Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vol. 34
No. 2
2004
Book Reviews
Socioeconomic Democracy: An Advanced Socioeconomic System
by Robley E. George ............................................................................. 110
Reviewed by Michael John Dougherty, West Virginia
University Extension Service
Ecology and Design: Frameworks for Learning
by Johnson, Bart R. and Kristina Hill (eds.) ...........................................112
Reviewed by Stephen P. Gasteyer, Rural Community
Assistance Program, Washington, D.C
The New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography of Power, Politics, and
Impoverished People in the United States
by Goode, Judith and Jeff Maskovsky (eds.) ....................................... 114
Reviewed by John J. Green,Delta State University
EDITORS COMMENTS
This issue of the Journal continues to further my editorial vision of providing
cutting edge theory and research on key issues of community development
practice. The goal is to publish articles that build a solid theoretical and research
foundation for community development, while being useful to practitioners.
I am very pleased that this issue of the Journal includes an article by
Jnanabrata Bhattacharyya, Theorizing Community Development. This is
important to the Journal and to the field of Community Development in several
ways. First, Bhattacharyya was a founding member of the Community Development
Society, and during his years as a Professor at Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale, he helped to shape the field and trained many of our fields current
leaders. One of his contributions was an earlier article defining community
development as solidarity and agency published in the journal Human
Organization. It is a classic piece that has contributed to much of the new theory
on community development, and it figured prominently in many of the articles in
the Journals special issue on Community Development Theory published in 2001.
Follwing publication of the Special Issue, Bhattacharyya was invited to join
a few colleagues at a retreat following the Ithaca CDS conference in July 2003 to
discuss community development theory. An outcome of the workshop was an
invitation for him to update and revisit his earlier article and to write a new article
for the Journal that would provide examples and further reflections on his key
insight of community development as solidarity and agency. We publish this
article with the hope of both sharing his insights with our current readership and
stimulating debate. Thanks to Bhattacharyya for working in this special piece
for us, to the peer reviewers who helped suggest ways to tighten the arguments,
and to Noemi Danao and Marilu Carter who helped ready it for publication.
Following this keynote theory article, we include four research pieces
that deal with residents action and perception of their community. The first two
articles show the benefits of community involvement to build strong communities
through community development initiatives. Israel and Beaulieu report on their
research that shows that building social capital can increase educational outcomes
such as keeping youth in school, and this in turn helps increase community
economic vitality. Next, Sullivan examines how increasing community
participation in local nonprofit economic development organizations helps
economic development. His research shows that most citizens participate
indirectly through their public officials, and that the nonprofit development
organizations tend to work with other organizations such city officials and
chambers of commerce, rather than individuals. Sullivan calls for organizational
changes to increase citizen participation.
The final two articles in this issue look at community action from the
perspective of concerns and attitudes of residents. Junk, Seefeld, Schmiege,
and Windley revisit the issue of how newcomer and longtime residents in rural
(c) 2004, The Community Development Society
communities view growth in their communities. They found that the newcomers
were more concerned about managing growth than the fact that their communities
might continue to grow, countering the perspective that newcomers would move
into town and pull up the gangplank. Longtime residents were more concerned
about the costs of growth and rising house prices that would price their children
out of the market. Finally Gncoglu-Eser, Luloff, and Warland recount the
tensions that exist between newcomers and oldtimers to the opening of a
limestone quarry in a small town. The newcomers saw the quarry as a threat to
environmental quality, while the oldtimers saw it as an issue of jobs and the
expression of private property rights. These articles emphasize how important it
is that community development practitioners learn and understand the concerns
and interests of community residents, which are often more complex and nuanced
than might be assumed based on conventional wisdom
Finally, we continue to appreciate the help of our staff, the support given
by the Human and Community Development Department at the University of
California, Davis, and the many peer reviewers who have helped evaluate
manuscripts and make sure they are of the highest possible quality. We thank
the following reviewers:
Jeff Sharp
Leone Ohnoutka
David Darling
Emil Malizia
Jerry Hembd
Gary Craig
Ron Hustedde
Karri Winn
Courtney Norris
Domenico Parisi
Steve Murdock
Laurie Wermuth
Robert Ogilvie
Kai Schafft
Peggy Hickman
Alice Schumaker
Mildred Warner
Beth Honadle
Robert Pence
Larry Leistritz
Norm Walzer
Thomas Stafford
Thomas Gaunt
Timothy Borich
John Daley
Vicki Luther
Steve Jeanetta
Kenneth Pigg
Ron Hustedde*
Jnan Bhattacharyya
Steve Aigner
Stephen Longstaff
Eric Scorsone
Gary Green
David Bruce
Mary Schwass
Steve Deller
Jim Killacky
Mary Emery
Brian Dabson
Jason Henderson
Brent Hales
Gregg Lichtenstein
Rick Eberhard
Maria Marshall
Edward Malecki
Tammy Werner
Julie Zimmerman
Christopher D. Merrett
Scott Loveridge
Brett Zollinger
Mark Brennan
*reviewed two manuscripts
Vol. 34
No. 2
2004
THEORIZING COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT
By Jnanabrata Bhattacharyya
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts a parsimonious definition of community development. It proposes
that the purpose of community development is the pursuit of solidarity and agency by
adhering to the principles of self-help, felt needs and participation. The erosion of solidarity
and agency has been a historic process, connected particularly to the rise of industrial
capitalism, the nation-state, and instrumental reason. Examples of community development
practice as a positive response to the erosion are given from the fields of public health,
violence, micro-economic development, and food. It also argues that place as a proxy for
community has become conceptually as well as practically inadequate, and that effective
community development calls for micro-macro coordination.
Keywords: community development theory, self-help, felt needs,
participation, solidarity, agency
INTRODUCTION
This paper submits a theoretical framework for the practice of community
development, intended to help to distinguish the field from other related
endeavors. It perhaps goes without saying that it should be read as one persons
idea of community development, although its debt to numerous authors should
be evident throughout the paper. In an earlier exercise (Bhattacharyya, 1995) I
had proposed that community development is different from other endeavors in
that it aims at building solidarity and agency by adhering to three practice
principles, namely, self-help, felt needs, and participation. That paper has been
received in community development and related fields with interest. Among
other reactions, it was utilized as a springboard for discussions at the 2003
Community Development Theory Retreat at the Taughannock Farm Inn in
Trumansburg, New York. This paper reflects my response to some of the feedback
I received at the Retreat, as well as my continuing engagement with the subject
while iterating the earlier proposition.1 I discuss some of the definitions of
community development of the last forty years to show the continuing need for
a more rigorous definition. I have suggested that the purpose of community
development should be seen as different both from its methods and the techniques
to implement the methods. I have argued that place or locality often used in
community development literature as a proxy for community has become or is
Jnanabrata Bhattacharyya, Emeritus Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, and
Director (1984-1994), Department of Community Development at Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale. Email: jnan_bhattacharyya@yahoo.com
Bhattacharyya
Bhattacharyya
may be recalled that the term locality and its relation to neighborhood, place, or
community were left in a state of confusion; now in this definition it occupies a
vital place. Also, why is political left out from the series? This definition no more
and no less than the others they have cited is vague and arbitrary. There is no
particular impetus for choosing one set of terms over another. But all this
discussion of community development definition is rendered pointless by the
conclusion of this section (p. 14), which I have already signaled: In short,
definitions of community development are not clear-cut, and how one interprets
community development affects ones orientation when initiating a development
program. So anything goes? It is another way of saying that, according to
them, community development is not definable.
Much the same can be said about the work of Denise and Harris (1989).
They write in the Introduction (p. 7), This concept [community development]
is as varied in definition as those who profess to practice it. As evidence, they
note that the 22 authors in Christenson and Robinson (1989) each had defined
the term differently. They then add one of their own. Thus, a community is a
collectivity of people, who can be identified geographically, who have something
in common which unites them in action. Such a definition includes micro
communities (special interest groups, neighborhoods, subdivisions, villages,
towns, etc.) as well as macro communities (cities, megalopolises, areas, regions,
states, nations, international alliances, and global humanity). Like Christenson
and Robinson, Denise and Harris conclude:
We believe that community development should be so defined as to
encompass the wide spectrum of beliefs of those who practice it. Therefore,
to the editors, the field of community development contains numerous
approaches to community development with differing values, beliefs, goals,
purposes, and methods all of which are concerned with improvement of
the communities (p. 7).
What is not an approach to community development, then? Every socially
approved occupation exists because it is thought to contribute to community
improvement. If community development is to be recognized as a distinct
academic/professional field, then an all-encompassing concept is not going to
accomplish it; not everything that contributes to community improvement can
be claimed as community development. To define, after all, is to set limits.
A concept of community development must satisfy two conditions. First, it
must be distinctive in its purpose and in its methodology. Second, it must be
universal in scope: it must be applicable to all types of social formations, urban
as well as rural, post-industrial as well as pre-industrial, to sedentary as well as
nomadic populations. Our task therefore is to construct an unambiguous
reference point to guide community development activities and to determine if
certain activities fall within the orbit of community development. Such an attempt
is made in the next section.
10
Bhattacharyya
11
12
Bhattacharyya
13
14
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15
coupled with the spread of literacy vastly enlarged the private space at the cost
of public entertainment (such as public poetry recitation) and of the leisure time
spent in the company of friends and neighbors (see McLuhan, 1962; Febvre &
Martin, 1976). But these also enabled the formation of new forms of solidarity
based on more widely shared meanings, attitudes, and sentiments.
What we are confronted with today is erosion rather than transformation of
solidarity at both micro and macro levels. The very titles of some works of the
second half of the 20th century, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam (1995), The
Lonely Crowd by David Riesman (1950), The Pursuit of Loneliness by Philip
Slater (1970) convey a sense of the state of solidarity today. In the case of the
United States, Putnam (1995) noted the steep decline in a number of dimensions
of solidarity (social capital) in civic participation, church going, membership
in social clubs, trade unions, in time spent with family and neighbors. During
the last third of 20th century, they fell by 25 to 50 percent at both macro and
micro levels. According to the 35 country World Values Survey, civic
participation and social trust levels are worse in most other countries in the
Survey than in the United States (Putnam, 1995), and the process of solidarity
erosion, notes Meranze (2001, pp. 110-111),
is visible all around us: in the closing of health facilities, the widespread
stigmatization of some recipients of governmental assistance, the transfer
of fiscal resources from schools to prisons, long-term attacks on labor unions
and labor rights, the contraction of social commitments to shared basic
rights, the tightening of social borders.
It is impossible in this short essay even to outline the complex history of
the erosion of solidarity and agency. I will therefore focus on several related
factors of modernity that have played a decisive role in it, industrial capitalism,
the rise of the nation state, and instrumental reason. It should be noted at the
outset that social change, at least its modern variants, is almost always
ambiguous; it ushers in changes that enhance life while at the same time making
it less meaningful. This is true of these factors as well.
Industrial Capitalism
Beginning in the late 18th century in countries where it has become the
common mode of production industrial capitalism has created unprecedented
prosperity, numerous amenities, and freedom from famine. It has expanded
literacy, increased life expectancy at birth, and has vastly enlarged opportunities
for choice. In many cases, it has brought about a democratization of society.
However, the erosion or even destruction of solidarity has also been an
integral feature of the process of industrialization, with its attendant ideology
of the free market. This is a well traversed ground but bears a little recapitulation
in view of the current euphoria in many quarters about globalization of free
market economy that has tended to obscure the catastrophic effects of free
market on human solidarity, since its beginning.
16
Bhattacharyya
17
despoliation of nature, and economic crises. The warnings that may not seem to
have come to pass (such as food production) might yet do so; but the predicted
ruination of society has been averted not by the mechanisms of the free market
system but by its regulation by the state. The Great Depression in the United
States, for example, did not come to an end because the market had corrected
itself. It was overcome, and the society saved, by state intervention (the New
Deal) to regulate the free market.
The implication for community development of the arrival of industrial
capitalism and the free market ideology derives from the extraordinary fact that
for the first time in human history, at the end of the 18th century, society became
an accessory of the market. Until then the economic system was an accessory
of the society controlled and subordinated by social authority. With industrial
capitalism society came to be regarded as an aggregation of individuals as
opposed to a complex web of relationships; and a new ideology emerged,
anchored in the new science of economics, that defined the human being as an
individual bent on optimizing individual utilities. This was reflected as
methodological individualism in philosophy, economics, and the social sciences.
Solidarity and the entire culture complex (meaning systems, sentiments, religion,
language) were regarded as externalities: often hostile, dysfunctional, and in
need of radical reform if they impeded the utility optimizing behavior, as preindustrial solidarity and culture patterns almost always did (Foster, G., 1973;
McCleland, 1961). The value of human beings came to rest on their market
price. It is this historic reversal that provides the context for community
development, the predominance of the market, the dis-embedding of economic
activities from society, and the rise of the isolated individual that has structured
the erosion of solidarity in modern and modernizing societies.
Market economies today are highly, though imperfectly, regulated by the
state or other agencies (e.g., in the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank, and
the Departments of Treasury, of Health and Human Services, of Labor, and the
Securities and Exchange Commission). But the process of objectification, the
underlying individualistic ideology, and its preoccupation with negative freedoms
persist. There is mounting pressure in the United States (and elsewhere such as
Britain, Germany, India) to drastically cut back state regulation of the market, and
to reduce the role of public policy generally. In the United States, examples of the
absence or erosion of solidarity at the macro level are large-scale poverty and
illiteracy, the reluctance to increase minimum wage, millions of children who are
not immunized, and OSHA regulations that are being weakened (Iceland, 2003).
The erosion of solidarity does not remain confined to the macro level but is
mirrored in every social space (Bellah et al., 1985; Berger, 1973; Putnam, 1995). The
logic of industrial capitalism with its attendant characteristics of commodification
of life and radical individualism permeates every aspect of life and has a global
reach. The implication for community development is that weak solidarity and
meager social capital diminish the potential for collective action.
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19
choice. It is concerned strictly with the means, and indifferent about what we
choose for the goal that we should be efficient about. This reason pervading
every modern institution obscures the goal from reasonable scrutiny and becomes
an end in itself. Reason as efficiency is measured by market-price computation
of benefit-cost ratios. The human or environmental benefits or costs figure in
the computation only if and when they affect efficiency. This reason becomes
the only kind of reason. It subverts community by expropriating the authority to
judge and validate traditions, worldviews, and the entire range of human
subjectivity (e.g., attachment to place and people). Modern societies are
rationalized societies where every aspect of life has come under the purview of
instrumental reason (Berger, 1973; Braverman, 1974; Weber, M., 1978).
As conceived in 18th century Western Enlightenment, reason is a mental
faculty absolute, eternal, and universal. It challenged and even supplanted the
authority of the church and god. It is reason that is in charge of the universe, not
god. It is the reason of science and technology, and of historicism. With its
application, we can discover the laws of the universe and of human history and
manufacture objects. These laws are independent of what we may think or feel.
They are ineluctable as the laws of thermodynamics.
A third version views reason as context-bound, inter-subjective, dialogical,
or communitarian. Reason means the willingness to talk things over; to be
reasonable is to be conversable (Rorty, 2001). There is not just one, singular
reason, absolute and universal. It is not a free and spontaneous activity, but
contexted and historical. Modern rationality is merely a historical condition,
and is therefore susceptible to change. Because reason is context-bound, there
may be as many reasons as contexts. The purpose of rational inquiry is not to
apprehend objective truth or reality, which is assumed to be already there, to be
discovered. The truth or reality is that which results at the end of the investigation.
Objectivity does not mean correspondence to a pre-given reality, but intersubjective or communitarian agreement on the definition of the reality (see the
debate in Brown, 1984; Rorty, 2001, Sahlins, 1976).
We can call the first two versions of reason positivist and the third version
subject-centered or inter-subjective or communitarian. The positivist version
was dominant in the social and behavioral sciences until the 1960s the purpose
was to discover laws of human behavior as scientific as those of the hard sciences
(Giddens, 1987). Auguste Comte, the co-parent of sociology with Saint Simon,
looked for sociological laws of human affairs (prevoir pour pouvoir). Karl Marx
following the historicist tradition formulated his laws of economic determinism;
Ernst Cassirer sought a positive, exact, political science. (The positivist
version has returned in the social sciences as rational choice theory.)
The communitarians find support in Darwin: evolutionary progress is tychistic
it occurs through accidental congruence of genetic modification with
environmental niches (Rorty, 2001, pp. 29-30). There is no systematic law in
human affairs, which are full of uncertainties and randomness. Communitarian
reason thus sought to debunk historicism and positivism as it applied to human
20
societies: you cannot extrapolate from the past to the future. Human culture is an
act of bricolage, tinkering: we fashion things out of what we have available around
us. Positivist reason may explain natural and social phenomena. It can help us in
determining benefit/cost ratios or evaluating the rationality of a course of action
for a given end. But it cannot furnish the ends the gods or demons we pursue are
beyond the scope of instrumental reason (Bernstein, 1985).
The implication for community development is that positivism disregards
our subjectivity our will, our spontaneity, our meanings, and our capacity to
order things. Positivism confronts us with seemingly ineluctable laws that we
must obey. The ground is thus prepared for domination sponsored by the state,
the party, religious bodies, teachers, parents, or the local planner, all of whom
claim to uphold truth in compliance with objective facts and reason. Laws and
decisions based on reason thus can be presented as apolitical, uncontaminated
by particular preferences.
Reason liberated us from religious and political tyranny but harnessed to
industrial capitalism has itself become tyrannical as instrumental reason. Cultures
that do not obey the market logic of capital are labeled as irrational. In order to
explain why poor countries remain poor, the resistance to or the slow pace of
modernization, western social scientists and their Third World emulators in the
1950s and 1960s branded whole cultures as suffering from various syndromes
which by their absence explain the success of the West. Thus, the Mexicans
suffered from the encogido syndrome (Erasmus, 1961), some from the image of
the limited good (G. Foster, 1973), or lacked the achievement motivation
(McCleland, 1961). Southern Italians had amoral familism (Banfield, 1958),
and now it seems all Italy does (Ginsborg, 2003). Such characterizations of cultures
become meaningful only from the perspective of instrumental reason. Family,
community, tradition, and place that made life meaningful are often viewed as an
irrational drag on the march of rational choice. Where this reason takes hold,
cultures lose their vitality; solidarity disintegrates into an aggregation of
individuals bowling alone.
The same reason is at play when developers objectify people. Development
research, for example, is frequently what Chambers (1983) calls extractive. The
researchers extract information from people who act merely as passive reservoirs
of information with no role in designing the research agenda or in the research
process. Peoples cognitive participation (Berger, 1974) their perception and
knowledge of the problems are dismissed as irrational (Chambers, 1983). Thus,
the agency-generating powers of defining the problems, explaining their causes,
and proposing remedies are denied to the respondents. There is no dialogue;
the ownership of the problem slips away from the people to the developer.
Industrial capitalism, the nation-state, and reason have shaped the modern
world. They have made possible the production of great wealth, longer life,
uncountable amenities, and freedoms from ancient tyrannies. Above everything
else, they have given us the opportunity for choice, perhaps the defining
Bhattacharyya
21
22
and individuals (for a near exhaustive record of the concepts formulations see
the University of Missouris Handbook of Community Development). To be
sure, neither the wordings nor the rationales used by these entities are identical,
but the principles as stated here, I believe, correctly represent them.
Self-Help
Self-help is the opposite of helpless dependency. It does not mean the denial
of inter-dependence or mutuality that is the very basis of social existence. The
principle rests on a concept of human beings that when healthy they are willing
and able to take care of themselves, to reciprocate, to be productive, more
predisposed to give than receive, are active rather than passive, and creative
rather than consuming (Fried, 1971). Human beings are homo faber, by nature
they like to be productive. They are agents. But there are people who by a variety
of causes have been rendered incapable of self-help. In some instances, the causes
are rooted in individual pathology. But when the loss of agency afflicts large
numbers of people or particular groups of people or is chronic, the causes are
located outside of the individuals, in public policy, in the structure of economic
and cultural opportunities (see Mills, 1959). The practice of self-help includes
collective effort to alter these debilitating structures in order to restore agency.
Freire (1973) distinguishes problem solving from problematizing. Problem
solving is the approach of conventional development practice. The problem to
be solved is defined by outsiders (the state, the development organization, for
example). The people whom the problem presumably affects have little role in
defining it. They may have a role in implementing the solution (by sweat equity or
matching funds, for example). By contrast, problematizing requires the people to
determine what the problem is, so that they own the problem, which is the first
necessary step for them to exert themselves for the solution. Problematizing is
agency-generating whereas problem solving reinforces the agency-less passivity.
As a method, self-help is similar to the educational philosophy of Dewey,
Piaget (1973), and Freire (1973) among many others. Proper education is agencygiving. It teaches the methods of learning, with which the pupils can launch
ahead in the journey of creativity, as opposed to rote memorization or
dependency-generating knowledge -consumption, which is analogous to the
problem solving approach of conventional development practice.
Felt Needs
This principle, a complement to the principle of self-help, implies that
development projects should respond to peoples needs as they see them; they
should be demand-based. It ensures project relevance. It is agency-generating
because it recognizes and fosters peoples capacities to define and prioritize
their problems. Much conventional development work involves manipulating
the people to buy what the developer intends to sell. Responding to felt needs
can be an entry point for selling. But manipulation is inherently anti-agency
Bhattacharyya
23
making people do what they would not willingly do. Since the project may not
take, it can also lead to resource waste with high opportunity costs. The
principle of felt needs is grounded on the premise that, given the knowledge
and other resources available to a people, all their cultural practices including
needs are rational (Vayda, 1983). The attempt to change a practice therefore
should begin with changing the material/knowledge resource base, changing
felt needs, and the experienced reality.
Participation
Participation is the most recognized of the three principles of community
development practice. Understood properly, it encompasses the principles of
self-help and felt needs. But commonly it is used in a narrow sense as in electoral
participation. Like self-help and felt needs, it is also used as an empty formula
or a device to promote peoples acceptance of goals already decided by the
development organization. This was the case, just to cite one example, with the
rhetoric of participation in the Great Society program during the Johnson
administration (Janowitz, 1978, Moynihan, 1969).
In its broadest sense, participation means taking part in the production of
collective meanings. People can be excluded from it in many ways, by silencing
a language, for example, or by overwhelming or de-legitimizing a culture, or
by instrumental reason. Language is the heart of a culture, the vital medium for
the production of collective meanings (Fishman, 1972), and its suppression has
been one of the most common characteristics in the formation of nation-states
(Anderson, 1983; Seton-Watson, 1977; Weber, 1976). In modern societies, the
production of culture history, ideas, literature, music, technology, and
commodities of all sorts is exclusionary (Braverman, 1974; Freire, 1973; Ranajit
Guha, 1983; Johnson et. al., 1982; Lamont & Fournier, 19924). Civilizations, in the
sense of Great Traditions (Redfield, 1955), such as Christianity or Islam, have
often de-legitimized cultures or Little Traditions (Niebuhr, 1951).
Similarly, positivist reason, pervasively embedded in the modern,
bureaucratized, society undermines cultural or practical reason. The publicprivate distinction tends to disappear. The deep penetration of instrumental
reason opens up to conscious scrutiny what are culturally settled practices and
makes them contingent upon re-validation by instrumental reason. Every aspect
of life becomes public, exposed to control and manipulation by the state and the
market. This undermining of culture (meanings) finds its legitimation in the material
abundance produced by the application of positivist reason (Bernstein, 1985;
Foucault & Gordon, 1980; McCarthy, 1978; see also Baker & Reill (eds.), 2001).
Thus the principle of participation means inclusion, not merely in the
electoral process or endorsing decisions but in deciding the agenda for debate
and decision; it means inclusion in the processes of defining the problems to be
solved and how to solve them. At a more important level, it means countering
the domination and repression of positivist reason in its various manifestations
24
be it the state, the scientized politics, the industrial production process, or the
culture industry.
Together these three principles provide the necessary guidance for the
practice of community development. The people must have the opportunity to
own the problem by feeling and defining it, and also to apply their knowledge/
material resources for solving it. By acting as agents from the beginning, people
can regain or reaffirm their solidarity and their agency.
Community Development in Practice
Community development is being practiced by countless organizations, in
numerous countries with diverse political traditions, addressing a truly
astonishing variety of issues. Some of the organizations are small, stand-alone,
neighborhood groups. Some are affiliated to umbrella organizations (e.g., the
Industrial Areas Foundation, the Grameen Bank) that provide training in community
organizing, routine administration, sometimes loans and/or grants, and a larger
voice in regional and national politics. They are active in democratic countries
(e.g., the United States, the U.K., India), in transitional democracies (e.g., countries
of the old Soviet Union), and even in authoritarian countries (e.g., China).
Instead of describing exemplary cases of community development, which it is
impossible to do in such a brief space,5 I will point to some significant shifts in
thinking about various social problems. What has become obvious is that local
action, centered in neighborhoods and villages, is not adequate to the task of
finding enduring solutions to social problems. The local problems are local
manifestations of problems whose sources lie farther upstream. Community
development thus calls for simultaneous action at both micro and macro levels. This
is a tall order, but, as I illustrate below, such simultaneous actions are indeed happening.
Public Health
Perhaps the greatest change in thinking has been taking place in the field of
public health, what has been called a paradigm drift (Campbell, 2000, p. 185)
away from the clinical epidemiological approach to the community development
approach. Instead of focusing on modifying individual behavior, the new method
focuses on the community and macro factors (Davis, Cohen, Baxi, & Cook,
2003). The typical approach to epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, poliomyelitis,
obesity, or infantile pneumonia, is clinical epidemiological. It attacks the clinical
cause of the disease (the virus, the bacterium). Health care personnel administer
medicines or preventive inoculation. The health education component radio
and television broadcasts, billboards, posters, group sessions, and school
curriculum follows traditional teaching format, experts giving out information
to a passive audience. Such, for instance is the approach of the current WHO
programs against the resurgence of polio in certain countries, notably India. It
has also been the approach to HIV/AIDS in which case, in addition to medicines,
people were urged to practice safe sex and abstinence.
Bhattacharyya
25
The new thinking that is taking place has two related parts. One, there is
increasing recognition that the health status of a population depends not so
much on medical care as on the socioeconomic environment in which people
live and work. In the United States, health disparities are determined by macro
factors such as polluted residential area, poverty, lack of access to nutritious
food, safe streets or playgrounds, and the absence of community norms that
support healthful behavior (Acharya et al., 2003). To improve health, therefore,
requires strategies to alter the environment.
The second part, the paradigm drift, calls for participation and
representation of local people in health programs (Campbell, 2000, pp. 182196). The drift was initiated by the World Health Organization and endorsed
by a number of international declarations the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978,
the Ottawa Charter of 1986, and the Jakarta Declaration of 1997 (Campbell,
2000). The most effective tool against HIV/AIDS, for instance, has proved to
be community norms revitalized by community-based organizations (social
antibodies) (Epstein, 2003; Hansen, 2003; Singer et al., 1991; Bhattacharyya,
K. & J. Murray, 2000; Blum, H. L.; 1981, Frieden & Garfield, 1987; Madan,
1987; Nichter, 1984, 1989; Rifkin, 1981; Rifkin & Walt, 1986; Stone, 1992).
In each of these cases, the standard bureaucratic method of individualtargeted healthcare was shunned for a community approach. The people were
not treated merely as carriers of disease, actual or potential. The diseases were
understood in their relation with broader socioeconomic contexts. The people
participated cognitively by understanding the disease and its causes, and, armed
with the understanding, in developing community norms and implementing the
programs. The successful programs have been those where micro and macro
level organizations have worked in tandem.
Violence
As in the case of health, the standard bureaucratic posture to violence targets
individuals, regarding it as a police, military, or behavior modification problem.
The preventive measures, therefore, have generally been reactive rather than
proactive harsher punishment, more policing and more prisons, counseling.
The relatively few proactive programs, such as the federal Safe School/Healthy
Students program that was initiated in response to the Columbine School tragedy,
have relied on greater vigilance (e.g., metal detectors), more rigorous monitoring of
truancy, and more counseling (anger management, mediation). School personnel
(counselors, social workers) make home visits more frequently to discuss childrens
problem behaviors with parents or other care providers. But even such programs
have shown little readiness to formulate strategies to deal with the underlying
socioeconomic causes of violent behavior although such causes - the cumulative
effect of low SES, residential segregation by race, residential instability - have
been known for nearly a century (Acharya et al., 2003; Sampson, 2004 ).
After studying 343 neighborhoods in Chicago, Sampson (2004) has shown
how specifically those factors are related to neighborhood violence. The
26
Bhattacharyya
27
economic systems, from China to the United States. (Ford Foundation, 1992).
But there are a hundred other organizations practicing a similar community
development approach to economic development: the Self Employed Womens
Association (SEWA) in India, the Foundation for International Community
Assistance (FINCA), The Trickle Up Program (TUP), the Womens World Bank,
the ACCION International, the Working Capital, and numerous others (Ford
Foundation, 1992; Aburdene & Naisbitt, 1992). They have created not only
hundreds of thousands of self employed people, but some degrees of power and
solidarity among historically marginalized people.6
Food
An interesting development in the United States in the last two decades is
the Community -Supported Agriculture (CSA), a concept that is a step up from
the farmers market. In the CSA, consumers commit to buy a share of the harvest.
According to Roosevelt (2003), the CSA movement began in Japan 30 years
ago and spread to Europe and the United States. From one CSA in Massachusetts
in 1986, the movement has grown to 1,200 farms with 1,000 families as members.
The impetus for CSA is only partly the desire for fresh food. (Currently, U.S.
grown produce travels 1500 miles and is 4-7 days old before reaching the
supermarket.) Partly it is the desire for food that has not been genetically
engineered and is free of pesticides and hormones.
But it is also a movement to create communities to recover the meaning of
food. According to Nestle (2002), the U.S. population buys nearly half its meals
prepared elsewhere, and is consuming more processed food, rather than locally
grown whole foods. Among those who cook at home, few do so from scratch.
There is a growing sense that large numbers of people have little control over
what and how they eat. Just ten corporations dominate the global food market.
Since 1960, the number of farms in the United States has declined from 3.2 million
to 1.9 million. Such consolidation under giant corporations has raised productivity
by 82 percent, but the corporations produce fewer crops, leading many varieties
to virtual extinction (Nabhan, 2002).7 Peoples control over food is also
compromised by powerful marketing techniques of the food industry. In 1998,
for instance, the ten leading manufacturers of packaged food products spent
$8,228.5 million in advertising. Food and food service companies spend more
than $11 billion annually on direct media advertising. In 1999, McDonalds
spent $627.2 million, Burger King $403.6 million, and Taco Bell $206.5 million on
direct media advertising (Nestle, 2002; Schlosser, 2002). Nearly 70 percent of
food advertising is for promoting the most highly processed, elaborately
packaged, and fast foods (Nestle, 2002).
The CSA movement along with farmers markets and local food coops is an
attempt to regain some control over food. It is restoring variety by bringing back
heritage seeds and poultry. By practicing organic farming, it is producing wholesome
food while protecting the environment. But it is more than that. Even beyond
28
Bhattacharyya
29
NOTES
1. I am indebted to Drs. Karabi Acharya, Sumita Bhattacharyya and Susan Maher, and to
Kakali Bhattacharya and Uttiyo Raychaudhuri, for help with different aspects of the paper. I
thank Dr. Ted Bradshaw, Dr. Ron Hustedde, Noemi Danao and other members of the Taughannock
Farms Inn Retreat for comments on an earlier incarnation of this paper and for the
encouragement to write this one. I also thank Marilu Carter for her assistance.
2. There is no single work that deals with the problem of agency in such diverse fields as
anthropology, history, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology, and it
will take too much space to cite even the major works in each field. An overly simplified introduction
to some of the authors is W. Foster (1986). More scholarly sources are Lemert (1979), Giddens
(1984), and Wolin (1990). None of these works deals with literature, especially post-modernist
criticism, and on this there is no generally accessible overview; the interested reader may consult
Berman (1988) and Kellner (1989)
3. The disruption of regional cultures was also a blessing as it abolished slavery and extended
civil rights, once again illustrating the ambiguity of history.
4. See especially the articles in Part Two: High Culture and Exclusion, in Lamont and Fournier
(1992).
5. See the excellent collection of recent cases in Putnam and Feldstein (2003). The annual
Report and the quarterly Letter of the Ford Foundation commonly publish accounts of
community development from across the world.
6. For a critical assessment of the movement see Jonathan Morduch (1999).
7. The large industrial farms have made inroads in the fast growing organic food market
shipping organic produce to the U.S. from as far away as China and New Zealand (Roosevelt,
2003). The federal organic certification procedure released in September 2003 is too
cumbersome and time consuming for truck farmers that had initiated and sustained the
organic movement. The new label for locally grown organic foods is ecological.
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Vol. 34
No. 2
2004
INVESTING IN COMMUNITIES:
SOCIAL CAPITALS ROLE IN KEEPING
YOUTH IN SCHOOL
By Glenn D. Israel and Lionel J. Beaulieu
ABSTRACT
Many community leaders view economic development as the primary strategy for improving social
well-being. One approach to economic development is enhancing the local labor forces human
capital through formal education. In this article, we use a social capital framework to analyze how
local institutions, specifically families and schools, affect educational achievement among public
school students. We explore how social capital in the broader community context mediates the
effects of family and school social capital on keeping students in school. Using hierarchical linear
models to estimate these contributions, the results reaffirm the vital role of family social capital.
They also show that attributes of school and community social capital make important contributions
to staying in school. Our results suggest strategies that community development practitioners and
local leaders can use to enhance educational outcomes and, in turn, the economic vitality of
communities.
Keywords: staying in school, education, social capital, human capital, National
Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), School District Data Book (SDDB), the
Common Core of Data (CCD), the National Center for Education Statistics
INTRODUCTION
Economic development remains an issue of paramount concern in many
communities across America. Such a focus seems sensible given the fact that
jobs, and the income generated from such employment, are critical to the wellbeing of individuals, their families, and communities. Though globalization
has led to significant changes in many local economies, community well-being
also is linked to the development of a labor force with the knowledge and skills
necessary to operate in an increasingly complex work environment (Judy &
DAmico, 1997).
Giving reason for pause is Robert Putnams (2000, p. 325) work, which
offers a compelling argument that economic prosperity is a product of extensive
positive networks of relationships among local people, firms, and institutions.
To Putnam, positive social networks represent the social capital of these
communities. According to Flora et al. (1992, p. 236), such social networks
represent one of three key components of community social infrastructure (the
This journal series paper R-10360 is part of Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Project FLAAEC-03957. Direct correspondence to Glenn Israel, University of Florida, PO Box 110540,
Gainesville, FL 32611-0540, or email the author at gdi@ifas.ufl.edu. Glenn D. Israel, University
of Florida, and Lionel J. Beaulieu, Southern Rural Development Center.
36
others being the strength of local social institutions and the capabilities of the
communitys human capital resources). In this context, social infrastructure is
defined as the capacity and will for collective action, which provides for residents
social and economic well-being (Flora et al., 1992, p. 234).
This article undertakes a unique examination of social infrastructure by
exploring the interplay of two of its dimensions in improving the vitality of its
third component. Specifically, we explore how the quality of relationships (i.e.,
social capital) existing within two important community institutions the family
and schools are useful in developing the human capital of local youth (as
measured by their propensity to stay in school). We also examine how
community-level aspects of social capital enhance the academic achievement
of youth beyond the contributions made by the family and school. We focus on
staying in school because high school completion is an early milestone on an
individuals path to prosperity and civic engagement. It is well documented
that career earnings of high school dropouts are much lower than the earnings
of those who complete additional education, their dependence on a communitys
social services is higher, and participation in civic affairs is more limited
(Beaulieu & Barfield, 2000; Presidents Council on Sustainable Development,
1996; Teitelbaum & Kaufman, 2002). Moreover, as the proportion of poorlyeducated residents increases, the greater is the drag on community efforts to
develop its economy.
In the following sections, we describe key features of social capital.1 In
particular, we draw on Ken Wilkinsons (1991) community field theory to
elaborate the structural and interactive elements of social capital, which are
present in families, schools, and communities, that shape the educational progress
of young people (Israel, Beaulieu, & Hartless, 2001; Smith, Beaulieu, & Israel,
1992; Smith, Beaulieu, & Seraphine, 1995). Using the sample of public school
students from the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS), we assess
the relative importance of family, school, and community social capital in helping
students stay in school. Our study is one of the first in-depth analyses to measure
the unique contributions of each component on keeping youth in school. Finally,
we discuss important implications of our findings for advancing the economic
and social welfare of American communities.
FAMILY SOCIAL CAPITAL
The term family social capital represents the norms, social networks, and
relationships between parents and children that are valuable for children while
they are growing up (Coleman, 1990, p. 334). Family structure and resources
affect the extent of social capital. Among the structural attributes of the family
that can influence the amount of social capital are the presence of one or both
parents in the home and the number of siblings (Israel et al., 2001). These
attributes affect the opportunity for interpersonal interactions between parents
and children, and shape the frequency and duration of such interactions (Smith
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38
39
40
41
activities and build social capital (Putnam, 2000). Finally, equality, with regard
to income and education, can reduce social cleavages that affect the quality of
interaction (Blau, 1994). Durable cleavages in community affairs can cause
residents to become alienated, reduce participation in local affairs, and fragment
collective action. One outcome of high inequality is that little social capital is
available to promote local education.
Community Interactive Social Capital
Interactive social capital of the community can be described at two levels
(Israel et al., 2001). First, extensive community social capital is characterized
by large numbers of actors, inclusiveness of interests represented, and widespread
involvement in decision making and implementation. Activities conducive to
educational achievement include campaigns urging voters to pass initiatives that
improve facilities such as schools, sports arenas, and community centers, creating
programs for youths and activities that involve students in community projects.
Second, at the individual level, relationships among adults and youths are
demonstrated by adult residents interest in the welfare of other peoples children
and efforts by individuals and organizations to engage children in activities that
make effective use of their time and energy (Beaulieu & Israel, 1997; Coleman
& Hoffer, 1987; Smith et al., 1995). A students involvement in either religious
or non-religious (e.g., 4-H, boys and girls clubs, sports programs) organizations
facilitates relationships with peers and adults. Collectively, these provide a
support system to a student beyond that offered by the family. On the other
hand, children who move frequently have relationships disrupted, and they are
hampered in establishing long-term relationships with individuals in the
community (Smith et al., 1995).
Based on the above discussion, we explore whether interactive social capital
existing in the family, school, and community has positive effects on youth staying
in school.
METHODOLOGY
The analysis is based on data collected as part of the National Educational
Longitudinal Study (NELS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center
on behalf of the National Center for Education Statistics. The initial survey,
conducted in 1988, involved a stratified national probability sample of more
than 1,052 schools. A sample of eighth grade pupils was surveyed from each of
these schools, yielding a total of 24,599 usable responses. Students provided
information on individual and family characteristics, school experiences, and
participation in extracurricular activities. Information from parent, teacher, and
school surveys were linked to the student surveys.
Additional data from the School District Data Book (SDDB) and the
Common Core of Data (CCD) files developed by the National Center for
Education Statistics were linked with the NELS data using geographic codes
42
included in the restricted version of NELS. We also merged 1990 census data
describing community-level attributes, county typology codes from the
Economic Research Service, and voter participation data from the InterUniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research with the NELS data.
Though the hierarchy of school, school district, and county differ across states,
we treated these as a single level in our analysis.
This study also was limited to public school students because we wanted to
assess variations that might exist in tax-supported schools located in different
places. After selecting students having data on the variables of interest, the
analysis included 9,764 students enrolled in 729 public schools located in 478
counties. We used weights to adjust for over sampling of policy-relevant strata
(Ingels et al., 1998).
Measurement of Variables
The dependent variable, staying in high school, was a binomial variable.5
Because academic performance mediates the influence of family, school, and
community factors on staying in school (Battin-Pearson et al., 2000; Garnier et
al., 1997), two variables, a composite score based on standardized math and
reading tests and the average of grades in four subject matter areas, were included.
A variable was included to assess what Coleman (1988) labeled the
traditional disadvantages of background. Given that blacks are more likely
than whites to leave school and that females are less likely to attend college,
race/ethnicity and gender combinations were included in the analysis (Ekstrom
et al., 1986; Smith et al., 1995).
Five measures of family structure and resources were included: family
income, whether a parent had a college education, parental structure of the family,
the number of siblings, and the number of siblings who have dropped out of
high school. The measures of family interactive social capital were two nurturing
activities (parents express expectations to the child about attending college;
child discusses school matters with parents) and a monitoring activity (how
much parents limit TV viewing). These variables have shown strong effects on
educational outcomes in earlier studies (Downey, 1995; Israel et al., 2001;
McNeal, 1999; Teachman et al., 1997).
The structural and resource measures for schools included enrollment, per
student expenditures, whether students attended a school with a high minority
percentage (over 30%), and school climate, as indicated by an emphasis on
academics and a rating of problems at the school. A four-item index was
developed to measure the extent of emphasis on academics in the school while
an 11-item index was created to measure the extent of problems.
Two measures of school interactive social capital were the number of clubs
in which a student was involved and the amount of discussion between a student
and his/her teachers. Students who are involved in school activities thrive
academically (Flinn & Rock, 1997), while those who require frequent monitoring
and corrective instructions are less likely to stay in school. In addition, three
43
44
mediating variable in our analysis, suggesting that family, school, and community
attributes might vary across geographic areas. As such, the chances of a young
person remaining in school could differ across metro/nonmetro areas. When no
significant variation in parameters was found to exist across the four community
types, the parameters were constrained to be equal. The resulting parsimonious
model helped to show when community location was found to have a statistically
important mediating effect.
RESULTS
We found that approximately 16 percent of students dropped out of school
between the eighth and twelfth grades in the analytic sample. Tables 1 and 2
present results for the logistic regression of the dependent variable staying in
school on the independent variables. As expected, academic performance, as
measured by the eighth grade test score and grade point average, had a positive
influence on staying in school (Table 1). Including academic performance
variables reduced the effect of many family background and family social capital
variables on staying in school when compared with a model excluding the two
performance measures (data not shown). This finding supports the view that
performance is an intervening factor in explaining dropout behavior. Contrary
to expectation, African American males were more likely than other male students
(whites and Asians) to stay in school.8 Female Hispanics were most likely to
drop out, followed by other females.
The results are consistent with previous research, which has shown that
family characteristics have powerful influences on educational achievement.
For example, children whose mother or father attended college were more likely
to stay in school. Likewise, remaining in school tended to be higher among
children from more affluent families. In keeping with earlier research (Beaulieu
& Israel, 1997; Israel et al., 2001; Smith et al., 1995), family structure had some
influence on staying in school. However, the presence of two parents versus
one parent in the household did not prove to be a significant factor for staying in
school. Rather, youth living in other types of families (i.e., a parent and guardian,
grandparent, or other adults in the family) were the most prone to dropping out.
Students with one or more siblings who have already dropped out of school also
were less likely to stay in school. This suggests that a weak family environment
can be a major barrier to the academic progress for youth.
Attributes of family interactive social capital are important in shaping a
childs academic performance. We found that students were more likely to stay
in school if a parent expressed expectations for obtaining a college degree (as
compared to a high school diploma or not completing high school), if they
discussed school programs with their parents, and if parents placed limits on the
amount of time that the child was allowed to watch television. The large positive
effect of parents expectations for going to college was reduced in families with
a larger number of siblings, which probably reflects the increasing difficulty of
45
financing college for each additional child. The positive effects associated with
parent-child conversations about school appeared to produce greater benefits for
those children whose parent(s) had no college education than it did for students
with at least one parent who attended college. While this finding would appear to
run counter to expectation, such discussions were less likely to occur among students
with non-college educated parents in our data. So, when such interactions did
take place, they produced greater benefits for children of these less educated parents.
Table 1. Regression Coefficients Showing the Effect of Family Structure,
Resources, and Interactive Social Capital and Individuals Background on
Staying in School
Explanatory Variable
Staying in School
Parameter Estimate
P-value
Intercept
Individuals Background
Students composite test score in 8th grade
Students grade point average
Gender and Race/ethnicity
Female - Black
Female - Hispanic
Female - Other (includes white, non-Hispanics)
Male - Black
Male - Hispanic
Male - Other (includes white, non-Hispanics)
-5.922
.033
.828
.000
.000
.130
-.364
-.222
.394
.191
.000
.338
.011
.003
.005
.198
.---
.544
.006
.001
.000
-.639
-.060
.000
.045
-.241
.000
.443
.--.354
.000
.177
.477
-.066
.351
-.310
.000
.000
.001
.000
.011
Table 2 reports on the role that schools play in helping young people stay in
school. The number of students enrolled in the school had a modest positive net
effect on staying in school. Per student expenditures had a small impact on
staying in school, but only for low minority enrollment (less than 30 percent)
46
47
Staying in School
Parameter Estimate P-value
.028
.008
.160
-.054
.006
.413
.853
.331
.000
.167
-.095
1.067
.589
.000
-.256
.002
.292
.085
.277
-.062
-.026
.000
.082
.003
.004
.029
.109
.067
.029
.000
-.246
.251
-.057
.000
.000
.037
a
Differences based on minority enrollment at the school were tested for all variables. Only
significant parameters are shown.
Using this approach, the impact of social capital is striking. In the case of
high resources and high interactive social capital, virtually every student is
expected to stay in school. When you examine students who are embedded in
low resource and high interactive social capital environments, the proportion
staying in school remains high. Students are much less likely to stay in school
when resources are high and interactive social capital is low. This pattern is
most evident among Hispanics. Only half of the students are predicted to stay in
school when both resources and interactive social capital are low.
If we disaggregate the interactive social capital effects, we find that the
variables associated with family social capital processes are approximately 1
times more powerful than those associated with the school or community.
48
However, when family interactive social capital is low, the combination of school
and community interactive social capital generates a large, positive effect on
staying in school. As such, the data outlined in Table 3 offer a compelling
illustration of how social capital, when present and actively exercised by families,
schools, and communities, can make a sizable contribution to promoting the
academic progress of high school students.
99.7%
99.5%
99.6%
99.8%
99.7%
99.6%
98.1%
96.9%
97.3%
98.5%
98.2%
97.8%
86.8%
80.1%
82.3%
89.6%
87.5%
85.3%
49.9%
37.8%
41.2%
56.5%
51.4%
46.7%
a
Predicted probabilities were calculated for metro core, other metro, adjacent non-metro, and nonadjacent nonmentro communities. Since the differences among community types were relatively
small, these are not shown.
49
CONCLUSIONS
Americas community leaders continue to face challenges to enhance
residents economic and social well-being. Though many leaders place a high
priority on economic development activities, the long-term economic health of
a community rests, in part, on the presence of a dynamic social infrastructure.
This, in turn, depends on the presence of people with strong human capital
attributes. Communities can build their human capital resources by ensuring the
educational progress of local youth. However, promoting the educational
achievement of young people cannot be realized without a deliberate effort to
build strong linkages among families, schools, and communities. Such networks
translate into direct benefits for local youth and strengthen the community as a
whole.
In this article, we examined an issue that can illustrate how community
leaders might fare with efforts to create a pool of high-quality workers. We have
explored how the strength of social capital present in the family and school, and
in the community in which these two institutions are embedded, might promote
the educational progress of local youth. The capacity to keep youth in school
serves as an early marker of the human capital resources that might be available
in the future to support the communitys economic development initiatives.
Our study supports the view that the academic success of young people
stands on a three-legged stool families, schools, and communities. We have
reaffirmed the key role of parental socioeconomic status (SES) in shaping their
childrens educational achievement. Children having well-educated parents, for
example, often excel academically and stay in school. At the same time, when
youth are provided with a nurturing environment and guided with regard to
acceptable behaviors, they make significant educational progress (irrespective
of their familys SES). In fact, when interactive social capital is extensive, our
results show that nearly all students can be expected to stay in school (irrespective
of resource levels). Dropout rates are predicted to be higher when high resources
are not accompanied by high interactive social capital.
Our findings also make a compelling case that local leaders must stay attuned
to the needs of family and children who have moved several times. We found
that children who have experienced few, if any, moves since the first grade and
youth who participate in a religious group tend to stay in school. This suggests
that access to adults outside the immediate family has a positive effect on these
students, as does the stability of living in a locality for a long period without
interruption by a physical move to another school or community. Given the
mobility of Americas population, community and school leaders must find new
ways to help integrate new residents into the community and engage new students
into the life of their schools.
This study also validates findings that schools shape educational outcomes.
Having resources available matters and expanding per pupil expenditures can
result in modest increases in staying in school. Educational leaders should,
50
51
usually entail expectations and obligations with context-specific fungibility. Furthermore, social
structure, either in the closure and completeness of networks or their fragmentation, can facilitate
or inhibit, respectively, social capital formation.
2. We discuss school social capital in depth for this article because it has received less
attention. Our earlier published work focused on both family and community social capital.
3. Social capital also can accumulate within a local group or organization, and thus can be
used to further the groups particular interests, sometimes to the detriment of others in the community
(Wall, Ferrazzi, & Schryer, 1998).
4. Many rural communities cannot fully capture the benefits of their investments in children
because many leave the community upon graduation from high school (Hobbs, 1995). This creates
a disincentive for rural communities (because urban and suburban areas benefit from their
investments) but it does not negate the need for such investments.
5. Appendix A details the coding scheme for each variable in this study.
6. Measures of community-wide social networks were not available.
7. We assumed that participation in religious and non-religious groups involved youth in
positive relationships with adults and peers but no information about the quality of these relationships
was available.
8. This effect is net of all other variables. Black males were less likely to stay in school than
other males (83 and 89 percent stayed in school, respectively) in the bivariate relationship.
9. Community proximity was positively associated with socio-economic capacity, school
size, per pupil expenditures, and the probability that a school has a high minority percentage, but
negatively associated with length of residence (data not shown). Though proximity showed little
net effect on staying in school, the uneven distribution of the other variables among community
types cannot be ignored.
10. The predicted probabilities were calculated for each student profile using the parameter
estimates from Tables 1 and 2 and appropriate values for each variable in the model. Details are
available from the senior author.
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55
APPENDIX
Appendix Table A. Variables Used in the Analysis, Variable Names and Data
Source, Measurement, and Descriptive Statistic
Variable and Sourcea
Stay in school (F2EVDOST)
Students Background
Standardized math and reading
composite score (BYTXCOMP)
Base year grades (BYGRADS)
Gender by race/ethnicity (RACE)
Mean or
Coding Scheme
Percent
0 = student dropped out during
83.4%
first or second follow-up; 1 = never
dropped out
50.677
2.897
6.1%
4.7%
38.8%
5.6%
4.4%
40.4%
1.382
56
Appendix Table A. Variables Used in the Analysis, Variable Names and Data
Source, Measurement, and Descriptive Statistic (cont)
Variable and Sourcea
How far parent(s) expect child
to go in school (BYP76)
Coding Scheme
Range of 0 = drop out of
school to 4 = complete a
graduate or professional
degree (treated as interval-level)
0 = never, 1= rarely,
2 = sometimes, 3=often
Mean or
Percent
2.640
1.112
7.334
36.1%
3.135
1.066
2.004
2.910
Child-teacher communication
(BYS51AB, BYS51BB,
BYS51CB, BYS51DB, BYS51EB)
2.363
Parent(s) involvement in
PTO (BYP59A-D)
57
Coding Scheme
Whether parent(s) involved
in other school organizations,
not including PTO.
Parents contact school (BYP58A-F) Mean response to: contacted
school regarding: 1) academic
performance, 2) academic
programs, 3) behavior,
4) fund raising, 5) information
for school records, and 6) doing
volunteer work.
Range is 0 = never to 3 =
four or more times.
[Cronbachs alpha = .69]
Community Structure and Resources
Community type (based on 1993
Factor with four categories:
ERS county typology codes)
Metro core
Metro other
Nonmetro adjacent
Nonmetro nonadjacent
Average years in current home
(H028 from SDDB)
Community socio-economic
capacity (P117, P080A, P077,
H061, P113, P204 from SDDB)
.386
38.1%
35.9%
13.6%
12.3%
Mean or
Percent
26.6%
1.247
33.2%
1.340
Vol. 34
No. 2
2004
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN
NONPROFIT ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS
By Daniel Monroe Sullivan
ABSTRACT
Citizen participation in community development, including economic development, is vital for a
viable democratic society to flourish. As more U.S. cities shift some or all of their economic
development efforts from the city government to nonprofit economic development organizations
(NEDOs) which use resources from both the public and business sector to promote local economic
growth it is important to examine what implications this shift has on citizen participation. Some
researchers highlight the advantages of NEDOs, portraying them as high-performing organizations
that facilitate cooperation between city government and the local business community. But are
there any disadvantages to promoting development via NEDOs in terms of citizen participation?
Using survey data from nearly 500 NEDOs, this study finds that the local business community and
city government are heavily involved in NEDOs, including founding them and contributing board
members, money, and policy advice. However, in most NEDOs, citizens who are not part of local
business organizations do not participate directly, but they participate indirectly through their public
officials. Community development practitioners should work towards increasing direct citizen
participation in NEDOs, especially when NEDOs use significant public resources.
Keywords: Nonprofit economic development organizations (NEDOs),
citizen participation, economic development strategies, democratic society
INTRODUCTION
Researchers and practitioners alike have long asserted the importance of
citizen involvement in the community development decision-making process
(Daley & Marsiglia, 2001; Gaunt, 1998), including the promotion of economic
development (Sharp & Flora, 1999). Citizen involvement is essential for genuine
local and representative democracy to develop. In addition, citizens can help
identify community needs, articulate development goals to meet these needs,
and contribute their knowledge and skills.
Starting in the 1970s, city governments began to promote economic
development actively by engaging in an array of activities such as operating
industrial parks, running small business incubators, and orchestrating downtown
revitalization programs (Clarke & Gaile, 1998). More recently, cities have created
nonprofit economic development organizations (NEDOs) to help promote
This material is based upon work supported by the Cooperative State Research, Education and
Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Research Initiative, under agreement
no. 97-35401-4353. Any opinion, finding, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this
publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. Correspondence can be directed to Daniel Sullivan, Department of Sociology,
Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207. Email: dsulliva@pdx.edu.
Sullivan
59
60
Sullivan
61
Others are nominated by NEDO members, who are themselves from the business
community and tend to favor electing other business leaders. To be considered for
nomination one may already have to be a member of the organization, which can
involve making substantial financial contributions that many citizens cannot afford.
Citizens may be uninvolved for several other reasons. Some NEDOs do
not open their meetings to the public and do not publicly advertise them. In
addition, public funding for NEDOs is often not exposed to annual city
government budgetary scrutiny. Instead, off-budget allocations either passthrough grants from the state and federal government, or local off-budget
allocations (e.g., sales tax revenues) allow public money to be automatically
channeled to NEDOs with no public debate and often with little public knowledge
(Kantor, 1995; Squires, 1996).
Potential Benefits of Citizen Involvement
Many community development researchers and practitioners assert that citizen
participation in city government decision-making is an essential element of genuine
democracy. Gaunt (1998) asserts that there should be an open communication
process whereby citizens are involved in a mutual exchange of information,
reaction, and dialogue for the purpose of influencing decision making (p. 277).
Berry et al. (1993) agree that there needs to be citizen involvement and further
argue that their involvement should be structured, thus enabling citizens to have
a routine voice in the policy-making process. Given that NEDOs rather than
government development agencies are becoming an increasing popular type of
organization to promote economic development, it follows from the above argument
that citizen participation in NEDOs could be similarly important.
Gaunt (1998), building on the work of Warner (1971), posits that there are
three general ways in which citizens can participate. (1) Informational
participation means that citizens receive information from NEDOs, for example
information about upcoming development projects and the amount of public
money that will be used. Although this level of participation is the least influential
of the three, it does allow citizens to serve as watchdogs (Burke, 1983), and it
may lead to more active citizen participation in the future. (2) Review
participation refers to citizens not only obtaining information about development
projects but also commenting on the proposed projects before they are
implemented. This level of participation allows citizens to express their needs
and interests, which may be different from those of business leaders (Abatena,
1997; Daley & Marsiglia, 2001), and to evaluate whether the project will satisfy
those needs. The limitation of review participation is that citizen participation is
merely reactive; they are not involved in designing the development projects.
(3) The third and highest level is interactive participation whereby citizens are
involved in development projects from the early stages. They help define the
problems and needs of the community and participate in designing projects that
can meet these needs.
62
63
Sullivan
in their municipality or region. The resulting list of NEDOs was then expanded
through an extensive search on the Internet.
In total, 1,306 NEDOs were identified and sent surveys. A total of 666
NEDOs responded, resulting in a 51 percent response rate. Of these, 204 are
excluded because they are either purely public or purely private organizations.
Purely public organizations are those whose entire budget comes from public
sources, and they have either no board of director or one composed of only
public officials. Purely private organizations are those whose entire budgets
come from private sources, that have a board of directors composed of only
private sector persons, and that have no direct authority to use public powers
(zoning, eminent domain, ability to give public subsidies). Overall, 462 cases
are included in this study. Table 1 shows that about half of NEDOs operate in
metropolitan counties and half in nonmetropolitan counties. Many of the NEDOs
are in smaller cities (2,500 to 25,000 residents), and there are more from the
Midwest and South than from the Northeast and West.
Table 1. Characteristics of Cities that Have Nonprofit Economic
Development Organizations
N
percent
Metropolitan county
Nonmetropolitan county
Population size
2,500 - 9,999
10,000 - 24,999
25,000 - 49,999
50,000 - 99,999
100,000 +
220
237
237
263
111
49
18
5
48%
52%
52%
58%
24%
11%
4%
1%
Region
Northeast
Midwest
South
West
67
137
167
91
15%
30%
36%
20%
N = 462
Indicators
The main goal of this paper is to examine how citizens are involved in
NEDOs. The term citizen is difficult to define. Technically all residents of a
city are citizens. However, for this paper, I use the term citizen to refer to
residents who are not involved in a business organization (e.g., chamber of
commerce, utility company, developer) or some other leadership position (e.g.,
city or county government official or economic development expert affiliated
with higher education institution or Extension). The term citizen/neighborhood
organization refers to such non-business and non-governmental organizations
64
65
Sullivan
71%
48%
44%
44%
26%
17%
15%
13%
13%
13%
8%
5%
Most Involved
23%
21%
17%
16%
4%
3%
2%
2%
2%
1%
0%
0%
N = 462
66
percent never do so. The remaining 28 percent sometimes or usually notify the
public of their meetings. Not surprising, those NEDOs that open more of their
meetings to the public also tend to notify the public more often of upcoming
meetings (Spearmans rho = 0.659).
In terms of selecting NEDO board of directors, over half are elected without
any public involvement. Forty-four percent are elected by NEDO members, and
a small percentage are appointed because of their position in a business
organization like the chamber of commerce (7 percent) or because they contribute
financially to their NEDO (3 percent). Of those appointments that involve public
input, most are indirect because they are appointed by city and county governments
(33 percent). A small percentage of members are public officials themselves (6
percent) and, most significantly, very few are elected directly by voters (4 percent).
Local NEDO Relations with Other Organizations
In this section, I examine only local NEDOs i.e., NEDOs that operate
within the same geographical boundaries as their city governments. Overall, the
survey findings indicate that local NEDOs tend to interact most frequently with
city officials and local business organizations, especially the chambers of commerce,
and they rarely interact with citizen and neighborhood organizations. In terms of
weekly interaction, Table 3 illustrates that 57 percent interact with city officials
and 43 percent interact with their chambers. Some also interact weekly with several
other business actors developers, banks, utilities, and their county governments.
Few local NEDOs interact with citizen and neighborhood organizations, higher
education institutions, or state and federal government agencies.
Table 4 shows that most local NEDOs (97 percent) coordinate their
development projects at least sometimes with one or more development
organizations. Many local NEDOs coordinate with city government (81 percent)
and chamber of commerce (68 percent), and some coordinate with developers,
utilities, county NEDOs, and county government. Few coordinate with citizen
and neighborhood organizations.
Sixty-three percent of local NEDOs allow one or more organizations to
participate in developing their economic development strategies. City government
is by far the most frequent participant (54 percent), followed by a number of
business organizations chambers (33 percent), utilities (28 percent), and
developers (22 percent) and their county government (21 percent) (see Table
5). Only 11 percent of local NEDOs allow citizen and neighborhood organizations
to be involved.
Local NEDOs that cite at least one organization participating in developing
their strategies are then asked to name the one organization that is most
influential. Local NEDOs report that city government is most often the most
influential participant (61 percent); sixteen percent identify their chamber of
commerce or county NEDO. All other organizations are rarely or never the most
influential, including citizen and neighborhood organizations.
97%
96%
88%
84%
90%
81%
89%
71%
54%
65%
69%
60%
42%
46%
37%
31%
31%
1.965**
-0.425
-0.687
0.815
-0.352
1.818*
0.799
-1.521
0.616
1.553
0.744
-1.488
1.421
0.665
1.136
1.061
Yearly Interaction
Local
City
NEDO
Govt
t-stat
83%
63%
58%
39%
62%
55%
45%
26%
23%
22%
6%
20%
27%
13%
7%
2%
87%
81%
86%
51%
63%
35%
51%
59%
56%
31%
35%
48%
15%
31%
58%
19%
9%
27%
-0.726
2.254**
-0.948
0.761
1.645*
-0.799
-1.683*
-0.754
-2.000
-4.117****
-1.990***
-1.473
-4.113****
-1.000
-0.533
-4.086****
Monthly Interaction
Local
City
NEDO Govt
t-stat
43%
18%
20%
7%
16%
17%
10%
5%
8%
4%
0%
4%
2%
3%
2%
1%
57%
44%
50%
24%
22%
12%
7%
23%
10%
4%
11%
6%
2%
4%
9%
3%
1%
5%
1.302
1.406
0.598
1.420
-2.742***
1.352
0.000
-0.332
0.894
1.000
1.421
0.000
2.596***
0.000
-0.575
1.646*
Weekly Interaction
Local
City
NEDO Govt
t-stat
Table 3. Comparing Local NEDOs and City Governments, by Interaction with Other Development Organizations
Sullivan
67
68
City Government
t-statistic
Does your organization coordinate its economic development activities with another
organization(s)?
Always
27%
31%
0.821
Usually
35%
39%
0.564
Sometimes
34%
28%
-1.338
Never
3%
3%
-0.377
With which organization(s) does your organization coordinate?
City government
81%
Local NEDO
86%
Chamber of commerce
68%
72%
0.665
County NEDO
44%
54%
1.615
County government
42%
34%
-1.346
Utility company
39%
37%
-0.427
Developers
36%
27%
-1.482
Citizen/neighborhood org.
9%
12%
0.687
N = 117
69
Sullivan
City Government
54%
33%
28%
22%
21%
16%
13%
11%
11%
9%
2%
73%
65%
38%
37%
38%
45%
22%
20%
22%
26%
8%
61%
8%
8%
3%
3%
3%
1%
0%
0%
0%
0%
63%
9%
10%
1%
1%
0%
5%
0%
4%
5%
0%
t-statistic
5.046****
1.871*
2.596***
3.126***
5.345****
2.071**
1.986**
2.561**
3.349****
2.143**
Notes: Local NEDOs operate only in one city. For most influential, other = 12 percent for NEDOs
and 1 percent for city governments.
1: N = 117; 2: N = 71 for local EDOs, and N = 92 for city governments. Because they have
different number of cases, I could not perform a paired t-test.
* p<.10, **p<.05, ***p<.01, ****p<.001
70
DISCUSSION
Given that more cities are putting public resources into NEDOs to promote
economic development, the goal of this paper is to examine the extent to which
citizens are involved in the NEDO decision-making process.
My findings indicate that citizens are more likely to be indirectly involved
through their public officials than directly involved in NEDOs. City and county
governments are often involved in creating NEDOs, and they tend to be the
biggest financial contributors. In addition, NEDOs have more contact with city
officials than with any business organization, and they have some contact with
other public institutions such as county governments and higher educational
institutions. Therefore, overall, if government officials involved in NEDOs
represent the interests of non-business citizens, then we can say that, indirectly,
citizens have some influence over NEDOs.
However, citizens are less involved directly in NEDOs, and this may be a
point of concern for community development practitioners. For example, although
city and county government meetings must be publicly announced and open to
the public by law, NEDOs are not obligated to announce or hold public meetings.
As a result, some NEDOs do not notify the public of their meetings or allow the
public to attend. Thus, even the weakest form of citizen participation
informational participation is not available in all NEDOs. In addition, it is
difficult for citizens who are not business leaders to become members of their
boards of directors because few board members are publicly elected. Rather,
most are voted in by NEDO members or appointed by government officials.
Moreover, citizen and neighborhood organizations that are interested in economic
development rarely have contact with NEDOs, in terms of interaction, policy
coordination, or assistance in developing NEDO strategies. Although it is true
that many citizen and neighborhood groups do not have relations with their city
government about economic development issues, even fewer have relations with
their NEDOs. These findings suggest that the two strongest forms of citizen
participation review and interactive participation are not available in many
NEDOs.
Overall, these findings suggest that community development practitioners
should examine their community NEDOs to determine how many public
resources they use and how much opportunity there is for citizen involvement.
Citizen involvement is not only important for infusing democracy into local
economic development, but it is also vital for representing the diversity of
community interests and perspectives. Greater diversity can translate into
identifying and developing solutions for a wider array of needs and problems so
that development projects do not only reflect the interests of the business
community.
In cities that already have NEDOs, community development practitioners
should work towards increasing direct citizen access to NEDO decision-making,
especially when NEDOs use substantial public resources. In cities that are
Sullivan
71
72
Vol. 34
No. 2
2004
INTRODUCTION
In 1996, the first wave of baby boomers turned 50. With boomers nearing
retirement age, and the proportion of older persons in the population increasing,
understanding the behavior of older persons becomes increasingly important
(Junk, Fox, Cann, & Tripple, 1997). One of the behavior patterns under study is
Virginia W. Junk is a Professor in Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho;
Tammy L. Seefeld is a County Extension Agent for the University of Arkansas; Cynthia J. Schmiege
is an Associate Professor of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho; and Paul
G. Windley is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Idaho. Funding for this project was
provided in part by the USDA National Research Initiatives Program, rural development funds.
Correspondence can be directed to Virginia Junk, Family & Consumer Sciences, University of
Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-3183. Telephone: (208) 885-7264. Email: vjunk@uidaho.edu.
74
the migration of older persons. Over the past 35 years, the United States has
experienced recurring shifts in population migration patterns, including shifts in
migration patterns of older persons.
Traditionally, natural increases accounted for almost all of the growth in
nonmetropolitan communities, with the number of people leaving the
nonmetropolitan communities far exceeding the number of people in-migrating.
Beginning in the 1960s, there was a nonmetropolitan turnaround (Johnson &
Purdy, 1980; Fliegel & Sofranko, 1984; Fuguitt, 1985), with people moving
from the cities to nonmetropolitan areas. This turnaround was perceived to be a
sharp contrast to the more traditional in-migration trends of population flowing
from nonmetropolitan areas to metropolitan areas (Vining & Kontuly, 1978).
During the late 1970s, high resource-amenity communities (those developed
around natural or manufactured environmental or geographic amenities, such as
water, mountains, forests, or climate) were prominent centers of growth (Fuguitt,
1985). In the early 1980s, the high resource-amenity communities that were
labeled retirement communities emerged as the fastest growing group of
nonmetropolitan communities (Johnson, 1993). The population-restructuring
trend of the 1990s was facilitated by continued modernization in transportation
and communication, which reduced the challenges of distance that traditionally
determined settlement patterns (Frey & Johnson, 1998).
Older Adults in High Resource-Amenity Communities
High resource-amenity communities have only recently emerged as a
specialized type of community (Beale & Johnson, 1998). Communities of this
type have attributes that make them popular as destinations for older, healthier
in-migrants seeking a better quality of life for their retirement. Additionally,
private enterprise frequently developed and advertised high resource-amenity
communities as retirement paradises, and these communities may be designed
specifically to meet the needs of current and prospective older residents.
In-migration has been the principle contributor fueling the growth of many
high resource-amenity communities (Carlson, Junk, Fox, Rudzitis, & Cann, 1998;
Beale & Johnson, 1998). Some researchers posit that the growth in communities
with scenic and leisure appeal, which are rich in outdoor recreational
opportunities, reflects the rising importance of non-economic factors in migration
decision-making (Heaton, Clifford, & Fuguitt, 1981; Johnson & Fuguitt, 2000).
Glasgow (1990) found that older residents views of community satisfaction
have a big influence on how communities approach plans for growth and
development. Older newcomers may be fleeing the negative consequences of
growth in their previous places of residence. Thus, they might be more likely
than longtime residents (who have not experienced the negative consequences
of rapid urbanization) to support environmental protection and to oppose future
growth and development (Stallmann & Jones, 1995).
75
76
77
2001b). Older residents satisfaction with their community, and their perception
of how well their needs and desires will continue to be met, will increasingly
influence how communities approach plans for growth and development
(Glasgow, 1990).
Theoretical Framework
Theory-based research is needed to identify further the potential conflicting
opinions between newcomer and longtime residents. Nonmetropolitan
newcomers and long-timers may view environment, growth, and development
issues differently. Conflict between newcomer and longtime residents may occur
if newcomers bring particular social ideas to their nonmetropolitan community
that are distinctly different from those of longtime residents. Environmental
concerns and individual views about growth and development issues may be the
basis for disagreement (Krannich & Zollinger, 1997). Socioeconomic status
and lifestyle differences, along with other factors, may also contribute to conflicts
between newcomer and longtime residents (Salamon & Tornatore, 1994).
Gangplank Theory
One theory that attempts to explain conflict between newcomer and longtime
residents is the gangplank theory (Society of Planning Officials, 1976). This
theory proposes that in rapidly growing, high resource-amenity nonmetropolitan
communities, newcomers are thought to be particularly concerned about future
growth and development that could conceivably destroy the environment that
initially attracted them to the community. More specifically, newcomers do not
want any more newcomers, and they want the environment that drew them to the
area to remain unchanged. Their desire is to move into an area of their choice,
then pull up the gangplank in order to restrict community change.
Smith and Krannich (2000) examined whether underlying causes of social
conflict about growth and development between newcomer and longtime
residents were related to significant attitude and value differences. Junk (2001)
found from focus group discussions that longtime residents felt newcomers were
not connecting to their community: Neighborliness is changing. We used to
know a lot of our neighbors. Its sad because people drive into their driveway,
push a button, go into their garage, push a button, and nobody interacts (p. 26).
Cockerham and Blevins (1977) found that in-migration into Jackson Hole,
Wyoming brought change, and newcomers clearly wanted control of growth. In
addition, they quoted one newcomer as stating: Im here and I have what I
want. Although it is a terrible thing to say, I want other people to keep out. Its
time to close the gate and protect what is left of this valley (p.72).
Newcomer and longtime residents differ on many socio-demographic levels.
However, for variables indicative of attitudes toward population growth,
economic development, and tourism development, Smith and Krannich (2000)
78
79
80
Sample
The 50 and older population of Idahos three retiree magnet counties
(counties with communities that attract higher than typical percentages of older
persons) was sampled. Potential participants were identified using snowball
and convenience sampling. Based on suggestions by Frenzen and Parker (2000),
certain types of stakeholders in rural communities were identified, including
mayors, county commissioners, ministers, bank managers, county extension
agents who focused on community development, librarians, pharmacists, lawyers,
and proprietors of needle craft and quilt shops, toy stores, hardware stores, grocery
stores, clothing stores, medical centers, and senior centers.
Before visiting each county, persons who currently or previously lived there
were identified and asked if they could refer researchers to contact persons within
the community. Next, researchers visited each county and first met with the
Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce and representatives of
community development groups. Chamber of Commerce members, as well as
business owners, were identified from Chamber of Commerce membership lists.
After meeting with persons on the lists, researchers were given names of others
who might fit the criteria for inclusion in the study, who in turn recommended
additional participants. The researchers also stopped in at businesses on the
main streets seeking potential stakeholder participants and leads for persons
age 50 and over who might meet the study criteria. This was a particularly
important step since the mailing addresses of businesses, which were often post
office boxes rather than street addresses, were not listed in telephone directories.
Visiting with the businessperson was a way to get their correct mailing address.
In order to identify additional potential participants, subscriptions to local
newspapers were obtained. Each issue was scrutinized to identify newcomers
and longtime residents in particular since, unlike businesspersons, there was no
directory on which to rely. Particular focus was given to newspaper
announcements that listed peoples names and sometimes their ages, such as fun
runs. Newspapers were also used to look for pictures of local events where
people appeared to be 50 years or over, followed by phone screening.
Because of the labor-intensive nature of these means of identifying persons,
and the difficulty in identifying enough newcomer and longtime residents for
the results to be generalized in each county, a list was compiled of University of
Idaho graduates age 50 and over in the counties. Those who met the study
criteria were then contacted by phone to confirm that they were in the target age
group, to find out how long they had lived in their current community, and to
check on their current mailing address. The drawback of this method of sampling
is the potential bias for higher levels of education.
Participants in the survey included three categories of community residents:
(1) newcomers age 50 and older who had lived in their community ten years or
less, (2) longtime residents age 50 and older who had lived in their community
more than ten years, and (3) stakeholders of any age who were either newcomers
81
82
community. They could check one of four answers: Not well at all, fairly
well, very well, or other (please describe).
An additional dichotomous dependent variable was created for use in logistic
regression analyses. This variable classified each respondent as either a
newcomer (n=128) or a longtime resident (n=279). Creating this variable allowed
us to determine answers to which questions about community growth and change,
based on the gangplank theoretical model, would be significantly related to
whether a person was a newcomer or longtime resident.
The Independent Variables
Our theoretical model suggested that concerns about community growth,
concerns about land usage, satisfaction with the cost of housing, and how well
the respondent felt growth was being managed in their community would be
significant in distinguishing newcomers and longtime residents. Preliminary
analyses also suggested one additional variable of interest, the respondents
satisfaction with restaurant choices in the community, should be included in the
analyses.
Other independent variables included eight characteristics of respondents.
The first was how many years they had lived in the community. Other independent
variables included the socio-demographic characteristics of education, sex,
marital status, employment status, age, approximate home value, and approximate
family income.
RESULTS
From the combined sample of residents of all three counties, 69 percent of
participants were long-timers and 31 percent were newcomers. Education
attainment was fairly high, ranging from some college to advanced degrees for
most residents. Although these levels were affected by including some University
of Idaho graduates in the sample frame, the overall educational level in one
county in particular (Blaine) was very high, with 43 percent having a bachelors
degree or higher compared to 26 percent in Valley County and 17 percent in
Bonner County (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). In addition, those who
move when they are older tend to be more highly educated than the norm (Junk
et al., 1997), which would raise even further the expected average level of
educational attainment in the sample.
The sex of participants was almost evenly split. Three-quarters of
participants were married. The average age was 61, with a mode age of 51. The
range for age was 50-94 years. One-third worked full-time, 6 percent were
employed part-time, and nearly half were self-employed. Eleven percent of
longtime residents and 13 percent of newcomers were retired.
The mean home value for longtime residents ($273,994) was 60 percent of
that of new residents ($456,198) (p<.02). One problem with using the mean is
83
that it is sensitive to outlying values. For example, in Sun Valley there was a
cluster of homes at $1 million ranging up to one respondent with a home value
of $5 million. The median home value in this study was $250,000 for newcomers
and $200,000 for long-timers. This value compares to a median home value of
homeowners of all ages in the counties of $288,800 in Blaine County, $141,200
in Valley County, and $124,500 in Bonner County. The mode in the study was
$150,000 for newcomers and $200,000 for long-timers. These modes compare
to census data mode ranges that show the following ranges for the three counties:
Blaine County $300,000-$499,000, Valley County $100,000-$149,999, and
Bonner County $50,000-$149,999 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000).
Since the median education and home values were higher than shown by
the census data, one would expect that the median income would also be higher.
This was the case. Median family income was $50,000-$64,999 compared to a
median income range of a low of $32,803 in Bonner County to a high of $50,496
in Blaine County. One would also expect that people age 50 and older would
have higher household income than all persons age 25 and older. The majority
of both newcomers and longtime residents had family incomes above $50,000.
Focus Group Responses
Comments from focus group participants provided insight into local
community issues. Most were very positive about how they would describe
their community to others who were thinking of moving there. A common
addendum to the statement was, if they can afford it. They thought quality of
life would be improved by dealing with growth issues such as increased traffic,
making a road to bypass the downtown area, repairing streets, and making it
safer to cross what has become a busy main street.
There was disagreement on how newcomers were affecting the community.
Some longtime residents believed that newcomers wanted to Californiacate
the area. They said, People move here because they love the quality of life, and
then they want to change everything so its just like where they left. Others said,
Older newcomers add an energy and life to our community. They volunteer, and
one couple planted all these baskets of flowers on our main street and water them
by hand using milk jugs. No one in our town has been willing to do that before.
Discussions of public services brought out the desire to have ambulances
respond with paramedics rather than emergency medical technicians. There
was concern about the affordability of local activities that drew people to the
community. Some newcomers wanted a public golf course with reasonable greens
fees and special price breaks for skiing and golf for seniors.
The groups discussed challenges facing their communities, with one of the
most common being housing affordability. They were worried not just for
themselves but also for their children who wanted to live in the area but could
not afford housing. Besides the purchase price, escalating property taxes were
a concern, particularly to the oldest focus group participants. Some of the older
84
participants in the groups saw two groups of elderly persons in their community:
those moving in with money and those who aged there.
One of the most interesting comments came from a group of businesspersons
in two of the three communities. They mentioned that they moved to the area in
the first place for a slower pace of life and to work hard in the summer so they
could ski and relax during the winter. However, people moving in from other
states do not understand the gone fishing with grandson or gone skiing sign
on the door of the business. They expect businesses to be open regular hours
year round, but this is not the norm for these businesspersons. There arent used
to and get irritated by customers who demand everything be done immediately.
DATA ANALYSIS
Chi Square Analyses
Analysis began by comparing percentages in various answer categories of
newcomers and longtime residents. The chi square statistic was used to determine
significant (p<.05) relationships between the answers of newcomers and longtime
residents and each variable of interest. The discussion of these findings follows.
Duration of Residence
When considering the independent variable of duration of residence with
the dependent variables, newcomer and longtime residents differed significantly
on three different issues. Compared to 23 percent of newcomers, 33 percent of
longtime residents were very concerned about growth (p<.04). Longtime
residents were also less satisfied than newcomers were with the cost of housing:
31 percent and 19 percent respectively (p<.02). Conversely, 42 percent of
newcomers compared to 35 percent of longtime residents felt that growth
was not being handled well within their communities (p<.02).
Sex
When examining the influence of sex on the dependent variables, females
were more concerned than males about employment opportunities (p<.05) and
public transportation options (p<.02). When compared to females, a greater
percentage of males felt that growth was not being handled well at all within
their communities (p<.01).
Age
The influence of age on the dependent variables indicated that people between
the ages of 65 and 74 were more concerned about land usage (p<.05) than people
in other age groups were concerned. Those over the age of 75 years were less
satisfied with the cost of housing (p<.02) than people in other age groups were.
85
Marital Status
Marital status significantly influenced the combined sample with regard to
level of concern about public transportation options (p<.03). Compared to 25
percent of married participants, 38 percent of unmarried participants were very
concerned about public transportation. Additionally, married and non-married
participants differed in their level of satisfaction about utility costs (p<.02) and
the cost of housing (p<.01). Compared to unmarried participants, married
participants considered themselves moderately to very satisfied with the
cost of utilities. When questioned about cost of housing, unmarried participants
were significantly less satisfied.
Employment Status
In consideration of employment status, self-employed people were
significantly more concerned with community leadership (p<.02) and less
satisfied with property taxes (p<.04) than those individuals in other categories
of employment were.
Level of Education
Regarding participants level of education, there were significant findings within
the category of growth. Overall, people with advanced degrees or beyond had
greater concern about growth (p<.02) than people in other categories of education
had.
Family Income
When examining family income, participants with family incomes less than
$24,999 were less satisfied with the cost of housing (p<.02) than participants in
other groups of family income level were. This was not surprising given the
high cost of housing in these resort communities.
Value of Home
When examining the influence of home value on the dependent variables,
there were significant findings within the category of cost of utilities. Overall,
people with home values in the range of $100,000 to $199,999 were less satisfied
with the cost of utilities (p<.03) than people in other home value groups were.
Logistic Regression Analyses
Because the theoretical model of interest was the gangplank theory, and
whether or not newcomers wished to move to high resource-amenity communities
and then, in effect, draw up the gangplank, we were especially interested in
the extent to which respondents views on various aspects of community growth
would be characteristic of being a newcomer or a longtime resident. Our
86
S.E.
Wald
df
sig.
.120
.183
-.374
.277
-.293
.432
1-.089
.146
.154
.130
.116
.180
.182
.850
.675
1.41
8.27
5.70
2.63
5.64
.011
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
.411
.234
.004**
.017*
.104
.018*
.916
*p<.05, ** p<.01
Three issues stood out as being significantly different for newcomers and
longtime residents (see Table 1). Newcomers were more likely to be concerned
about how growth was being managed. In the focus groups, newcomers
commented that they supported growth but did not see much evidence of longrange planning to accommodate it. Newcomers were less likely to be satisfied
with restaurant choices. In Blaine County, there was the widest variety of choices,
most likely because of the proximity to the Sun Valley resort area, but the other
two counties had much more limited choices in restaurants. Longtime residents
were less likely to be satisfied with housing costs, but satisfaction with property
87
taxes was not a significant predictor, even though the rise in housing prices
brought increased valuation for taxation. In the focus groups, long-timers
commented about their concern that their children would not be able to buy a
home in the community and thus would have to move away.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to determine if there were significant
differences between older newcomer and longtime residents concerning their
opinions about community growth and change. The theoretical base was the
gangplank theory, which posits that newcomers who move to a high resourceamenity area will want to restrict growth and change in an effort to maintain the
status quo. The population sampled consisted of persons age 50 and older from
three nonmetropolitan counties in Idaho. While results cannot be generalized
beyond this population, some interesting relationships were observed that might
hold true for older people in other nonmetropolitan areas.
Community Growth Variables
Longtime residents were significantly more concerned about growth than
newcomers were. Similar to the findings of Smith and Krannich (2000), these
findings do not support the gangplank theory. The newcomers apparent greater
comfort with growth could be based on the assumption that they had not lived in
the community over a long time period and had no memories of how things
used to be with regards to the community. However, both newcomer and
longtime residents with advanced degrees and between the ages of 65 and 74
showed greater concern about growth and land usage.
Economic Variables
When economic variables were considered, multiple findings were indicated.
Compared to longtime residents, newcomers were found to be more satisfied
with the affordability of housing in their communities. Notably, the mean home
values for newcomers were significantly higher than for longtime residents.
Female residents in both groups were less satisfied with the cost of housing.
Moreover, residents over the age of 75, and those participants who had incomes
less than $24,999 (whether newcomer or longtime resident) were also less
satisfied with the cost of housing. As housing demands increase, rent goes up
and affordability becomes more of an issue for those on limited incomes. In
addition, the continued rise in property values places economic stress on longtime
property owners because of the resulting increase in property taxes.
Participants opinions about land usage were significantly related to their
age. One possible reason for elevated concern could be the realization of how
property taxes will affect their disposable income after they retire. Age also
related to the level of satisfaction that longtime residents had about the cost of
88
housing. This concern may stem from a rise in property values because of the
influx of newcomers creating an increasing demand on the local housing market.
As compared to newcomers, longtime residents seemed to be less satisfied
with many economic variables and more concerned about growth variables. For
community and county decision-makers, this diversity can portend a potential
conflict between the issues new older residents want addressed, as compared to
the issues of concern to longtime residents. While longtime residents are
concerned about economic issues such as the costs of housing and utilities,
newcomers appear to be concerned with the issues related to the handling of
growth and land usage.
IMPLICATIONS
As a result of people over age 50 choosing to reside in areas that are filled
with natural amenities, the intermountain west and other parts of the country in
amenity-rich areas have experienced much growth in their older population.
Although the three high resource-amenity counties represented in this study have
attracted older in-migrants, the data do not support that newcomers oppose
growth. In essence, the majority of the newcomers in this study did not want to
pull up the gangplank in order to restrict community change. They were, instead,
concerned about how growth and change would be handled. Further study could
ascertain specific growth issues in order to illustrate what newcomer and longtime
residents would like, specifically, to have done differently. For example, after
the data were presented to the communities, one planning official wanted to
know if older persons would support an airport expansion what he termed
actionable information.
The results of this study show differing levels of concern about community
issues for newcomer and longtime residents. This study classified newcomers
and longtime residents based on the number of years in the community. Other
determinants may exist that would make someone a newcomer. For example,
some people move into a community and quickly become involved in community
activities and organizations. Others stay more distant and may not feel a part of
the community as quickly, if ever. Some communities make newcomers feel
more welcome than others and make it easier to become acquainted and
participate in activities. Further studies that identify additional characteristics
of newcomers, other than number of years in the community, could contribute to
the understanding of potential conflict between what newcomers and longtime
residents want.
The differences of opinions between newcomers and longtime residents
toward community change play an important role in determining when or if
local action is to be undertaken. When considering the diverse attitudes of both
newcomer and longtime residents toward change, community modifications need
to be done cautiously. Differences of opinion about growth may create a general
lack of support for efforts, which can lead to possible conflicts or block efforts
89
90
adult day care, in-home health, and nursing home care. If communities
are ill-prepared for a shift to an older population, public services and
facilities can become overtaxed.
Explore ways to provide lower cost local housing to service employees,
so there will be a sufficient labor pool to provide the services that an
increasingly older population needs. With commensurately lower
salaries, those in service jobs often cannot afford housing and the cost
of living in high resource-amenity communities.
Last, an influx of older newcomers can subtly change a community in ways
this study did not measure. Qualitative studies that allow the researcher to spend
several months living in a community could identify factors not evident in the
study reported here. As these communities continue to grow and change, the
need for actionable research will become increasingly important.
REFERENCES
Beale, C. L. 1974. Rural development: Population and settlement prospects. Journal of Soil and
Water Conservation 29: 23-27.
Beale, C. L. & K. M. Johnson. 1998. The identification of recreational counties in nonmetropolitan
areas of the United States. Population Research and Policy Review 17: 37-53.
Bennett, D. G. 1993. Retirement migration and economic development in high-amenity,
nonmetropolitan areas. The Journal of Applied Gerontology 12(4): 466-481.
Carlson, J. E., V. W. Junk, L. K. Fox, G. Rudzitis, & S. E. Cann. 1998. Factors affecting retirement
migration to Idaho: An adaptation of the Amenity Retirement Migration Model. The
Gerontologist 38(1): 18-24.
Cockerham, W. C. & A. L. Blevins, Jr. 1977. Attitudes toward land-use planning and controlled
population growth in Jackson Hole. Journal of Community Development Society
8(1): 62-73.
DeMaris. 1995. A tutorial in logistic regression. Journal of Marriage and the Family 52: 956-968.
Dillman, D. A. 1978. The Total Design Method. New York: Wiley.
Dychtwald, K. 1990. Toward a new image of aging. Prevention 42: 103-111.
Fliegel, F., & A. J. Sofranko. 1984. Nonmetropolitan population increase: The attractiveness of
rural living and race. Rural Sociology 49(2): 298-308.
Frenzen, P. D., & T. S. Parker. January, 2000. Rural consumer markets. Rural America 15(1): 2-11.
Frey, W. H., & K. M. Johnson. 1998. Concentrated in-migration, restructuring, and the Selective
deconcentration of the United States population. Pp. 79-106 in P. Boyle & K. Halfacree
(eds.), Migration into Rural Areas. London: Wiley.
Fuguitt, G. V. 1985. The nonmetropolitan population turnaround. Annual Review of Sociology 11:
259-280.
Fuguitt, G. V. & T. B. Heaton. 1995. The impact of migration on the nonmetropolitan population
age structure, 1960-1990. Population Research and Policy Review 14: 215-232.
George, P., & P. Mallery. 2001. SPSS for Windows: A simple guide and reference 10.0 update.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
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Vol. 34
No. 2
2004
INTRODUCTION
In rural and small communities, proposed changes in natural resource uses
have the propensity to become sources of conflict. Despite perceptions to the
contrary, residence in such areas is not an indication of common behaviors or
goals related to uses of the areas natural resources. Newcomers, especially those
from larger more urban areas, often hold preservationist orientations toward the
natural environment. In contrast, established residents are regularly depicted as
holding utilitarian priorities, reflecting their involvement in extractive occupations,
such as farming, logging, and mining (cf. Hays, 1987; Bourke & Luloff, 1994). A
better understanding of these differing interests could help rural and small
communities respond more effectively to their changing economy and environment.
When an extra-local mining company proposed to operate a limestone quarry
in Haines Township, Pennsylvania, a group of largely newcomer residents
organized to oppose it. There were few vocal proponents of the quarry in the
community; the majority of residents did not become involved in the issue. We
investigate how length of residence, community attachment, attitudes toward
private property rights, and environmental behavior affected residents attitudes
Sezer Gncolu-Eser, Post Doctoral Scholar; A.E. Luloff,Professor of Rural Sociology; and Rex
H. Warland, Professor Emeritus of Rural Sociology. Correnspondence can directed to A.E. Luloff,
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, Pennsylvania 16802. Email: aeluloff@psu.edu.
94
toward the quarry. First, we review the literature on community attachment and
attitude differences between newcomers and oldtimers on environmental issues.
Then, we explain our methodology, briefly describe the study site and quarry
issue, and present and discuss our survey findings with the help of interview data.
Community Attachment and Newcomer-Oldtimer Disputes
Most definitions of community include references to geographic territory
(locale), local society, collective actions, and mutual identity (Wilkinson, 1991;
Luloff & Bridger, 2003). Our focus is on the complex system of friendship
and kinship networks and formal and informal associational ties rooted in family
life and on-going socialization processes (Kasarda & Janowitz, 1974, p. 329).
Residents become attached to their communities through such interpersonal
and organizational ties (Goudy, 1990; Kasarda & Janowitz, 1974). Attachment
through these social bonds leads to positive sentiments toward the community
and, in turn, enhances residents attachments (Goudy, 1990).
Community attachment relates to three systemic variables: length of
residence, socioeconomic status, and age (Goudy, 1990; Kasarda & Janowitz,
1974; Sampson, 1988). Longer time spent in a place leads to selectivity in social
relations and produces sentiments that are more positive toward the community.
Higher status residents tend to exhibit more interest in community affairs because
they have more education and discretionary resources to articulate their interests
(Coleman, 1957; Crain & Rosenthal, 1967; McCarthy & Zald, 1977). In addition,
such residents have greater stake(s) which usually generates concern
with community affairs (Kasarda & Janowitz, 1974, p. 335).
Residents often respond to controversial issues based on existing community
attachments (Coleman, 1957; Gamson, 1966). Those who identify their well
being with that of the community try to constrain disagreements (Coleman, 1957).
If opposing parties are bound by friendship, shared backgrounds, and/or
organizational ties, disagreements on community issues seldom ascend to enmity
(Gamson, 1966).
Background characteristics of community members are important factors
in local responses to controversial issues. Differences among community
members with respect to their length of residence and socioeconomic status can
create a milieu for episodes of conflict. Gamson (1966, p. 73) noted:
[A]ny clear-cut basis of differentiation among the citizens of a town may
provide a structural basis for the development of inter-group hostility if
there also exists strains and low integration among solitary groups.
Many newcomers to rural and small communities differ from established
residents. Research has shown that newcomers tend to be younger and have, on
average, higher levels of education and better-paying jobs (Bell, 1992; Graber,
1974; Ploch, 1978; Smith & Krannich, 2000; Sofranko & Williams, 1980).
Johnson & Fuguitt (2000) focused attention on the age-specific trends of rural
in-migration. They suggested that individuals in their thirties with children were
95
96
Perceptions of threats to local ways of life, well being, and collective identity
may affect oldtimers attitudes toward changes in natural resources and land
uses in a variety of ways. For example, residents of Laurel Mountain (West
Virginia) organized against an extra-local mining companys proposal to operate
a limestone quarry in their community and prevented it from opening (Steelman
& Carmin, 1998). Community members regarded the proposed quarry as a threat
to their traditional way of life and collective well-being. They believed the quarry
would degrade local springs, air, natural habitat, and the aesthetics of their
community and, as a result, their quality of life. In Tooele, Utah, many oldtimers
hoped that the countys stigmatization as a contaminated place would keep
potential newcomers away (Wulfhorst, 2000). They were more concerned about
the alteration of their lifestyles by newcomers than about the risks posed by
hazardous waste management operation in their county. And, in Trysil, Norway,
residents who had strong ties to forestry, hunting, and livestock farming regarded
attempts to protect the carnivore populations as a threat to their way of life
(Skogen, 2001). Trysil residents resisted pro-carnivore attitudes by actively
defending their experiences with nature and rejecting the environmentalists
definition of the carnivore problem. Their negative attitudes toward the predators
were closely connected to resentments toward city people who have never
seen mutilated sheep.
Not all rural areas have been affected by newcomer/oldtimer disagreements.
Indeed, Smith and Krannich (2000) suggested that newcomers and oldtimers in
their study communities had more common ground than what was perceived
by either group. A better understanding of this common ground, or of the multiple
and often contradictory orientations, would help community developers address
and mitigate possible conflicts and enhance community-building efforts based
on increased understanding, respect, and cooperation towards others (Smith &
Krannich, 2000. p. 418). Taken together, preservationist and utilitarian
orientations toward natural resources and land use could create both opportunities
and constraints for rural communities. The challenge is to properly integrate
these orientations into local decision-making. Wilkinson (1991, p.117) asserted
that community development itself is an inside job, a process of communitybuilding by community actors and groups. It requires local actors newcomers
and oldtimers, preservationists and utilitarians to act collectively to pursue
multiple community interests which would relate to all aspects of local life
social, cultural, economic, and environmental.
Based on our understanding of the literature and informant interviews, we
hypothesized that in Haines Township: (1) newcomers would be more likely
than oldtimers to oppose the quarry; (2) residents with higher levels of
community attachment would be more likely to hold a neutral position toward
the quarry; (3) residents who defended private property rights would be more
likely to support the quarry; and (4) pro-environmental residents would be more
likely to oppose the quarry. Sociodemographic variables were used as controls.
97
98
99
Limestone springs at the lower sections of Elk and Pine Creek basins provide
large amounts of cold water that allows Elk, Pine, and Penns Creeks to have the
cool water essential for trout fisheries. PVCA argued that wastewater from the
proposed quarry would disrupt the creeks thermal regime and destroy the trout
habitat through sedimentation. The group hoped that exceptional value
designation would prevent the quarry from opening since such designation does
not allow any activity that would degrade existing water quality.
In addition to their opposition activities, PVCA members worked on other
local projects. This included helping to establish the Haines Township Planning
Commission that was charged with preparing a comprehensive plan. However,
both the petition for exceptional value and initiation of a comprehensive plan
raised additional concerns in the community. Many feared these changes would
restrict existing flexibility in land use practices.
PVCA organized its opposition professionally and attracted outside support
from national organizations, such as the Sierra Club and Trout Unlimited. Despite
these efforts, the group did not stop the quarry from opening. It did, however,
delay quarry operations until 1997 and the downstream sections of Elk and
Pine Creeks were re-designated as exceptional value waters. As a result, the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP, formerly DER)
licensed the quarry for operation under strict environmental regulation.
Measures
Residents attitude toward the quarry, our dependent variable, was measured
with eight Likert-type items (strongly agree to strongly disagree). We randomly
placed these items in a battery that also included six items related to other local
issues. All statements were drawn from the key and action informant interviews.
Factor analysis was used to simplify these items. We derived a scale of quarry
attitude by calculating the mean of the eight items that factored together (Table
1). Internal consistency of the quarry attitude scale was assessed with Alpha
(0.86); a higher score indicated a more pro-quarry attitude.
Length of residence. Earlier, several studies used 10 years as the dividing
line between newcomers and oldtimers. These studies assumed that 10 years of
residence in a community was sufficient to integrate and adapt to a new
environment (Graber, 1974; Sofranko & Williams, 1980; Fortmann & Kusel,
1990). Following this rationale, we used residence of at least 10 years to
differentiate between oldtimers and newcomers.
Community Attachment. Level of community attachment was measured by
questions adopted from previous studies (Goudy, 1990; Kasarda & Janowitz,
1974; Sampson, 1988). It included two variables: community sentiments and
local social bonds. Three questions measured community sentiments. The first
asked whether respondents do not feel at home at all (1), feel somewhat at home
(2), or feel very much at home in their community (3). The second asked If for
some reason you had to move away from this community, how sorry or pleased
would you be to leave? A response of 1 indicated that the respondent would be
100
Limestone Quarry
0.854
0.766
0.732
0.728
0.652
0.630
0.514
0.360
N = 186
Eigenvalue
Percent of Variation Explained
Cronbachs Alpha
Extraction Method: Principal Axis Factoring
4.08
44.95
0.86
101
102
FINDINGS
The typical respondent was a 51 year old married high school educated
female, with an income of between $30,000 and $49,999. The vast majority
were oldtimers (72 percent had resided there ten years or more).
The average respondent was an established resident reasonably attached to
the community.3 The mean attitude toward the quarry and toward private property
rights was neutral, while the mean involvement in behavioral aspects of
environmentalism was moderate.
Bivariate Analyses
We first examined the quarry attitude using bivariate analysis. Zero-order
correlations indicated that ten variables were significantly correlated with quarry
attitude: education, occupation, political view, income, length of residence,
interest in community, membership in organizations, participation in HTFF,
attitude toward private property rights, and environmental behavior. Attitude
toward private property rights and environmental behavior had the strongest
correlations with the dependent variable (see Appendix 1 for the full correlation
matrix for the variables used in this analysis).
Next, we conducted a series of difference-of-means tests (t-tests) to ascertain
whether oldtimers and newcomers differed (Table 2). Three statistically
significant sociodemographic differences emerged. Oldtimers were older, had
lower levels of education, and less income. No statistically significant differences
existed between the two groups of residents in terms of gender, occupation,
political view, or parental status.
Nor did any significant differences exist between newcomers and oldtimers
feelings at home or interest in the community. Oldtimers were significantly
more likely to indicate that they would feel sorry if they had to leave their
community for some reason.
Strong and statistically significant differences existed between oldtimers
and newcomers with respect to all five indicators of interpersonal ties. Oldtimers
were more likely than newcomers to have more friends, relatives, and close
relationships (more than twice as many) in the community and to know more
adults and have been in more neighboring houses. Oldtimers and newcomers
did not differ significantly from each other with respect to their involvements in
community activities, events, or organizations and in organizational memberships.
However, oldtimers were significantly more likely to participate in HTFF
activities.
Both oldtimers and newcomers reported a close-to-neutral position toward
private property rights. No difference between oldtimers and newcomers
involvements in behavioral aspects of environmentalism was found. Finally,
oldtimers were more likely than newcomers to support the quarry. This difference
was statistically significant.
103
Newcomers
(N = 61)
Mean Scores
Sociodemographics
Gender
Age
Education
Occupation
Income
Political View
Parental Status
Community Attachment
Community Sentiments
Feeling at Home
Sorry/Pleased to Leave
Interest in Community
Local Social Bonds
Interpersonal Ties
Proportion of Friends
Proportion of Relatives
Number of Close Relations
Number of Houses Been In
Number of Adults Known
Organizational Ties
Level of Involvement
Organization Membership
Participation in HTFF
Attitude to Private Property
Environmental Behavior
Quarry Attitude
t-value
0.57
53.87
2.48
0.48
4.77
3.21
0.40
0.47
44.45
2.89
0.35
5.55
3.30
0.53
1.27
3.89***
-2.43*
1.51
-2.35*
-0.35
-1.46
2.78
4.35
4.29
2.64
3.98
4.32
1.86
2.93**
-0.28
2.94
2.31
14.07
6.64
13.49
2.41
1.73
5.87
4.18
8.00
3.95***
3.79***
2.73***
5.23***
3.66***
2.41
0.48
0.52
3.25
0.44
2.86
2.22
0.40
0.36
2.95
0.44
2.60
1.35
0.95
3.10**
1.45
0.07
2.06*
a
The specific number of cases used in the tests varied due to missing data.
* Significant at p<0.05; ** significant at p<0.01; *** significant at p<0.001.
Multivariate Analyses
We analyzed attitude toward the quarry using a combination of hierarchical
and stepwise regression methods. First, variable sets were sequentially entered
into the analysis to assess their impact on the quarry attitude. We began with the
sociodemographic control variables, and then added length of residence, community
sentiments, interpersonal ties, organizational ties, attitude toward private property
rights, and environmental behavior to build the complete model. This model
accounted for about 30 percent of the variation in quarry attitude (Table 3).
Proportion of friends in the community, level of involvement in community
activities, attitude toward private property rights (the most significant and strongest
coefficient in the model), and environmental behavior were significant predictors.
104
Model 1
-0.071
0.021
0.051
0.129
-0.090
Model 3
Model 4
-0.067
0.031
0.086
0.115
-0.093
-0.076
0.053
0.170
20.175
0.020
-0.118
-0.022
0.015
-0.114
-0.011
-0.219*
-0.045
0.109
-0.005
0.058
-0.219*
-0.036
0.096
-0.019
0.063
0.189*
-0.104
-0.113
0.337***
-0.226*
0.191
0.157*
-0.096
-0.102
-0.136*
0.348*** 0.369*** 0.378***
-0.229*
-0.213** -0.240***
Constant
2.897
2.754
0.304
0.324
Adjusted R2
N
139
161
* Significant at p<0.05; ** significant at p<0.01; *** significant at p<0.001
0.135*
0.147*
0.172**
-0.222**
-0.223***
2.642
0.315
178
2.552
0.321
203
In the complete model, missing data on one or more measures reduced the
sample by nearly 40 percent. To increase sample size, parental status and
household income were excluded from the analysis. Survey respondents regularly
refuse to answer sensitive questions (Bailey, 1994, p. 132). Parental status and
total household income had the lowest numbers of responses in the sample (167
and 175 respectively). Further, neither measure emerged as a significant predictor
in any hierarchical regression equation. Their exclusion raised the sample size
to 161 and the adjusted R2 also increased (0.324).
To simplify the model, we next used stepwise regression. Stepwise regression
analysis is designed to approach the maximum R2 with the minimum number of
105
independent variables that make the largest contributions (Cohen and Cohen,
1983, p.124). We conducted stepwise regression by elimination. First, all
independent variables were entered simultaneously into the analysis. At each
stage, we dropped non-significant variables that made small contributions to R2
from the regression. Then, the remaining variables were regressed on quarry
attitude. These analyses yielded Model 3 that also explained about 32 percent of
the variation in attitudes toward the quarry, using 178 cases. Significant variables
included occupation, length of residence, proportion of friends in the community,
attitude toward private property rights, and environmental behavior. This model,
however, failed to include a significant number of cases, raising questions about
whether it adequately described the sample.
To increase the number of cases available for multivariate analysis, we next
excluded occupation from the model and conducted another stepwise regression
analysis. The exclusion of occupation was based on its weak relationship with
quarry attitude (it had the smallest coefficient) and the fact that no significant
difference between oldtimers and newcomers on this measure existed. Model 4
is the final reduced model (Table 3). It too explained 32 percent of the variation,
but included data on an additional 25 residents (14% more cases). Significant
predictors were length of residence, proportion of friends in the community, the
level of involvement in community activities, events, or organizations,
participation in the HTFF, attitude toward private property rights (the strongest
predictor of quarry attitude), and environmental behavior.
Private property advocates not only strongly supported the quarry but also
seemed to represent a group of loners who participated less in community.4
They were less likely to be interested in knowing what went on in the community
(r = -0.25, p<0.01), to be involved in community activities (r = -0.19, p<0.01),
to belong to community organizations (r = -0.20, p<0.01), or to participate in
the HTFF (r = -0.20, p<0.01).
Although this paper primarily focused on attitude differences toward the
quarry, we also conducted a series of one-way ANOVA and Tukey multiple
comparison tests to examine whether private property advocates differed from
other residents in their attachment to the community. For these analyses, we
collapsed the variable, attitude toward private property, into three categories:
(1) disagree, (2) neither agree nor disagree, and (3) agree. Respondents who
agreed that Everybody should have the right to do whatever they want with
their land and those who disagreed with the same statement significantly differed
from each other on five indicators of community attachment. These were interest
in knowing what goes on in the community, proportion of friends living in the
community, and all three measures of organizational ties (Table 4).
Attitude toward private property rights was the strongest predictor of quarry
attitude. Respondents who felt that everybody should have the right to do
whatever they want with their land had the most favorable attitudes toward the
quarry. They also seemed less involved in the community, as indicated by their
being less likely: (1) to be interested in knowing what went on in their community;
(2) to get involved in community activities, events, or organizations; (3) to have
106
F-value
Proportion of Friends
2.61
2.71
2.97
3.63*
Interest in Community
4.49
4.26
4.14
5.65**
Level of Involvement
2.55
2.35
2.18
3.47*
Organization Membership
0.60
0.29
0.39
6.24**
Participation in HTFF
0.56
0.42
0.42
4.19*
107
Our informant data suggested many longtime residents did not take sides in
the quarry issue because they found themselves in a cross-pressured situation
and feared jeopardizing local social relationships. Earlier, Coleman (1957) and
Gamson (1966) said that residents with relatives and/or friends from each side
of opposing parties often withdrew from the issue. We found no support for our
hypothesis that Haines Township residents with higher levels of community
attachment were more likely to hold a neutral position toward the quarry issue.
While respondents who were actively involved in community activities, events, or
organizations favored the quarry more, those who had more friends in the
community and who participated in more festival-related activities favored it less.
Newcomers opposition to the quarry could have resulted from their proenvironmental behavior. Yet, no significant difference existed between
newcomers and oldtimers on this measure. Both groups were moderately
involved in behavioral aspects of environmentalism. On the other hand,
environmental behavior was a significant predictor of quarry attitude. Proenvironmental residents were more likely to oppose the quarry.
Haines Township newcomers had significantly different sociodemographic
characteristics than established residents. As Johnson and Fuguitt (2000)
suggested about those in commuter areas, in-migrants tended to be younger, and
have higher levels of education and income. Such differences disappeared at the
multivariate level.
Clearly, sociodemographic variables play a role in elucidating the advocacy
and mobilization of the opposition group. The quarry created heightened concern
among newcomers because it posed a threat to the quality of life that attracted
them to the area. Given their socioeconomic status, newcomers had more potential
to mobilize against the quarry. The data obtained from the informants confirmed
that newcomers had more money, time, knowledge of the political system,
connections to outside organizations, and previous and/or ongoing experiences
with environmental issues. That they immediately mobilized to preserve the
environmental quality of their chosen residences was, therefore, not surprising
(Gncolu-Eser & Luloff, 2003).
This study integrated informant interviews and survey results to assess factors
affecting resident attitudes. These two methods complemented each other and
increased confidence in findings. Informant interviews: (1) contributed to the
development of the survey instrument, (2) helped generate the hypotheses related
to community attachment and private property rights, and (3) provided context
and depth for interpretation of survey findings. Through this approach, attitudes
toward the quarry were captured within the backdrop of local interactions.6
Rural and small communities tend to become arenas of tension because of
their changing economic and sociodemographic structures. Newcomers often
redefine natural resource use and land use practices in their chosen residences.
Their preservationist approach to the natural environment, however, may not
correspond to the oldtimers truth. Established residents are not necessarily
less concerned about the environment. They do, however, share utilitarian
108
109
NOTES
1. Factor analysis of the HTFF measure and the previous two questions did not provide a
satisfactory index. Therefore, each of these items was entered into the analysis separately.
2. A higher percentage of respondents (16.1%) indicated that the none category best described
their political views compared to those who chose either liberal (9.8%) or moderate-liberal
(11.9%).
3. Descriptive statistics for this sample are available upon request from the authors.
4. The authors gratefully acknowledge an anonymous reviewer and the editor for this helpful
suggestion.
5. Additional analyses revealed that respondents who agreed with the statement were significantly
different from those who disagreed in terms of occupation (F=4.89, p<0.01) and income (F=7.72,
p<0.001).
6. Small sample size was a potential limitation of this study. By including the usual constellation
of sociodemographic measures, further reduction in sample size occurred. To assess the impact of
this loss, we ran a series of models excluding income, parental status, and occupation from the
analyses. Only occupation was a significant, though moderate predictor in the multivariate model.
The exclusion of a significant variable is generally not a satisfactory solution to a missing data
problem. Here doing so was reasonable since excluding occupation increased the sample size by
about 14 percent. Importantly, when regression analyses were conducted with and without
occupation, the latter generated a better model that is, it explained the variation in quarry attitude
with more variables and the magnitudes of the coefficients were larger.
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Wulfhorst, J.D. 2000. Collective identity and hazardous waste management. Rural Sociology
65(2): 275-294.
112
-0.09
0.02
0.04
0.00
-0.30*** 0.13
0.02
Income (7)
0.08
0.15* -0.01
-0.22**
0.39*** -0.09
-0.08 -0.48***-0.09
-0.03 -0.09
0.12
-0.32***-0.23**
Community Attachment
Community Sentiments
Feeling at Home (10)
0.01
-0.03
-0.06
0.09
0.11
-0.17* -0.00
0.10
-0.06
-0.02
-0.27***-0.19* 0.42***
0.02
-0.02
0.07
-0.18**
0.01 -0.10
-0.16* -0.03
0.00
0.05
-0.16*
0.16* -0.06
0.15*
0.03 -0.02
-0.04
0.10
0.11
0.03
0.19**
-0.06
0.01
0.20**
0.01
0.05
0.06
-0.04
0.14* -0.10
0.05
-0.02
0.11
-0.05
-0.01
0.09
-0.12
-0.04 -0.09
0.05
0.04 -0.10
-0.07
-0.14
0.01
0.29***
0.12
0.37***
-0.06
Organizational Ties
Level of Involvement (18)
0.20** -0.03
0.20** -0.01
-0.03
0.13
0.20** -0.05
-0.05
0.15*
0.29*** 0.01
0.10
-0.06
0.22***
-0.19** 0.12
0.49***-0.01
0.07
-0.42***-0.03 -0.01
-0.06
-0.12
0.38*** 0.15
0.15*
-0.12 -0.11
113
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
0.49***
0.22*** 0.18**
0.28*** 0.24***0.06
0.12
0.09 -0.06
0.31***
0.14
0.17* 0.07
0.21**
0.18*
0.25***
0.15*
0.15* 0.16*
0.14*
0.10
0.34*** 0.10
-0.06
0.12
0.05
0.10
0.19** 0.08
-0.10
-0.11
-0.06
0.09
0.34*** 0.16*
0.11
0.10
0.06
0.04
-0.09
-0.02
0.12
0.10
-0.17* -0.05
0.31***-0.12
0.20** -0.01
0.31*** 0.41***
0.26*** 0.08
0.16*
0.06
0.52***
0.44*** 0.38***
-0.19** -0.20** -0.20**
0.29*** 0.21**
0.22***-0.53***
22
Vol. 34
No. 1
2003
Book Reviews
GEORGE, ROBLEY E. Socioeconomic Democracy: An Advanced Socioeconomic
System. (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing, 2002, 326 pp.). Paper.
Reviewed by MICHAEL JOHN DOUGHERTY, Extension Specialist,
WVU Extension Service, Morgantown, West Virginia
Socioeconomic Democracy is a proposal for an alternative economic
model. It represents the culmination of three decades of work on the topic by
Robley George. It is best thought of as a prescriptive descriptive piece, for it
discusses the system the author thinks should be in place and explains how
such a system would work.
George succinctly describes his philosophy at the beginning of the first
four chapters of the book (p. 7, p. 11, p. 41, p. 91). Socioeconomic democracy is
a model economic system, or more precisely, socioeconomic subsystem, in which
there is some form of Universal Guaranteed Personal Income as well as some
form of Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth. In other words, there is both a
lower limit on personal material poverty and an upper limit on personal material
wealth set and adjusted democratically by all society.
After a brief introductory chapter, George explains his version of Universal
Guaranteed Personal Income, Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth, and
Democracy in the next three chapters.
The case for UGI is fairly clear. It is the rationale for many systems already
in place in many societies. The case for MAW is not made nearly as well, in part
because of its reliance on dogmatic statements. Some of these tend to be nothing
more than rants against the rich. Finally, the case for Democracy is clear-cut. But
it should be noted that the concept is not the current American winner-take-all
version but rather a more robust system involving greater participation and
elections to decide important matters.
Chapter 5 is a discussion of the four possible variations of guaranteed
income and wealth limitations: only a guaranteed income, only a wealth limit,
both, or neither. This theme is revisited later when costs and benefits are examined.
The next two chapters provide justifications for Socioeconomic Democracy
though George noted such justifications were unnecessary, as the book is a
theoretical discussion. One examines the system from anthropological,
philosophical, psychological, religious, and human rights perspectives. The
other is a discourse on the relationship between Socioeconomic Democracy and
the teaching of Islam.
What is intriguing here is what is missing. The large religious justification
section in Chapter 6 includes current philosophy. But it lacks any stories of
religious figures or church communities, despite there being examples that would
probably have supported Georges argument (e.g., the communal spirit of the
early Christian Church).
(c) 2003, The Community Development Society
Book Reviews
115
116
Finally, George never addresses one major question what will make
people do this. While the book is a theory being put forth, the justification,
feasibility, and ramification considerations would point to this model coming
into being at some point because it will benefit society. But the trigger that will
lead to this realization and thus to action is never defined.
Overall though, the question is whether or not Socioeconomic Democracy
is a meaningful work. To those interested in doing something with respect to the
increasing disparity of wealth and income, this book offers one potential solution.
Furthermore, propositions put forth accomplish this goal in a way that does not
require major alterations in the democratic traditions on which many nations
have been founded. Many who work in the field of community development
would probably have some interest in its general message.
However, be forewarned. That message is not as strong or solid as it could
be because of the authors smugness and sometimes self-indulgent or sidebars
that often add little to the discussion at hand.
Book Reviews
117
118
GOODE, JUDITH and JEFF MASKOVSKY (eds.). The New Poverty Studies:
The Ethnography of Power, Politics, and Impoverished People in the United
States. (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2001, 494 pp.). Paper and Cloth.
Reviewed by JOHN J. GREEN, Division of Social Science/Center for
Community Development, Delta State University, Cleveland,
Mississippi
Mainstream understandings of poverty, shared among many policymakers
and researchers, tend to blame the victim and thus relegate development
efforts aimed at eradicating poverty to the sidelines. Equally problematic is the
near infatuation with reducing welfare roles while failing to provide serious
attention to the challenges faced by real people. The impoverished and
government assistance have been defined as the problem as opposed to inequality
in a land of wealth. However, The New Poverty Studies represents a breakthrough
in scholarship presenting a critical approach to poverty in the United States.
Book Reviews
119
Editors Judith Goode, Jeff Maskovsky and sixteen other authors focus attention
on the use of ethnographic method to expose and critique dominant views of
poverty and give voice (i.e. political agency) to the impoverished. Readers
concerned with poverty and public policy have much to gain from this book.
The New Poverty Studies is divided into five parts, with a total of fifteen
chapters in addition to the Introduction and Afterword. A collection of texts
authored primarily by anthropologists and urban scholars, the book covers a
wide array of topics, including women-headed households, immigrant networks,
debt, so-called welfare reform and types of social organization. The authors
skillfully combine theory and method in case studies to address substantive
issues and present multiple views of people in poverty and the institutional forces
that impact their world. They treat poverty as a process of uneven development
that must be investigated at the local, regional, national and global levels.
The breadth of material and topics covered in this book is laudable, but at
times explicit coherence is unclear until the reader is able to consider the collection
of essays as a whole. The wide net cast does demonstrate the extent to which a
general critique of mainstream poverty studies may be applied. An overarching
theme is present the dominant ideology as expressed through policy and
research attributes responsibility to the impoverished while neglecting the context
in which they live and the broader forces (e.g. corporate interests, policy, power
relations) that impact their varied situations.
The authors point out that most poverty research is conducted from a
revised culture of poverty theoretical position that continues to focus attention
on individual initiative through a human resources lens. As Donna Goldstein
maintains in Chapter 9, this represents a blending of neo-liberal and neoconservative ideology. This has resulted in a privatist consensus (Jeff
Maskovsky in the Afterword) in the policy agenda that seeks to reduce state
intervention.
An essay of particular interest to the field of community development is
the well-written and penetrating chapter by Susan Brin Hyatt entitled From
Citizen to Volunteer: Neo-liberal Governance and the Erasure of Poverty. The
author argues that studies and policies primarily concerned with volunteerism
and the development of social capital tend to transform political rights into
entrepreneurial opportunities and dismiss the role of the state in securing social
welfare. Furthermore, biased accounts of what it is that constitutes social capital
has led to an overemphasis on traditional, middle-class forms of community
organization to the exclusion of the actual volunteer and self-help groups that
impoverished people have created.
Unfortunately, the extent to which the authors critique contemporary
approaches to poverty may lead many community development professionals
to walk away from this book dismayed. Although they are correct to point out
the link between neo-liberal/neo-conservative governance and such catch words
as volunteer and empowerment, the authors provide few alternatives for
120
action other than giving voice to the poor in a general sense. Given the lack of
attention to how one might go about presenting truly counter-hegemonic
responses, readers might be left with a feeling of hopelessness in addressing
issues of poverty in the face of the prevailing constraints that the authors
themselves point out.
Overall, The New Poverty Studies offers readers a refreshing theoretical
and research-based perspective on poverty. Community development
professionals and scholars would do well to read this book in order to reflexively
confront many commonly held assumptions about the world and peoples
positions within it. This critical examination of poverty discourses is particularly
suited for a graduate-level course on poverty where students are expected to
assess the impacts of social organization. With its urban focus, the book would
need to be paired with a text giving attention to rural poverty. Although there are
many of these to choose from, The New Poverty Studies may serve as a model
and impetus for critical rural studies in the future.
Book Reviews
121
the original GUIC project. It was also difficult to determine whether the
participants adequately represented the children in that community.
Those who have meaningful relationships with children likely wont find
anything very startling about the results of the projects on a site by site basis.
However, taken together, some very interesting and compelling themes are
revealed. There was an astonishing similarity across all project sites in the
factors identified by the children as contributing to the quality of community.
Positive factors included safety and freedom of movement, social integration, a
variety of interesting activity settings, peer gathering places, cohesive community
identity and green areas, provision of basic needs, secure tenure of their home
and a tradition of community organising and self-help. Sources of alienation
included stigma and social exclusion, boredom, fear of harassment and crime,
racial tensions, heavy traffic, uncollected trash and litter, lack of basic services
and sense of political powerlessness.
It was also surprising that children in communities with higher levels of
material well being were not necessarily as satisfied as those living in much
poorer circumstances. The standard measures of quality of life, such as per
capita income, education, adequate housing, sanitation and life expectancy were
often outweighed by social capital indicators, such as an active community life,
festivals that celebrate community identity and a sense of being valued.
The participatory nature of the project allowed researchers to gain rich
insights into the day-to-day lives of the children. The project was also inherently
educational and empowering, as children articulated their feelings, wrote essays,
spoke in public, drew, photographed, measured, calculated and made
recommendations for change. Unfortunately, while some positive results are clearly
attributable to the project, it seems that, in general, attention to the project
recommendations was short-lived and was superseded by larger concerns.
Many topics are explored in the book, such as the impact of increased
traffic, the influx of immigrants, access to public spaces, fears of violence and
the relationship between home and community. The authors also comment on
corrupt politicians, inefficient bureaucracies, misguided development agencies
and the failure of the adult world to meet the basic needs of children.
One of the thorny issues the project grappled with is the development and
maintenance of local partnerships. Each project sought to form a network of
individuals and organizations to inform and support the project, with some agencies
collaborating on the implementation of the project. While this is a sound practice
in terms of current development theory, miscommunications and competition for
resources and recognition often created conflict and frustration. For projects such
as this to succeed there needs to be an effective institutional framework and
systems to promote ethics and accountability... (Bannerjee and Driskell, p. 156).
The GUIC project is an excellent model for childrens participation in
community evaluation and development. A multi-sector approach is applied to
the analysis, integrating concepts and theories relating to child development,
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Book Reviews
123
Latin America is covered in one chapter. And there is an odd outlier a solid but
anomalous chapter on aforestation (not deforestation) in the Negev of Israel.
Few environmental issues have attracted as much attention worldwide in
recent years as deforestation. A major reason for the high visibility of deforestation
as an issue is of course its overall impact on the earths ecological well-being.
But according to Vajpeyi and his co-authors, Third World deforestation also
draws attention because of the ways its local ecological, social, and economic
causes and consequences ripple around the globe. They note that the primary
human contributions to Third World deforestation include commercial logging,
increased worldwide consumption of industrial wood, clearing of forests for
settlement and agriculture, overpopulation, globalization of trade in wood
products, economic development, overgrazing, poor harvest practices, and
inadequate enforcement of existing laws. Primary effects on Third World forest
communities and their people are unemployment and poverty, ill health, and
community displacement and decline. These causes and consequences are all
longstanding concerns of community development.
Moreover, the authors recommendations for improving sustainable forest
management for the benefit of forests and forest communities read like a catalogue
of community development strategies. At the top of their list is grassroots
organizing to influence sustainable forest management practices. This takes the
form of community-based forest management (social forestry) at the production
end and product boycotts/bans at the consumer end. They also advocate,
among other things, activists support for aggressive enforcement of the laws
and policies that govern forest management, an activist role for non-governmental
organizations, and the levying of special timber surcharges to support sustainable
forest management.
While these causes, consequences, and strategies are all drawn from Third
World experiences, community developers will readily recognize that they are
equally relevant in the context of developed countries. This may be the most
important lesson of the book. Although the authors never say so explicitly, their
cases exemplify what some are calling the one world approach to development.
In the traditional approach, development ideas flowed out from the developed
countries to the rest of the world. That approach has been discredited as intellectual
imperialism. In its place, some argue that since each culture and country is unique,
we have nothing to learn from one another. The one world approach agrees that
the traditional approach was imperialistic but denies that we have nothing to learn
from one another. Rather, it holds, we can all learn from one another. In the book
at hand, American forest communities can benefit from the social forestry
experiences of Indonesian forest communities, and American activists can learn
from the experience of their Indian counterparts, to take just two examples.
In sum, the case studies in this book are interesting in their own right but
their greatest value may be in stimulating community developers to think about
how the experience of one part of the world can be applied in another area.
124
Book Reviews
125
across regions (or in this case metropolitan economies) over time. He finds clear
evidence that this is not the case, and that the Sunbelt, Snowbelt dichotomy of
the past is also irrelevant for explaining divergence in incomes. Instead, metro
areas specialized in one or both of the categories of producer services had
incomes above the metropolitan average in 1969 and had above average growth
in these incomes between 1969 and 1996.
This produces his final consideration of whether the replacement of a
manufacturing economy with an information economy is detrimental to the inner
city poor (especially the inner city black population) as many have contended.
Instead he finds that poverty rates in cities specialized in the information economy
are lower than those in other types of cities. In addition, the population in high
poverty neighborhoods in these cities has grown much less than similar
populations in cities specialized in manufacturing and primary production.
Drennans analysis would be valuable to community development
practitioners working in large metropolitan areas, with its careful analysis of what
undergirds the economic health of these areas at the end of the century. Too often
economic development specialists still bemoan the diminishing importance of the
manufacturing sector. This analysis shows why this is the case, and how important
an excellent telecommunications infrastructure is for cities today.
126
Book Reviews
127
TAYLOR-IDE, DANIEL and CARL E. TAYLOR (eds.). Just and Lasting Change:
When Communities Own Their Futures. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins
University Press, 2002, 350 pp.).
Reviewed by KEN MARTIN, PhD, Cooperative Extension Professor
& Director, West Virginia University
Just and Lasting Change provides a blueprint for data-based community
development. Local knowledge and resources and data driven community
decision-making processes provide the context for community change. The
authors rationale for the book is to present a framework for development based
128
Book Reviews
129
This led to new approaches for improving community health involving training
for lay health educators, community-wide campaigns to improve public health
practices, new protocols for recognizing and reacting to various symptoms, and
culturally sensitive education and training.
Two interesting points emerge as common threads in the case studies.
The first is that women were key to developing local support for many of the
community projects. The case studies indicate that the successes of the
community-based strategies and approaches were largely due to their involvement
on committees or in leadership roles often in cultures where this was not the
norm. The second is that external resources often reduce the potential for
sustainability. The SEED-SCALE model promotes the generation of local
resources for developing and implementing needed services and projects. The
case studies demonstrated that when these resources were re-circulated back
into the community, there was a greater potential for sustainability. Communities
tended to be more responsible and accountable when local resources were
committed. When external resources flowed into communities in the form of
subsidies, there were additional expectations from the granting agency and
community self-reliance was compromised as the resources were exhausted.
The community development model put forth in Just and Lasting Change
is grounded in several principles central to community development practice.
Partnerships, action strategies based on data, and changes in community behavior
are reflective of a community development process that can lead to purposive
change in the quality of community life.
Application of the model in underdeveloped communities in Africa, Asian,
and North and South America demonstrates its utility in todays global
environment. The issues addressed are not necessarily unique to underdeveloped
communities. For example, literacy challenges, environmental changes, access
to health care, and planning and development conflicts also confront many
developed communities and urban neighborhoods.
The emphasis on empowerment and sustainable development in the model
and the descriptive case studies provide the reader with a wealth of ideas and
perspectives that will prove useful for those interested in community development
teaching and practice. The SEED-SCALE model emphasizes working first at the
community level and then extending the successes to other communities and
regions. It was insightful to see how the involvement of regional and national
governments and international funding agencies impacted the various community
development efforts. In some cases this led to successful regional and national
efforts while in other instances, the extra-local participation served to limit the
ultimate potential for project sustainability and its extension to other communities.
The book should prove useful for community development practitioners,
whether they are working in underdeveloped or developed communities. The
variety of community development projects and their potential for sustainability
are all grounded in the grass roots involvement of the community. Not only do
130
community members help obtain the needed data for assessment, but their
insights in understanding the community and their roles in the action strategies
employed contribute to the ultimate potential for successful and sustainable
community development.
SIMAI, MIHALY (ed.). The Democratic Process and the Market: Challenges
of the Transition. (Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations University Press,
1999, 208 pp.). Paper.
Reviewed by RONALD R. POPE, President, Serendipity-Russia,
Illinois State University
The contributors to this book, all but one of who are from Eastern Europe or
the Former Soviet Union, have attempted to evaluate the political and economic
transitions in the region. (The one non-East European/FSU author is from Denmark.)
Although the publication date is 1999, most of the information on which
the evaluations are based substantially predates that year. And a good deal
more has happened since 1999. In short, it is not at all surprising that events
have overtaken much of the analysis.
For example, the editor argues that change has to be organized mainly
from above by the state (p. 4). This assertion is not defended - and it has been
brought into question by the success of grassroots efforts to make a difference
in much of the former Soviet empire. Given the regions history of control from
above, these efforts were not likely to have born much fruit by the mid 1990s.
But one can now see relatively small-scale success with building a civil society
spreading throughout the region. More and more people are giving up on
change from above and are taking matters into their own hands.
For example, in Vladimir, Russia, where this reviewer been operating a
model American Home since 1992, families with handicapped children finally
gave up on the government and formed their own association. They have been
having considerable success in improving the lives of the young members of the
handicapped community. There are many more examples of this sort of grassroots
activity that for the most part was not yet visible when the authors of this book
collected their materials.
This book is a good source for the views of knowledgeable and thoughtful
observers who grew up in this region under communism through the mid-1990s.
In this reviewers opinion, it is not a particularly good source for understanding
what is happening in the region today. This is partly because of the dated nature
of much of the information the authors base their analysis on. For example,
Russias debt is no longer rapidly increasing (p. 81). It is also inaccurate partly
because of, again in this reviewers opinion, the assumptions the contributors
tend to make.
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132
Book Reviews
133
divine right of kings, the information economy is weakening the divine right of
capital. Historically stockholder ownership of a corporation has been viewed as
ownership of the means of production (i.e., the physical assets). However, Kelly
points out that the corporation not only consists of the physical assets but also
human capital assets of the employees and the social capital of the social world
that they create. In fact, with the arrival of the information economy, the modern
corporations physical infrastructure is no longer the most important corporate
asset. Thus, workers in the information economy have increased leverage to
combat stockholder privilege if they can find the appropriate avenues to do so.
At first glance, Marjorie Kellys book, The Divine Right of Capital, might
be simply another book decrying the deleterious effects that corporations have
on American democracy. The second half of the book points out several possible
ways to increase democracy; however, this section does not seem to have a
single clear vision of the best way to change the current system. Instead, Kelly
opts for the delineation of six core principles upon which an economic democracy
might be founded and suggests several avenues that might redress current wrongs.
In summary, The Divine Right of Capital is a thought-provoking treatise
on the effects of wealth privilege on corporations and their workers. While Kelly
acknowledges deleterious effects of wealth privilege on communities, she spends
little time on the subject. So if one is looking for a lengthy theoretical discussion
of this aspect of wealth privilege, then The Divine Right of Capital is probably
not your first choice. However, the second half of this book is useful for
community development specialists despite its lack of a community focus. While
the second half of the book fails to offer a single solution for fostering economic
democracy, Kellys delineation of general principles and possible solutions allows
community and economic development professionals the opportunity to work
with their communities to tailor solutions for each communitys given situation.
Thus, the second half of the book is more useful for community development
than is the first half. Moreover, whether you are working with communities that
have just started thinking about corporations and their stockholders or you are
teaching economic and community development to novices at the university,
this book provides an accessible critique of the current economic system.
Vol. 34
No. 1
2003
Book Reviews
135
suggest that technology is not an end all to our environmental issues, but
instead a tool that is restricted by cultural norms.
My sense is that the editors and contributing authors of this book are
somewhat on the edge of society. They have ideas and beliefs that may not (yet)
be totally embraced by traditional business and industry. However, there is
much to be learned and shared from their knowledge.
Steering Business Toward Sustainability provides alternative business
concepts that may become the next wave in our industrialized society, whether
by choice or necessity. I cant help but wonder if the people who need to read
this book will read it. Perhaps those who are interested in creating an
environmentally sustainable world should purchase this book and pass it on to
a change agent who just might help bring the concept of sustainable business
into the mainstream of industrialized society.
Vol. 34
No. 1
2003
chapter five, Randy Stoecker talks about the approach and role scholars need to
adopt in community-based participatory research. Coming from India, this
reviewer agrees that this is a universal problem, where attempts are being made
to emphasize solid research focused on important topics, aimed at addressing
critical shortcomings of our educational system.
Participatory researchers seem to do increasingly well in the
university (Cancian, 1993; Gedicks, 1996). But there are often
compromises. Graduate students trying to do CommunityBased Participatory Research are still forced to take control of
the research in order to get credit to graduate (Heaney, 1993).
The reward system of universities discourages collaboration,
and community members have to make time and even money
sacrifices to collaborate in research, while academics get
rewards. (p. 100)
Part three focuses on one of the most important but often neglected
processes - involving people within the community to be served, rather that
forming a group of outsiders. This is probably the central core of the book,
where the chapters deal with an ideal case studies and further describe the
modified Delphi process for getting an opinion from a large group while allowing
feedback and interaction. In chapter seven, Minkler and Hancock talk about risk
mapping, which does not involve shared group work and yet can be an effective
tool. The next critical element they talk about is the transition period from asset
and problem identification to the process of selecting issues in communitybased participatory research. Stephen Fawcett and colleagues at the University
of Kansas explore how Internet-based tools can be used by academic partners
and community members to build local capacity and action for community health
and development. One such web-based resource is the Community Tool Box
(http://ctb.ku.edu).
Part four concentrates on the nuances involved in research, action research
and participatory research. This is the best resource for researchers, practitioners
and students. To further illustrate some of the key methodological and ethical
issues faced in community-based participatory research, Stephanie Farquhar
and Steve Wing present unique case studies, where epidemiology and
sophisticated computer modeling, in close collaboration with community partners,
were used to uncover health problems in low-income, African American
communities. A case study in the San Francisco Bay Area reveals how the
disability community, in collaboration with community partners, used
participatory action research to broaden the dialogue around a particularly
contentious issue in their community - death with dignity.
Part five further illustrates community-based participatory research with
and by diverse populations through a couple of case studies, Community
Based Participatory Research with Cambodian Girls in Long Beach, California
and Hidden Population: The Transgender Community Health Project.
(c) 2003, The Community Development Society
Book Reviews
137
The sixth and final part explores the possibilities of using communitybased participatory research to promote social change and healthy public policy.
In what is perhaps the most celebrated example of CBPR in the
United States, Anne Anderson and her neighbors in Woburn,
Massachusetts, worried about the high rates of childhood
leukemia in their community, began two decades
agoUnsuccessful in their efforts to get local government
authorities to test the water, they approached researchers at
Harvards School of Public Health, who worked collaboratively
with community members, and also conducted their own
analyses, to document what the community residents had
long suspected (p. 345).
In the foreword, Budd Hall wrote that, How is it that the people living in
the lands of some of the largest store of richness in the form of natural resources
the peoples of rural Appalachia, urban black and Latino America, Indian nations,
and internationally, of the Brazilian Amazon, Africa, subtropical regions are
among the poorest people of the world?
Community Based-Participatory Research for Health definitely serves
as an important addition to the field of participatory action research in communities.
Editors Minkler and Wallerstein present an overview of the basic issues in
community-based participatory research and the shortcomings involved in it. In
addition to providing interesting research, many of the case studies offer practical
suggestions for strategies to combat problems in community-based participatory
research. As such, this volume is appropriate for use by those exploring
community services for the first time as well as for those who have made it their
passion. Anyone committed to community-based service is likely to find this
book to be a valuable resource.
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