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Suppose you were given two qualitative studies: one is a piece of
empirically sound social science and the other, though interesting
and beautifully written, is not. How would you tell the
difference? Qualitative Literacy presents criteria to assess
qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviewing and
participant observation. Qualitative research is indispensable to
the study of inequality, poverty, education, public health,
immigration, the family, and criminal justice. Each of the hundreds
of ethnographic and interview studies published yearly on these
issues is scientifically either sound or unsound. This guide
provides social scientists, researchers, students, evaluators,
policy makers, and journalists with the tools needed to identify
and evaluate quality in field research.
Suppose you were given two qualitative studies: one is a piece of
empirically sound social science and the other, though interesting
and beautifully written, is not. How would you tell the difference?
Qualitative Literacy presents criteria to assess qualitative
research methods such as in-depth interviewing and participant
observation. Qualitative research is indispensable to the study of
inequality, poverty, education, public health, immigration, the
family, and criminal justice. Each of the hundreds of ethnographic
and interview studies published yearly on these issues is
scientifically either sound or unsound. This guide provides social
scientists, researchers, students, evaluators, policy makers, and
journalists with the tools needed to identify and evaluate quality
in field research.
For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that
the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce
distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation--the
disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But
relatively few have examined precisely "how" such poverty affects
social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor
neighborhood results in such undesirable effects.
This book examines a neglected Puerto Rican enclave in Boston to
consider the pros and cons of social scientific thinking about the
true nature of ghettos in America. Mario Luis Small dismantles the
theory that poor urban neighborhoods are inevitably deprived of
social capital. He shows that the conditions specified in this
theory are vaguely defined and variable among poor communities.
According to Small, structural conditions such as unemployment or a
failed system of familial relations "must" be acknowledged as
affecting the urban poor, but individual motivations and the
importance of timing must be considered as well.
Brimming with fresh theoretical insights, "Villa Victoria" is an
elegant work of sociology that will be essential to students of
urban poverty.
One's ability to manage the trials of poverty depends on their
networks-the relationships, support, information, and resources
they cultivate from them. Social ties come with obligations;
whether networks ultimately help or hinder those living in poverty
remains in question. This volume of The ANNALS examines the
uncertain role of network systems in the context of low-income
populations in the 21st century. Applying new fieldwork from
subject experts across the globe, this volume highlights networks
and the complex relationships that shape them, the local
organizations that foster them, and the policy changes needed to
bolster their value in times of economic distress.
Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda. Over the past
decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun
asking questions about the role of cul-ture in many aspects of
poverty, at times even explaining the behavior of low-income
populations in reference to cultural factors. Unlike their
predecessors, contemporary researchers rarely claim that culture
will sustain itself for multiple generations regardless of
structural changes, and they almost never use the term "pathology,"
which implied in an earlier era that people would cease to be poor
if they changed their culture. The new generation of scholars
conceives of culture in substantially different ways. In this
latest issue of the ANNALS, readers are treated to
thought-provoking articles that attempt to bridge the gap between
poverty and culture scholarship, highlighting new trends in poverty
research. The authors identi-fy the scholarly and policy-related
basis for why poverty researchers should be deeply concerned with
culture, noting the importance of understanding better how people
cope with poverty and how they escape it. They then tackle the
perplexing question-what is "culture"?-and propose that
sociologists and anthropologists studying culture have developed at
least seven different analytical tools for cap-turing meaning that
could help answer a number of questions central to the study of
poverty, including those centered on marriage, educa-tion,
neighborhoods, and community participation, among others. While not
denying the importance of macro-structural conditions-such as the
concentration of wealth and income, the spatial segregation across
classes and racial groups, or the persistent international
migration of labor and capital-they argue that human action is both
constrained and enabled by the meaning people give to their actions
and that these dynamics should become central to our understanding
of the production and reproduction of poverty and social
inequality. By considering poverty in the United States and abroad,
examining both the elite, policy-making level and the daily lives
of low-income people themselves, the articles convey a composite
and multileveled picture of the ways in which meaning-making
factors into the production and reproduction of poverty. The volume
aims to demonstrate the importance of cultural concepts for poverty
research, serve as a model and a resource for poverty scholars who
wish to incorporate cultural concepts into their research, assist
in the training of future scholars working at the nexus of poverty
and culture, and identify crucial areas for future methodological,
theoretical, and empirical development. The volume also serves to
debunk existing myths about the cultural orientations of the poor
for those formulating policy; as the editors point out, "ignoring
culture can lead to bad policy." This volume is vital reading, not
only for sociologists but also for researchers across the social
sciences as a whole.
Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than
others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or
otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better
networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the practice
and structure of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare
centers, and schools in which people happen to participate
routinely matter more than their deliberate "networking."
Exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children
were enrolled in childcare centers, this book examines why a great
deal of these mothers, after enrolling their children, dramatically
expanded both the size and usefulness of their personal networks.
Whether, how, and how much the mother's networks were altered--and
how useful these networks were--depended on the apparently trivial,
but remarkably consequential, practices and regulations of the
centers. The structure of parent-teacher organizations, the
frequency of fieldtrips, and the rules regarding drop-off and
pick-up times all affected the mothers' networks. Relying on scores
of in-depth interviews with mothers, quantitative data on both
mothers and centers, and detailed case studies of other routine
organizations, Small shows that how much people gain from their
connections depends substantially on institutional conditions they
often do not control, and through everyday processes they may not
even be aware of.
Emphasizing not the connections that people make, but the context
in which they are made, Unanticipated Gains presents a major new
perspective on social capital and on the mechanisms producing
social inequality.
One's ability to manage the trials of poverty depends on their
networks-the relationships, support, information, and resources
they cultivate from them. Social ties come with obligations;
whether networks ultimately help or hinder those living in poverty
remains in question. This volume of The ANNALS examines the
uncertain role of network systems in the context of low-income
populations in the 21st century. Applying new fieldwork from
subject experts across the globe, this volume highlights networks
and the complex relationships that shape them, the local
organizations that foster them, and the policy changes needed to
bolster their value in times of economic distress.
For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that
the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce
distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation--the
disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But
relatively few have examined precisely "how" such poverty affects
social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor
neighborhood results in such undesirable effects.
This book examines a neglected Puerto Rican enclave in Boston to
consider the pros and cons of social scientific thinking about the
true nature of ghettos in America. Mario Luis Small dismantles the
theory that poor urban neighborhoods are inevitably deprived of
social capital. He shows that the conditions specified in this
theory are vaguely defined and variable among poor communities.
According to Small, structural conditions such as unemployment or a
failed system of familial relations "must" be acknowledged as
affecting the urban poor, but individual motivations and the
importance of timing must be considered as well.
Brimming with fresh theoretical insights, "Villa Victoria" is an
elegant work of sociology that will be essential to students of
urban poverty.
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