NCJ Number
176931
Journal
Social Forces Volume: 76 Issue: 3 Dated: March 1998 Pages: 747-774
Date Published
1998
Length
28 pages
Annotation
Recognizing that black-middle class neighborhoods have higher internal poverty rates and are closer to high-poverty and high-crime areas than white middle-class neighborhoods, ethnographic data were obtained from a black middle-class neighborhood in Chicago to explore how residents managed their ecological context.
Abstract
The participant observation method was used to collect data over a 2.5-year period in the early 1990s for the Comparative Neighborhood Study (CNS) conducted at the University of Chicago. The CNS investigated racial discourse, culture, and social organization in four neighborhoods of different racial and ethnic composition. Interviews conducted with residents and community leaders showed dense social networks fostered by residential stability facilitated the informal supervision of neighborhood youth and enhanced the activities of formal organizations and institutions. Nonetheless, the incorporation of gang members and drug dealers into the networks of law-abiding relatives and neighbors thwarted efforts to completely rid neighborhoods of criminal elements. The author concludes that conflicting effects of dense networks challenge social organization theory and that residential stability and network density can both facilitate and impede social control. 68 references, 10 notes, and 2 figures