R. Allen Hays

Neighborhood attachment, social capital building, and political participation : A case study of low-and moderate-income residents of Waterloo, Iowa

ABSTRACT: This case study examines the importance of neighborhood identity and engagement in place-based social networks within the neighborhood in fostering and stimulating neighborhood-based participation in the urban political process. Scholars concerned with civic engagement have argued that there is a strong link between the informal ties known as “social capital” and citizen engagement in the larger community. If this linkage can be shown to exist in the neighborhood setting, then it can provide guidance to both scholars and practitioners in utilizing informal, place-based networks to empower disadvantaged neighborhoods. Evidence presented in this essay, based on interviews with a representative sample of neighborhood residents in the small industrial city of Waterloo, Iowa, suggests that strong informal networks of social capital exist within neighborhoods, but that persons who are more strongly engaged in these networks are not necessarily more involved in the efforts of formal neighborhood associations. However, individuals who are involved in these formal associations are much more likely to be connected to the local and national political systems through voting and other forms of participation.

The Transformation of the Urban Housing System in China

The public housing system, operated since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, has provided Chinese city dwellers with low-cost accommodation. However, the rapid growth of the urban population, the lack of urban development planning, the bias in capital investment, and, especially, the structure of the public housing system itself have caused a severe housing crisis in Chinese urban areas. In recent years, leaders have addressed this problem with a complex series of reforms. These reforms generally move the system toward greater reliance on market forces, but numerous difficulties have emerged in creating housing markets within a centralized political and economic system.

COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS' PERCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP ROLES IN AN URBAN COMMUNITY: A CASE STUDY OF ATTITUDES THAT AFFECT COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

ABSTRACT: This article addresses the linkages and barriers between civic participation and political participation in urban communities, through a qualitative case study of the attitudes of community activists in a small urban community. Robert Putnam’s theoretical model of civic and political involvement suggests a strong linkage between civic engagement and political engagement, while Nina Eliasoph’s model suggests substantial barriers between participation in the local civic realm and participation in the local political realm. These competing models are given a preliminary test utilizing in depth interviews with a cross section of persons who are actively involved in the civic and/or the political realms. The data confirm Putnam’s assertion of the strong linkage between the two, but they suggest that the two arenas are viewed as distinct by activists and that the rewards derived from civic engagement are quite different from those of political engagement. The analysis also suggests that community activists have strongly negative views of those who do not participate and that their suggestions for involving others have limited utility. This barrier may be the strongest of all in preventing both civic and political engagement in the urban community.

Habitat For Humanity: Building Social Capital Through Faith Based Service

This essay examines citizen involvement in community housing issues through Habitat for Humanity as a faith– based expansion of social capital in urban communities. This article expands Putnam’s model of social capital to include criteria for evaluating the conditions under which social capital formation has a positive impact on the larger community. Using a representative sample of nine cities from various regions of the US, it examines the functioning of the Habitat affiliate in each of these cities and the attitudes and motivations of their most active volunteers. Habitat has emerged as a highly effective volunteer, non– profit producer of housing for lower income persons, yet the nature of the social capital created by this organization also reflects the contradictions raised by such an undertaking in a complex urban environment characterized by deep social divisions.

The Evolution of Citizenship in a Divided Urban Community: Local Citizen Engagement in Belfast, Northern Ireland

This article explores the complex interactions between national citizenship and local citizenship in the divided city of Belfast, Northern Ireland, as they are emerging a decade after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement was signed. Utilizing in-depth, qualitative interviews with citizens with varied community roles and perspectives, combined with a media survey, this article addresses the question of how local citizenship is evolving in Belfast and how the evolution of a shared local citizenship may ultimately affect national citizenship. The study of this unique case sheds light on the broader theoretical question of the relationship between local and national citizenship within a democratic polity.

Policing in Northern Ireland: Community control, community policing, and the search for legitimacy

This article explores the recent struggles of Northern Ireland to create a legitimate police force that is viewed as responsive to the needs of both the Catholic/nationalist community and the Protestant/unionist community. Three types of legitimacy are explored: democratic legitimacy through popular control, professional legitimacy of trained public officials, and legitimacy through responsive implementation. Based on 102 qualitative interviews with community leaders and key actors within the process of police governance and community relations conducted between 2007 and 2010, this article concludes that progress has been made in establishing all three types of legitimacy but that the remaining deep sectarian divisions within the society, combined with recent economic difficulties, present serious challenges to police/community partnerships that will enhance the legitimacy of the police.

The Integration Debate: Competing Futures for American Cities

This excellent collection of articles highlights a fundamental truth about American society; namely, that our underlying social problem is not segregation per se, but racism. Racism is the unequal distribution of power and resources based on racial and ethnic identity. Segregation is one symptom of racism, and integration is one of several solutions that have been advocated to reduce racism. Its persistence explains both the frustrations that have been experienced in addressing segregation and some of the perverse consequences of integration strategies. Like racism, segregation is often dealt with in public discourse in terms of attitudes and preferences, not the distribution of resources. Segregation is discussed in terms of who chooses to live with whom and how the choice of integration can move attitudes toward greater tolerance. Certainly, this dimension is important, because it is the deep-seated perceptions of persons of a different race that help perpetuate the racist system. However, the most important aspect of segregation is its impact on the distribution of resources, such as land, capital, health, and education. Whites have utilized segregation to claim the lion’s share of these resources, and their fear of integration is driven as much by the fear of lost resources (e.g., property values) as it is by personal preferences with respect to associates. In light of the above, it would have been better had the essays on the consequences of segregation been placed first in The Integration Debate, followed by the articles on strategies to achieve integration. Chapters 8–12 lay out in depressing detail the consequences of segregation in terms of inequality of earnings and wealth and disparities in the education of children, access to health care, and treatment by the criminal justice system. This litany of lost opportunities for people of color could have set the stage for the discussion of integration strategies by reminding the reader of just how serious the consequences of racism and segregation are. As it is, the book begins with essays that focus on legal remedies for racial segregation. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 represented a radical shift by the federal government from actively supporting segregation to at least a stated opposition to it. However, the enforcement mechanisms in the original act were weak and, even when strengthened in 1988, the act still focused on discrimination as a grievance of individual households, rather than a broader social phenomenon. In addition, the mutually reinforcing fears of White realtors and White homebuyers have led to the development of creative ways of subverting enforcement. Chapter 6 is particularly interesting for its discussion of the use of the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) as a tool for challenging housing discrimination. The author argues that using the 13th Amendment can be more effective than the more frequently used 14th Amendment, because the strategy of using the 13th Amendment links current discrimination firmly to historical patterns of racism, beginning with slavery. Other essays focus on attempts to engineer both racial and class integration. Chapter 4 discusses neighborhoods that have tried to maintain racial integration by controlling housing sales. These neighborhoods have been accused of discrimination against individual Black buyers who are discouraged from moving in by an informal quota of households of color. This calls attention to the tradeoff between maintaining the choice of current Black and White residents to live in an integrated neighborhood and allowing individual households of color to choose where they want to live. Chapters 13–15 provide critical analyses of programs like Hope VI that are based on deconcentrating the poor. In chapter 14, the authors question the avowedly benign motivations for this program by linking this kind of displacement to earlier forms of displacement of the poor. In chapter 15, the core assumption that the concentration of poverty makes its effects substantially worse is questioned. The author argues that the alleged benefits of deconcentration form a convenient rationalization for clearing out the poor in favor of gentrification. Chapter 13 provides a related analysis of the impact of Chicago’s Gautreaux program and the federal Move to Opportunity experiment. The authors find that low-income minority families who move to more prosperous, predominantly White areas benefit from increased security and improved access to jobs and education. However, the benefits are not nearly as dramatic as advocates of dispersing the poor have suggested. The final two essays address the underlying issue of racism head on by arguing that the primary goal of public policy should be to end unequal access to resources based on race. In chapter 16, it is argued that integration can be a valuable tool, but that the primary focus should always be on basic human rights. Chapter 17 describes the toxicity of the isolated, impoverished communities in which many people of color still live. However, the class and racial composition of these neighborhoods does not operate in isolation, as a selfgenerating cause of problems, but in the context of the overall racial inequality that they embody. The Integration Debate makes an important contribution to the long debate over the nature and impact of segregation. Earlier works emphasized the high costs of segregation in terms of isolation from jobs and other resources. The essays in this book continue to emphasize these costs, but at the same time, they criticize the assumption that racial integration is always the most effective strategy for addressing them. Collectively, these essays address all of the important issues that have arisen in connection with our efforts to end segregation and promote racial equality. Even though some of the essays focus on legal issues and others focus on sociological and neighborhood planning issues, a careful reading of the whole collection enables one to appreciate how these issues are interrelated. This book should be included among the basic source books on racial issues in American cities.