Mario Luis Small

Reconsidering Culture and Poverty

Culture is back on the poverty research agenda. Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty and even explicitly explaining the behavior of the low-income population in reference to cultural factors. An example is Prudence Carter (2005), who, based on interviews with poor minority students, argues that whether poor children will work hard at school depends in part on their cultural beliefs about the differences between minorities and the majority. Annette Lareau (2003), after studying poor, working-class, and middleclass families, argues that poor children may do worse over their lifetimes in part because their parents are more committed to “natural growth” than “concerted cultivation” as their cultural model for child rearing. Mario Small (2004), based on fieldwork in a Boston housing complex, argues that poor people may be reluctant to participate in beneficial community activities in part because of how they culturally perceive their neighborhoods. David Harding (2007, 2010), using survey and qualitative interview data on adolescents, argues that the sexual behavior of poor teenagers depends in part on the extent of cultural heterogeneity in their neighborhoods. Economists George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton (2002), relying on the work of other scholars, argue that whether students invest in schooling depends in part on their cultural identity, wherein payoffs will differ among “jocks,” “nerds,” and “burnouts.” And William Julius Wilson, in his latest book (2009a), argues that culture helps explain how poor African Americans respond to the structural conditions they experience.

Ethnographic Evidence, Heterogeneity, and Neighbourhood Effects After Moving to Opportunity

Neighbourhood effects research is at a crossroads. After decades of qualitative and quantitative empirical studies aiming to determine how much neighbourhoods affect life chances, we seem nowhere near a coherent answer. This chapter identifies three concerns from the literature. Firstly, most quantitative empirical studies into neighbourhood effects most likely suffer from selection bias. Secondly, an entire generation of researchers concerned themselves asking if neighbourhoods matter and by how much, rather than asking under what circumstances do they matter? Thirdly, there is lack of clarity concerning how much progress has been made determining which mechanisms behind neighbourhood effects matter the most. This chapter draws lessons from the current literature and by using a case study from Chicago. It is suggested that future research should expect and explain heterogeneity and needs to move away from investigating average neighbourhood effects. It is also emphasised that future work should better integrate ethnographic research into the quantitative empirical research program. Ethnographic research has the capacity to help explain the often contradictory results of previous neighbourhood effect studies, and to generate hypotheses for future studies.

Weak ties and the core discussion network: Why people regularly discuss important matters with unimportant alters

Abstract Researchers have paid increasing attention to the core discussion network, the set of friends and family people turn to when discussing important matters. For nearly thirty years, social network researchers have argued that the network is composed of egos closest or most important alters. This assumption, however, has not been tested empirically. Using original data on an online representative quota survey of 2000 respondents, I find that 45% of the core discussion network is composed of people whom respondents do not consider important to them. In fact, the core discussion network includes doctors, co-workers, spiritual leaders, and other alters whom ego confides in without feeling emotionally attached to. I examine what respondents consider important matters and why they approach weak ties to discuss these. Placing emphasis on the process through which ego mobilizes alters, I develop two theoretical perspectives, which focus on how people identify those appropriate to a topic and how they respond to opportunities in interactional contexts. Findings suggest that ego discusses important matters with non-close alters at times because they are known to be knowledgeable (targeted mobilization) and at times because they are available when important issues arise (opportune mobilization). Results suggest that recent findings about changes in the core discussion network of Americans are consistent with several different possibilities about the nature of strong ties, including those in which there has been no change at all.

Reconsidering the Urban Disadvantaged The Role of Systems, Institutions, and Organizations

The recent economic recession and a sluggish recovery have made conditions especially precarious for the most disadvantaged members of the urban poor population—those with criminal records, health conditions, undocumented status, or unstable housing. We argue that the fewer the resources to which people have access, the more their circumstances will depend on the organizations in which they participate, the systems in which these organizations operate, and the institutions governing the behavior of both. We call for a renewed focus on systems, institutions, and organizations among researchers who study urban disadvantage, and review a series of studies that show the promise of these perspectives.

Is there such a thing as ‘the ghetto’?

ne of the first things you notice when ascending from the A train subway stop at 125th Street in Harlem, where I lived while conducting 5 years of research in New York City, is the density. It is a density of both people and organizations, as just about every lot on either side of the street is occupied by a clothing store, bank, pharmacy, grocery store, electronics outfit, beauty salon or restaurant (such as the legendary Manna’s), and every conceivable space on either sidewalk is filled with old and young, mostly African American men, women and children struggling to get past the crowds (see Newman, 1999).1 It was a marked contrast to many wealthier neighborhoods in the city, where the streets were often desolate and all but a few specialty establishments were difficult to locate. In many ways, Harlem reminded me of Villa Victoria, a predominantly Puerto Rican housing complex in Boston I had studied for 2 years, where the parks and plazas of the neighborhood were often packed with people, and where residents could find, within and around their complex, restaurants, childcare centers, grocery stores, pharmacies, clinics, schools, churches, parks and playgrounds (Small, 2004, ch. 6). I thought of both neighborhoods when, soon after recently moving to Chicago, I spent hours walking block upon block of its South Side neighborhood, including 63rd Street, the area a few blocks south of the University of Chicago where Loïc Wacquant conducted much of the research for Urban Outcasts (UO). What I first noticed, and what took me months to get used to, was the utter lack of density, the surprising preponderance of empty spaces, vacant lots and desolate streets, even as late as 2006. Repeatedly, I asked myself, where is everyone? The contrasts among these three poor urban neighborhoods are instructive, providing a hint as to the notable strengths and important limitations of UO. As an ethnographic study of black poor Chicago, especially as contrasted to the French banlieues, the book is an admirable and successful mix of ethnographic research and original survey analysis, one that rang true to me when witnessing the neighborhood many years after the author had conducted his research. As a theory of ‘the ghetto’ in the American city, the book, I suggest, is onto important themes but requires considerable refinement and revaluation.

Participation in Context: Neighborhood Diversity and Organizational Involvement in Boston

We use unique data from the Boston Non–Profit Organizations Study, an innovative survey containing rich information on organizational participation across seven social domains in two Boston neighborhoods, to examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and participation in local organizations. In particular, we identify neighborhood–based social ties as a key mechanism mediating the initial negative association between diversity and participation. In contrast to previous work, we measure participation using both the domain–based and group–based approach, with the former approach uncovering a wider range of organizational connections that are often missed in the latter approach. We also investigate the relationship between interpersonal ties and organizational ties, documenting how primary involvement with an organization facilitates the development of further interpersonal ties and secondary forms of organizational involvement. We then discuss implications of our findings for urban poverty research. Participación en Contexto: Diversidad Barrial e Involucramiento Organizacional en Boston (Van C. Tran, Corina Graif, Alison D. Jones, Mario L. Small y Christopher Winship) Resumen Usamos información única del Estudio sobre Organizaciones Sin Fines de Lucro en Boston, una encuesta innovadora que contiene información rica sobre participación en organizaciones en siete dominios sociales en dos barrios de Boston, para examinar la relación entre diversidad étnica y participación en organizaciones locales. En particular, identificamos lazos sociales a nivel barrio como un mecanismo clave que media en la asociación negativa entre diversidad y participación. En contraste con trabajos previos, medimos participación usando la aproximación a nivel dominio y a nivel grupo, siendo la primera aproximación la que descubre un gran rango de conexiones organizacionales que muchas veces son desapercibidas por la segunda aproximación. También investigamos la relación entre lazos interpersonales y lazos organizacionales, y mostramos cómo un involucramiento primordial con una organización facilita el desarrollo de vínculos interpersonales posteriores y formas secundarias de involucramiento organizacional. Luego discutimos las implicancias de nuestros resultados para la investigación sobre pobreza urbana.

De-Exoticizing Ghetto Poverty: On the Ethics of Representation in Urban Ethnography

To write an ethnography about poor urban people is to risk courting controversy. While all ethnographers face questions about how well they knew their site or how much their stories can be trusted, the tone and content of those questions typically remain within the bounds of collegial discourse. Ethnographers of poor minorities have incited distinct passion and at times acrimony, inspiring accusations of stereotyping, misrepresentation, sensationalism, and even cashing in on the problems of the poor (Fischer 2014; see Boelen 1992, Reed 1994; Wacquant 2002, Jones 2010, Betts 2014, Rios 2015).

Because they were there: Access, deliberation, and the mobilization of networks for support

Abstract When people need help, what is the process through which they decide whom in their network to turn to? Research on social support has described a process that is deliberative in nature: people determine their needs, assess who in their network has the needed attributes—such as skill, trustworthiness, intimacy, and accessibility—and then activate that tie. Nevertheless, research in behavioral economics and other fields has shown that people make many decisions not deliberatively but intuitively. We examine this possibility in the context of social support by focusing on one factor: accessibility. Although researchers have argued that people weigh the accessibility of potential helpers as they do any other attribute, accessibility may be not only an attribute of the helper but also a condition of the situation. We develop a framework to make this question tractable for survey research and evaluate competing hypotheses using original data on an analytically strategic sample of ∼2000 college students, probing concrete instances of social support. We identify and document not one but three decision processes, reflective, incidental, and spontaneous activation, which differ in the extent to which actors had deliberated on whether to seek help and on whom to approach before activating the tie. We find that while the process was reflective (consistent with existing theory) when skill or trustworthiness played a role, it was significantly less so (consistent with the alternative) when accessibility did. Findings suggest that actors decide whom in their network to mobilize through at least three systematically different processes, two of which are consistent less with either active “mobilization” or explicit “help seeking” than with responsiveness to opportunity and context.

Causal thinking and ethnographic research

In the history of modern sociology, no generation has failed to worry about how to conceptualize cause and effect. While different eras have adopted different languages, both theorists and methodologists have repeatedly argued about what can be said and how it should be said, often replaying debates of past eras. Nevertheless, the past two decades have seen a preponderance of activity that, while speaking to long-standing issues, can be said to have substantially refined our thinking about the relationship between cause and effect. At least three separate perspectives—each with a particular orientation, core assumptions, and understanding of objectives—have become particularly salient. One perspective is the counterfactual model of causality, which is typically employed by quantitative sociologists in the analysis of large-sample, observational data. Developed by statisticians and econometricians to understand when a cause can be said convincingly to have produced an effect, the counterfactual, or potential outcomes, model conceives of causes as treatments; it seeks to compare what happens to an individual ðor organization, group, or other entityÞ experiencing the treatment to what would have happened had the person not experienced the treatment. Since no one can both experience and not experience a treatment at the same time, the purpose of analysis is to estimate treatment effects on average for populations ðsee Rubin 1974; Heckman 2005; Pearl 2009Þ. A recent review of the methodological literature on this topic by Morgan and Winship ð2007Þ has become a handbook for many quantitative sociologists worried about making proper causal inferences. A core assumption of the counterfactual perspective is that sociologists should focus on understanding the effects of a given cause ðe.g., what are the effects of recessions?Þ rather than the causes of a given effect ðe.g., what causes revolutions to occur?Þ, since questions of the latter sort are difficult to answer convincingly. Gelman ð2011Þ recently referred to this distinction

Urban mobility and neighborhood isolation in America’s 50 largest cities

Significance Living in disadvantaged neighborhoods is widely assumed to undermine life chances because residents are isolated from neighborhoods with greater resources. Yet, residential isolation may be mitigated by individuals spending much of their everyday lives outside their home neighborhoods, a possibility that has been difficult to assess on a large scale. Using new methods to analyze urban mobility in the 50 largest American cities, we find that residents of primarily black and Hispanic neighborhoods—whether poor or not—are far less exposed to either nonpoor or white middle-class neighborhoods than residents of primarily white neighborhoods. Although residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods regularly travel as far and to as many different neighborhoods as those from advantaged neighborhoods, their relative isolation and segregation persist. Influential research on the negative effects of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood assumes that its residents are socially isolated from nonpoor or “mainstream” neighborhoods, but the extent and nature of such isolation remain in question. We develop a test of neighborhood isolation that improves on static measures derived from commonly used census reports by leveraging fine-grained dynamic data on the everyday movement of residents in America’s 50 largest cities. We analyze 650 million geocoded Twitter messages to estimate the home locations and travel patterns of almost 400,000 residents over 18 mo. We find surprisingly high consistency across neighborhoods of different race and income characteristics in the average travel distance (radius) and number of neighborhoods traveled to (spread) in the metropolitan region; however, we uncover notable differences in the composition of the neighborhoods visited. Residents of primarily black and Hispanic neighborhoods—whether poor or not—are far less exposed to either nonpoor or white middle-class neighborhoods than residents of primarily white neighborhoods. These large racial differences are notable given recent declines in segregation and the increasing diversity of American cities. We also find that white poor neighborhoods are substantially isolated from nonpoor white neighborhoods. The results suggest that even though residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods travel far and wide, their relative isolation and segregation persist.