Search Results

Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life

Mario Luis Small

Social capital theorists have shown that inequality arises in part because some people enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks ... More

Social capital theorists have shown that inequality arises in part because some people enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? This book argues that the answer lies less in people's deliberate “networking” than in the institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. This book introduces a model of social inequality that takes seriously the embeddedness of networks in formal organizations, proposing that what people gain from their connections depends on where those connections are formed and sustained. The model is illustrated and developed through a study of the experiences of mothers whose children were enrolled in New York City childcare centers. As a result of the routine practices and institutional conditions of the centers—from the structure of their parents' associations, to apparently innocuous rules such as pick‐up and drop‐off times—many of these mothers dramatically increased their social capital and measurably improved their wellbeing. Yet how much they gained depended on how their respective centers were organized. This book identifies the mechanisms through which childcare centers structured the networks of mothers, and shows that similar mechanisms operate in many other routine organizations, from beauty salons and bath houses to colleges and churches. The book makes a case for the importance of organizational embeddedness in the study of personal ties.Less

How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain

Leah Price

This book asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss ... More

This book asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, the book also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, this book offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. The book reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.Less

Live and Let Live: Diversity, Conflict, and Community in an Integrated Neighborhood

Evelyn M. Perry

“We are in a bind,” writes Evelyn M. Perry. While conventional wisdom asserts that residential racial and economic integration holds great promise for reducing inequality in the United States, ... More

“We are in a bind,” writes Evelyn M. Perry. While conventional wisdom asserts that residential racial and economic integration holds great promise for reducing inequality in the United States, Americans are demonstrably not very good at living with difference. Perry’s analysis of the multiethnic, mixed-income Milwaukee community of Riverwest, where residents maintain relative stability without insisting on conformity, advances our understanding of why and how neighborhoods matter. In response to the myriad urban quantitative assessments, Perry examines the impacts of neighborhood diversity using more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews. Her in-depth examination of life “on the block” expands our understanding of the mechanisms by which neighborhoods shape the perceptions, behaviors, and opportunities of those who live in them. Perry challenges researchers’ assumptions about what “good” communities look like and what well-regulated communities want. Live and Let Live shifts the conventional scholarly focus from “What can integration do?” to “How is integration done?”Less

Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future

Kevin T. Smiley

Michael Oluf Emerson (ed.)

Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities ... More

Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities (such as Houston) are dedicated to an unfettered free market ethos, individualism, and tolerance of high levels of inequality and decentralized governance, among other characteristics. By contrast, People Cities (such as Copenhagen) have a much greater collective ideal that drives the city toward attenuating inequality, strengthening government, and sanctioning “people-focused” policies and urban form. The first four chapters of the book showcase “how it happens” by introducing the perspective and studying the histories of the cities. We also showcase how government deeply shapes each type of city as well as the critical role that residents play in underpinning or contesting their city. The second part of the book (chapters 5 through 9) investigates “why it matters.” We discuss the implications of living in a Market City or People City for transportation, land-use planning, the environment, diversity, inequality, segregation, crime, and immigration. We also extend our perspective to a wider range of cities, making suggestions on how to apply the ideas presented in the book. Finally, we conclude by discussing how social change within the city might occur and best be accomplished.Less

Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood

Iddo Tavory

Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Summoned is an in-depth exploration of the social worlds of Orthodox Jews in a Los Angeles neighborhood as well as a theoretical exploration of the ... More

Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Summoned is an in-depth exploration of the social worlds of Orthodox Jews in a Los Angeles neighborhood as well as a theoretical exploration of the co-construction of identification, interaction and the patterning of social worlds. Located off Hollywood and Melrose—a space known better for aspiring artists than for its religious life—the neighborhood surprisingly emerged as one of the main hubs of Orthodoxy on the West Coast of the US. The study thus traces the everyday ways in which religious life can thrive in the midst of an urban environment that seems to be sharply at odds with its most basic sensibilities. Focusing on the multiple ways in which Orthodox residents are pulled into Orthodox social life, it moves from the synagogue to everyday encounters the street; from panhandlers coming all the way from Israel, to the way residents balance the non-Jewish world they work in, and a religious existence that seeks to erase such profanity. Focusing on this density of social life, the book is simultaneously a theoretical essay on interaction, culture and the theory of action. As such, it argues for an inter-situational view of social life, a view that take the rhythms, syncopations and anticipations of social life as seriously as it takes what happens within each situation.Less

The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian Power and Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles

Luis Daniel Gascón and Aaron Roussell

Community policing structures erected in the wake of rising crime rates and civil disorder throughout the 1990s were supposed to provide civilians a platform from which to influence law enforcement ... More

Community policing structures erected in the wake of rising crime rates and civil disorder throughout the 1990s were supposed to provide civilians a platform from which to influence law enforcement policy. Yet the fires that burned in Ferguson in 2014 raise doubts about how much influence the public has on police, particularly in marginalized communities. This book challenges the common narrative that community policing has democratized the police, when there is ample evidence that US police powers have expanded alongside the proliferation of community-based strategies. It reveals how community governance works to limit civilian power and turn residents into appendages of the state—their “eyes and ears” on the street as well as their mouthpieces during crises. Further, the authors argue that disputes about who does and does not count as community complicate mobilization. Finally, they argue that until police departments are forced to adapt directly to the needs of communities of color, grassroots organizations should lead initiatives that purport to be community based.Less

The Problem with Feeding Cities: The Social Transformation of Infrastructure, Abundance, and Inequality in America

Andrew Deener

The Problem with Feeding Cities is a sociological and historical examination of the US food system. It explains how the food system transformed from feeding cities to feeding regions to feeding an ... More

The Problem with Feeding Cities is a sociological and historical examination of the US food system. It explains how the food system transformed from feeding cities to feeding regions to feeding an entire nation, and in turn, why that process shifted the system’s underlying logic from fulfilling basic needs to satisfying profit margins. The book also explains how and why this system has failed communities. Food-access issues are the result of infrastructural disruptions stemming from how markets and cities developed, how distribution systems arose, and how organizations coordinated the movement, quantity, and quality of food. Building on archival research, 190 interviews with food industry stakeholders, and observations and tours of distribution facilities, The Problem with Feeding Cities profiles a wide variety of people connected to the food chain, including farmers, supermarket executives, logistics experts, food bank employees, and public health advocates.Less

Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels

Pamela J. Prickett

The area of Los Angeles known as South Central is often overshadowed by dismal stereotypes, problematic racial stigmas, and its status as the home to some of the city’s poorest and most violent ... More

The area of Los Angeles known as South Central is often overshadowed by dismal stereotypes, problematic racial stigmas, and its status as the home to some of the city’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods. Amid South Central’s shifting demographics and its struggles with poverty, sociologist Pamela J. Prickett takes a closer look, focusing on the members of an African American Muslim community who call South Central home. Believing in South Central examines how believers help each other combat poverty, job scarcity, violence, and racial injustice, providing new insights into the day-to-day lived religion of African American Muslims. The book shows why the mosque has become believers’ key system of social support in a changing neighborhood and how members deepen their spiritual practice not in spite of, but through, conditions of poverty.Less