participation in these efforts. As residents began to see themselves as agents of neighborhood change, they came into conflict with the revitalization objectives of the nonprofits funders. And, while many residents actively challenged the direction that the neighborhood initiative took in focusing on housing redevelopment for more affluent populations, a core group maintained their commitment to a community building approach toward neighborhood redevelopment. Between 1998 and 2014, during CICs initiative, over half of the original residents were displaced or left as neighborhood housing values dramatically increased, rendering the area inaccessible for low-income populations.

Family and economic growth : A world-system approach and a cross-national analysis

Family research in sociology has concentrated on the national-level determinants of family structure and process. The approach we propose, in contrast, reverses the causal ordering to consider the effects of family characteristics on national outcomes, especially economic growth. This effort is further stimulated by neglect in the sociology of national development literature, where the plausible impact of the family on economic development has been ignored. The modified world-system perspective that we present links the institution of the family to modernization and the developmental profile of nations. We use cross-national data to test this perspective and demonstrate that the family is a vital, but differential contributor to national development around the world.

Global Context, National Interdependencies, and the Ecological Footprint: A Structural Equation Analysis

This paper develops a theoretical integration and estimates an associated structural equation model of the ecological footprints of nations. The ecological footprint is an approximation of environmental pressure on natural resources that stems from production, consumption, and the resultant disposal of waste. We use structural equation modeling techniques to test an integrative perspective based on direct and indirect effects, taken from human ecology, ecological economics, modernization, and political economy approaches, as well as from the natural sciences. We find evidence for the conjuncture of many of the theories investigated and for contextualizing the footprint in a global network of causes. The model raises questions about conclusions reached in prior analyses based on direct effects only. The significant roles played by natural and economic forces suggest a need to attend to multidisciplinary dynamics. With the exception of “weak sustainability,” the indirect and direct impacts suggest ever-escalating levels of the footprints of nations.