| Can Block
Clubs Block Despair?
Press, Eyal
The American Prospect, May 2007,
v18,#5, pp29-34
The debate over the problems of
America's inner cities has been dominated by two schools of thought:
structural factors such as racism, poverty, on the one hand, and
behavioral pathologies such as out-of-wedlock birth and criminality,
on the other. Proponents of a third theory focus on "the nature
of the social interactions taking place among neighbors and the
degree to which they foster a shared capacity to solve problems
and enforce collective norms. These qualities appear to have a powerful
effect on everything from the level of violence in a community to
the conduct of adolescent youth to the likelihood that a neighborhood
will remain poor, which is perhaps why a growing number of scholars
and policy-makers are interested in teasing out what exactly fosters
such traits." Eyal
Press is a writer based in New York and a fellow at the Open Society.
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C30/03-07. Posted May 12/07
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