N e w s and u p d a t e s
Organizational perspectives on urban poverty
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences has published a volume, co-edited with Scott Allard, dedicated to the role of systems, institutions, and organizations in the lives of low-income residents of urban areas. Includes papers by David Harding, Jeff Morenoff, Stefanie De Luca, Nicole Marwell, Joe Galaskiewicz, Min Zhou, Mike McQuarrie, Bruce Fuller, Celeste Watkins, and others. Please email for a copy of the Introduction. From the abstract: 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. (May/13)
What I have been up to
People sometimes ask for non-academic reviews of my work.
Chicago Magazine probes my work on how poor neighborhoods in Chicago differ from those in other cities.
Greater Good magazine succinctly discusses our findings on how childcare centers can shape social capital.
The New York Times discusses the controversies surrounding the new perspectives on culture and poverty.
Spotlight On Poverty weighs in on the controversy.
The Huffington Post examines the factors contributing to multi-generational poverty, citing the work of a number of social scientists.
(Oct/12)
Cause-and-effect in ethnography
The American Journal of Sociology has issued a call for papers
for a special issue I am editing on Causal Thinking and Ethnographic Researh. The call for papers follows an interesting conference
on the topic held at the University of Chicago. See multiple
posts
on the conference
at Orgtheory. (Apr/12)
Neighborhood research at a crossroads
A new paper with Jessica Feldman, "Ethnographic Evidence, Heterogeneity, and Neighbourhood Effects after Moving to Opportunity,"
argues that the findings of the Moving to Oppportunity experiments should compel neighborhood effects research to move in a different direction.
We should be asking whether effects are heterogeneous across settings and populations and using ethnographic fieldwork, rather than speculation,
to examine why many predicted neigborhood effects failed to materialize. Published in Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives, edited by van Ham et al.
Prepublication draft (with table) available in pdf. (Apr/12)
How to conduct a mixed methods study
A new paper reviewing and assessing the recent trend toward mixed methods research has recently been published by the Annual Review of Sociology.
The paper evaluates mixed data collection and mixed data analysis studies across many subfields of sociology and related disciplines, finding a
great deal of creativity alongside some questionable practices. Available in pdf here. (Jul/11)
Author meets critics, II
My work on the ghetto will be subject to an Author-Meets-Critics session at the 2011 Association of Black Sociologists meeting on Saturday, August 20.
In a series of papers
(2006,
2007a,
2007b,
2008,
forthcoming), I have criticized strong conceptions of the ghetto, argued that
their use reinforces stereotypes, and shown that poor black and Latino neighborhoods are more heterogeneous, in highly consequential ways, than others have suggested.
The critics are
Janice Johnson Dias (John Jay),
Alford Young (Michigan, Ann Arbor),
Quincy Stewart (Northwestern), and
Alexes Harris (U Washington). (Jul/11)
Author meets critics
Unanticipated Gains will be subject to an Author-Meets-Critics session at the 2011 American Sociological Association meeting on Monday, August 22. The critics are
Karen Cook (Stanford),
Karyn Lacy (Michigan, Ann Arbor),
and Jason Owen-Smith (Michigan, Ann Arbor). (Jul/11)
Italian translation of Villa Victoria released
The Italian translation of Villa Victoria has been published by FrancoAngeli.
The book was translated by University of Bologna sociologists Marco Catrignano and
Gabriele Manella, who also provided an Introduction. (Jul/11)
Serious problems with NRC rankings of sociology departments
In 2010, the National Research Council released its latest rankings of academic departments, promising a more transparent, data-driven, and therefore effective approach to evaluating
programs. I chaired a committee of the American Sociological Association tasked with evaluating the NRC rankings of sociology departments. The committee uncovered a number
of serious problems that call into question the reliability and usefulness of the sociology rankings. The ASA has released the report
here. (Apr/11)
New thinking on urban poverty, conference at U Chicago
The University of Chicago is hosting a major conference on March 10-11, 2011,
titled "Rethinking Urban Poverty for the 21st Century: Institutional and Organizational Perspectives." A phenomenal group of speakers
is scheduled to present both empirical and theoretical papers. The conference is free and open to the public. Click here to register. (Jan/11)
Black cultural values are not the cause of black poverty
An article in the Boston Review comments on the recent volume
of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences that calls for rethinking culture in the context of poverty. Unfortunately, the distortions of the article threaten to set
the debate back 30 years. Once discussions on it surfaced in the Community and Urban Sociology listserv, I was compelled to respond. I encourage readers to read the original
sources, available for free, and arrive at their own conclusions. (Jan/11)
Unanticipated Gains out on paperback
Available from Oxford University Press. In addition, the book has received the C. Wright Mills Award for Best Book from the
Society for the Study of Social Problems, at its annual meeting. Earlier this year, it received an Honorable Mention, Mirra Komarovsky Award for Best Book.
Some early reviews:
- "An exemplary combination of quantitative analyses of survey data with ethnographic fieldwork.... Small has a masterful writing style; it was difficult to put down this book." Choice
- "A supremely smart book." Mary Pattillo
- "Will decisively reorient sociological research on social capital." Social Forces
- "Small's original model [is applied] brilliantly." William J. Wilson
- "A considerable advance [in] social capital theory." Contemporary Sociology
Reconsidering culture and poverty
A new volume of the
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences
reexamines the relationship between culture and poverty. The volume takes contemporary researchers on poverty to task for largely abandoning
the study of culture. At the same time, it challenges dated and discredited perspectives that suggest that the poor
are poor because of their cultural values. Instead, it calls for scholars and policy makers to take advantage
of new research in anthropology and cultural sociology that forces us to broaden our understanding of culture, poverty,
and anti-poverty policy. Click here for the
uncorrected proofs of the introductory article.
Or see the executive summary of the volume. (May/10)
Unanticipated Gains published by Oxford University Press
The new book on network formation in routine organizations is out. From the book description:Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks.
But why do some people have better networks than others? Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life argues that the answer lies less in people's deliberate "networking" than in the
institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, schools, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. The book illustrates
and develops this argument by exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children were enrolled in childcare centers.... (continued)
From the back cover:
- "Small does nothing less than transform the way that we understand social capital." Mitchell Duneier
- "A supremely smart book." Mary Pattillo
- "A beautiful and richly conceived study." Peter Bearman
Available: amazon; barnes & noble; sem-coop
How not to make qualitative research more scientific
A new paper published in Ethnography
examines a dilemma faced by many ethnographers and interviewers today. From the abstract: Today, ethnographers and qualitative researchers in fields such as urban poverty, immigration, and social inequality face an
environment in which their work will be read, cited, and assessed by demographers, quantitative sociologists, and even economists. They also
face a demand for case studies that not only generate theory but also somehow speak to empirical conditions in cases beyond those observed. Many have responded
by incorporating elements of quantitative methods into their designs, such as selecting respondents "at random" for small, in-depth interview projects
or identifying "representative" neighborhoods for ethnographic case studies, aiming to increase generalizability. This article assesses these
strategies, argues that they fall short of their objectives, and evaluates alternatives. "'How Many Cases Do I Need?':On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Fieldbased Research." (May/09)
Four reasons to abandon the idea of "the ghetto"
A new paper argues that strong conceptions of the ghetto, in which the ghetto
is an institution possessing a set of durable characteristics that recur from city to city, masks more than it uncovers, and it perpetuates many
of the stereotypes its proponents often aim to fight. Part of a symposium in
City and Community on the concept of the ghetto. Click here. The symposium was inspired by
a heated online debate on the concept of the ghetto. The debate
was prompted by an earlier paper published in City. (Feb/09)
Why the poor would not be better off in just any nonpoor neighborhood
The Moving To Opportunity experiments, designed to determine whether living in a poor
neighborhood reduces life chances, have produced mixed results. A new paper, "Why Organizational Ties Matter for Neighborhood Effects," co-authored with Erin Jacobs
and Rebekah Massengill, argues that part of the reason may be the study's neglect of the organizational dynamics of poor and non-poor urban neighborhoods. Local organizations
in poor neighborhoods are often very well connected.
In the September issue of Social Forces.
Click here for the working paper; please email for the published version.
Click here for an orgtheory.net post on the paper. Please email for a copy.
(Nov/08; upd Dec/08)
How to study culture and poverty without "blaming the victim"
Older studies of cultural dynamics among the poor relied on norms-and-values models
that had little explanatory power and were often accused of "blaming the victims" for their problems. However, the sociology of culture has moved far beyond
those models of culture, a fact that has been lost on much recent research on the poor. A new paper with
Michele Lamont examines six alternative conceptions of culture and their applications to the study of poverty and inequality. Click here.
(Nov/08)
New book on social capital to be published by Oxford University Press
Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life will be published next year. Based on a study of the connections
that mothers sometimes make through their children's childcare centers, the book examines the relationship between personal networks and social inequality.
Introducing an alternative to social capital theory, the book addresses a surprisingly understudied question: Why do some people have better networks
than others? (Sep/08; upd Mar/09)
Symposium on the ghetto in City & Community
A forthcoming issue of City & Community will feature a symposium on the concept of "the ghetto." Contributors include Herbert Gans, William J. Wilson,
and me (among others). Spring 2009. Check here for updates. (Aug/08)
Review essay examines Villa Victoria
A new paper by Felipe Pimentel reviews several books, including Villa Victoria, on social capital in Puerto Rican
communities. See also reviews in
AJS,
Contemporary Sociology,
Library Journal,
Social Anthropology, and
Urban Studies Journal. (Jul/08)
New paper on Chicago ghettos
"Is There Such a Thing as 'the Ghetto'?" sparked a passionate debate in the Community and Urban Sociology listserv.
It is a critique of Loic Wacquant's Urban Outcasts. For a copy, please click here
from a campus network or send an email. Cuz Porter, a Columbia Ph.D. candidate, has posted the debate here. (Feb/08)
New website launched
UrbanOrgs.org is a website for researchers interested in how organizations shape urban inequality. It posts notices on new books and articles, upcoming conferences, and
available datasets, with links. (Nov/07)
Two new papers on racial inequality
"Black Students' Graduation From Elite Colleges," with
Christopher Winship ,
examines why black students are more likely to graduate from some elite colleges than others. Published in Social Science Research.
"Racial Differences in Networks: Do Neighborhood Conditions Matter?" examines why
African-Americans in Chicago tend to have smaller personal networks than either whites or Latinos. Neighborhood poverty seems to make a difference. Published in Social Science Quarterly. (Sep/07)