COMMUNITY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Given the Division’s commitment to social justice, many of the questions that our members seek to address concern matters of exclusion or marginalization. In other words, we care about how race, socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, age, and other statuses or characteristics serve as barriers to community entry, reduce an individual’s ability to fully access or participate in a community, or affect the social and spatial relations within a given community. At the same time, however, our members also focus on communities as sites and forces for support, mobilization, and change. Recent global events, for example, have drawn attention to the role that technology and social media play in bringing together individuals in the fight for political change, while the “Occupy” movements have raised fascinating questions about how groups identify, communicate, and act upon shared values and objectives.
The Division aims to provide a lively and supportive forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences related to communities and their development. We welcome participation by scholars, activists, researchers, practitioners, students, and other interested parties, and invite research that is both empirical as well as theoretical. Given that our Division’s focus overlaps in some way with nearly all of SSSP’s Special Problems Divisions, we encourage engagement and collaborative work with members of other Divisions in an effort to broaden our shared knowledge, skills, and capacities.
Division mission statement last edited in 2011 by Shelley McDonough Kimelberg, Northeastern University, Community Research and Development Division Chair, 2011-2013
Some Readings*
Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Robert Bellah, et. al., Habits Of The Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, 3rd edition. University of California Press, 2007.
Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgan (eds.), Women and the Politics of Empowerment: Perspectives from Communities and Workplaces. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson, Critical Perspectives on Housing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Sheryll Cashin, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream. New York: Public Affairs, 2004.
John Emmeus Davis, Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Kai Erikson, Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976.
Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans. New York: The Free Press, 1962 (1982).
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.
Mark S. Homan, Promoting Community Change: Making It Happen in the Real World. 4th Edition, Belmont, CA: Thomson, 2008.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961.
Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. Harper Perennial, 1992.
Peter Medoff and Holly Sklar, Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood. Boston: South End Press, 1994.
Mary L. Ohmer and Karen DeMasi, Consensus Organizing: A Community Development Workbook, A Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Community Change Initiatives. Los Angeles: Sage, 2009.
Constance Perin, Belonging In America. Madison, Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1988.
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.
Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods. University of California Press, 2008.
Mario Small, Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Robert Courtney Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. University of California Press, 2005.
Carol Stack, All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. Basic Books, 1974, reissued 1997.
Carol Stack, Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South, New York: Basic Books, 1996.
Randy Stoecker, Defending Community. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.
Michael E. Stone, Shelter Poverty: New Ideas on Housing Affordability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
Mark Warren and Karen Mapp, A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Russell Sage Foundation Books and Harvard University Press, 2001.
Thad Williamson, David Imbroscio, and Gar Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era. New York: Routledge, 2002.
William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. Vintage, 1996.
Min Zhou, Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Ethnic Enclave. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.
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* With sincere thanks to the previous Community Research and Development chairs who initiated this list.
