Fall 2011 Society for the Study of Social Problems: Community Research and Development In this issue: Message from the Division Chair 2012 Graduate Student Paper Competition From the Blogosphere Book Review: Food Justice Winner 2011 Graduate Student Paper Competition Member News: Books, Articles, Appointments, Awards, Dissertations Conference Announcements 2012 Division Conference Sessions Message from the Division Chair Shelley McDonough Kimelberg, Northeastern University Greetings, members and friends of the Community Research and Development Division of SSSP! Thanks to all who participated in the 2011 CRD Division events at this summer's annual meeting in Las Vegas. The Division sponsored or co-sponsored nine sessions on a range of interesting topics. Events were well attended and sparked some great conversations. Next year's meeting in Denver promises to offer new opportunities for intellectual and social engagement with colleagues and friends. In this edition of the CRD newsletter you'll find a number of important announcements, including the 2012 annual meeting call for papers, and details of the 2012 graduate student paper competition. Be sure to check out the member news section to catch up on the latest accomplishments and career transitions of CRD members. Many thanks to all who contributed content for the newsletter. If you have suggestions or ideas for future newsletters, please email me at: s.kimelberg@neu.edu 2012 Graduate Student Paper Competition Deadline April 12, 2012 Encourage your graduate students to submit papers to the student paper competition! Papers can focus on various aspects of the community including its capacity (e.g., social capital), development, renewal, and its relationship with other social issues or problems. Qualitative or quantitative empirical analyses and theoretical papers are welcome. The winner will receive a $100 cash award at the SSSP 2012 Annual Meeting, registration for the meetings, a ticket to the SSSP awards banquet, and the opportunity to present her/his paper at the SSSP meetings in Denver, CO. To be eligible for submission: -A paper must not yet be published or accepted for publication -Papers must be student-authored. One or more student authors is acceptable, but papers may not be co-authored with a faculty member or other non-student. -Papers must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages (including all notes, references, and tables). -To be considered for the award, the author must make a commitment to present the paper at a Community Research and Development Division session during the 2012 SSSP meeting. Please include the following with your paper submission: -A brief letter from each author's advisor certifying the person's status as a student and including some brief comments about the research. -A copy of the paper with a cover letter specifying that the paper is to be considered in the CRD Division Student Paper Competition All materials must be submitted electronically to Dr. Andrea Leverentz at Andrea.Leverentz@umb.edu. Papers may be sent beginning on January 1, 2012 but will be accepted no later than April 1, 2012. Resources From the Blogosphere a selection of interesting finds Urban Portal http://urban.uchicago.edu/ "The Urban Portal is an online hub designed to provide experts and non-experts easy access to current research and resources on urban issues. The Portal is a core project of the University of Chicago Urban Network, an emerging community of scholars and others that aims to spur innovation in the study of urban processes and to encourage interdisciplinary discourse in urban research, theory, and policy." The Cyberhood http://www.thecyberhood.net/ "The Cyberhood is sponsored by the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) and the Center for Urban Studies at the University of Buffalo. The Cyberhood's mission is to encourage critical thinking about the the plight of communities of color, conditions in the inner city, and the problems of low-wage white workers. The website's goal is to connect students, scholars, practitioners, and activists from across the racial and class divide in order to build meaningful relationships. The building of such connections, we believe, will strengthen the struggle to understand and transform inner cities and the metropolitan regions of which they are a part." Book Review Food Justice, by Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi Reviewed by Jill Eshelman, Northeastern University Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi's Food Justice sets out to define a new form of social justice movement, with food, a basic human right, at its center. The book, like many others written on food policy, serves as a critique of the traditional food system run by agribusiness interests, large-scale farms, global food distribution networks, big box stores such as Wal-mart, and the fast food industry. The authors hope to go beyond this traditional critique of the food system, in order to form a new analysis of how communities can achieve food justice, which ensures "that the benefits and risks of where, what, and how food is grown and produced, transported and distributed, and accessed and eaten are shared fairly"(6). Gottlieb and Joshi chronicle the many struggles and triumphs of community activism and show how grassroots movements can contribute to policy changes. The first account of food justice in the book describes the Rethinkers in New Orleans, a group of students who rallied around the issue of the low quality of food in their schools. By working with the local food and farm network and school officials, these students were able to bring locally harvested shrimp onto the school menu. This is a classic tale of food justice, one in which local businesses and consumers benefit through the distribution of ecologically sustainable, affordable, and nutritious food. The remainder of the book examines the political and economic reasons why such examples of food justice may be hard to achieve, while nevertheless offering examples of how communities have overcome these obstacles. The authors divide the book into two main sections: An Unjust Food System and Food Justice Action and Strategies. First, the authors explore injustices in the current food system, with a focus on the current patterns of growing, accessing, and consuming food. This section highlights struggles such as those of small-scale farmers to make a living and compete with the dominant agricultural industry. The authors argue that the ability of farmers to have an economically sustainable existence is a critical piece for achieving food justice. The disappearance of supermarkets from low-income areas has likewise limited food equality and reduced the ability of the world's poorest residents to access fresh, healthy food. Another major drawback to the current food system is "globesity," caused by the replacement of local diets with the global distribution of fast food and highly processed food. Nutrition has become less of a concern in this profit-oriented distribution chain. Many communities have turned to food pantries as a solution to hunger, but these serve as a place where success is measured in pounds donated, not necessarily the nutrition in the nutritional value of foods. Through their description of these components of the food system, the authors successfully outline the need for a food justice movement. The second section of the book focuses on the changes that can lead to a new system of food politics. Gottlieb and Joshi analyze the relations between grassroots movements and political momentum around agricultural issues. The authors cite examples of the importance of economically and racially diverse communities in the food justice movement. For example, immigrants of various ethnic and racial backgrounds will often form cross-cultural alliances in order to utilize their shared knowledge of agriculture. The Nuestras Raíces group in Holyoke, the poorest city in Massachusetts, gathered together to clean an abandoned lot and form a community garden. While community gardens have become an increasingly popular tool to provide equity in the growth, distribution, and consumption of food, the authors seem to overlook the legal barriers that community members face when trying to establish farms on parcels with contested property rights. Another example of the importance of community voices to change the political landscape was the campaign to start a garden in the White House. A small group known as Kitchen Gardeners International hoped that if the First Family would establish a highly visible vegetable garden at the White House, this would lead to many more community vegetable gardens throughout the country, especially in low-income urban areas. The authors credit the success of this campaign to the power of social media, e-mail campaigns and petitions. The implication, though not explicitly stated, is that perhaps other groups could utilize these tools to help achieve food justice in their own communities. The final chapter in particular highlights points of entry for bringing about future food justice. The current challenge, as the authors see it, will be what Gramsci calls a war of position. In order to change the political structure of food, the movement will need to redirect public discourse around the issue of food. The authors remain optimistic that this emerging movement will one day become capable of challenging the systemic power of the major players in today's dominant food system, one local movement at a time. With the aid of other social justice movements, the food justice movement has a strong potential to implement changes. For instance, environmental groups can focus on stopping urban sprawl that destroys farmland, while economic development groups can work with food justice groups to promote sustainable job creation in the food industry. Gottlieb and Joshi emphasize that while related movements such as the "local food movement" play an important role in food justice, it is equally important to assure that "global" food is distributed and consumed in a fair way. Overall, the authors contend that in order to establish food justice, it will no longer be enough to have loosely connected efforts at changing food policy. Instead, people will have to be specifically dedicated to the issue of food justice. Scholars looking for a comprehensive overview of the history of community efforts and political struggles related to food policy should read this book. Gottlieb and Joshi have developed a well-researched text on the key movements and events related to the issue of food justice. People familiar with mainstream critiques of agriculture in the United States will recognize many of the examples of food injustice in the book. The authors refer many times to well-known experts such as Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. Readers should also be aware that while this book is a collection of many brief descriptions of the key events and failures in the food justice movement, the authors do not trace any particular case study at length. Even the cases highlighted in the description on the inner cover of the book are only a few pages in length. The book does not address the theoretical frameworks of social movements, and those hoping to obtain an in-depth understanding of the preliminary process of forming community movements related to food justice will not find that here. Instead, readers should expect primarily a collection of stories related to food policy. Aside from the last chapter, which briefly addresses a strategy for moving forward with a formalized food justice movement, the book is largely more descriptive than prescriptive. Nevertheless, the examples of prior successes have the potential to serve as inspiration for those who wish to create a new food justice movement, especially at a local level. 2011 Graduate Student Paper Competition Congratulations to the winner of the 2011 Graduate Student Paper Competition! Winner Mary Scherer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Gentrification, Creative-Class Style: Theorizing the State in Cultural Space- and Place-Making Political-economic support for market-led gentrification has prompted some compelling research, but we know less about state actors' support for cultural capital-led neighborhood change. Gentrification scholars now more or less agree that culture, in some form, should be taken seriously as part of both cause and outcome of the process whereby private capital is reinvested in poor urban areas, often leading to some form of displacement. However, the dominance of one type of cultural capital over another varies over time and across context, requiring specificity if it is to invoke shared meaning. Therefore, planners' selection of cultural products for place representation is far from arbitrary; in fact, it is increasingly based on professional consultation for mounting "re-branding" campaigns. The most popular consultant is economist Richard Florida, whose creative class theory explains that cities which foster a distinctive taste culture are more likely to experience revitalized local economies and enhanced global competitiveness. Although the privileging of creativity seems unproblematic at first, creative city planning is reliant on continually reproduced divisions between the creative class and those they seek to distinguish themselves from. This may have broader implications for the organizing principles we use to study inequality: creativity, as a catch-all for lifestyle, a values-based aesthetic, and a state-sanctioned habitus may signal a complex new schema indicative of new social divisions. I explore how city planning boards implicate the state in cultural capital-led gentrification. Member News New Books: Development Through Life: A Psychosocial Approach, 11th edition. (2012). By Barbara Newman and Philip Newman. Cengage/Wadsworth Press. $168.99. This book has been trusted and respected as a leading text for over thirty years providing instructors and students with a coherent structure for tracing development over the life span. The authors examine physical, intellectual, social, and emotional growth in each of 11 stages, emphasizing that development results from the interdependence of all these at every stage. This approach highlights the important developmental themes that recur in different stages of life-the themes that link our internal conflicts, changing self-awareness, and dynamic social environments. As a result, the text gives students a sense of a multidimensional person embedded in multiple contexts, striving toward new levels of competence and mastery. The Eleventh Edition has been thoroughly updated with new research findings and recent census data. It features an increased emphasis on brain development and social neuroscience, expanded use of case studies and first person accounts, and an enhanced coverage of diversity. More info at: http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?Ntt=development+through+life||9781111344665&Ntk=all||P_Isbn13&Ns=P_CopyRight_Year|1&N=+16 Globalization and Beyond:  New Examinations of Global Power and its Alternatives. (2011).  Edited by Jon Shefner and Patricia Fernández-Kelly. Penn State University Press. $79.95.  Authors include Giovanni Arrighi, Walden Bello, Fred Block, James Cypher, Raúl Delgado Wise, Cristina Escobar, Patricia Fernández-Kelly, Gary Gereffi, Frances Fox Piven, Alejandro Portes, Alexandra Walton Radford, William I. Robinson, Jon Shefner, Catherine Walsh, and Lu Zhang. If ever there was a tangible demonstration of the desire of people worldwide for a new world order, it was the enormous turnout in Washington, D.C., for the presidential inauguration and the rejoicing throughout the world at this signal of change in the offing. The neoliberal project was dealt a critical blow in the waning months of the Bush administration by the crushing tide of recession sweeping the globe. But the hegemony of the United States and of the international institutions it has used to maintain its economic dominance has been in decline for some years now, suggesting the need to explore alternative ways to carry out globalization's imperatives. In Globalization and Beyond, leading scholars take up the challenge of examining the current state of economic crisis and the variety of ways in which different countries (as well as different groups) are responding to it. More info at: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-04885-7.html Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. (2011). By Victor Rios. NYU Press. $20. Victor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s. A former gang member and juvenile delinquent, Rios managed to escape the bleak outcome of many of his friends and earned a PhD at Berkeley and returned to his hometown to study how inner city young Latino and African American boys develop their sense of self in the midst of crime and intense policing. Punished examines the difficult lives of these young men, who now face punitive policies in their schools, communities, and a world where they are constantly policed and stigmatized. More info at: http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=5154 New Article: "Community Types and Mortality in Georgia Counties". By Frank Young. Forthcoming, Social Indicators Research; Appeared on-line in SIR March 2011. Using an "ecological regional analysis" methodology for defining types of communities and their associated mortality rates, this study of Georgia's 159 counties finds that the suburban and town centered counties have low mortality while the city-centered type predicts low mortality for the whites. The military-centered counties do not predict. The rates for circulatory disease deaths show the same pattern. These findings are interpreted with the help of a new version of social ecology grounded in the ratio of the county's problem-solving capacity to the threats it faces. New Appointments: Ajala Olayinka Akinsumbo was appointed Head of the Department of Geography at Obafemi Awolowo University, Osun State, Nigeria. Victor Rios received tenure at the University of California, Santa Barbara in July 2011. Patricia Snell Herzog accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Rice University in the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. New Awards: Cameron Khalfani Herman (doctoral student, Department of Sociology Michigan State University) received a Martin Luther King Jr. Endowed Scholarship Award for the 2011-12 academic year. The award is given out annually by the university to recognize "MSU students who are, through their stewardship, becoming society's leaders by actively engaging in their communities in ways that fight injustice and promote equality for all on every possible level". Herman was chosen as a recipient based on his work with the My Brother's Keeper Mentoring Program (MBK), a mentoring and social intervention for African American boys attending an African-centered middle school in Detroit, Michigan. New Dissertations: "People In Context: Perceptions of Social Dissonance and Community Involvement" Patricia Snell Herzog Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame Social inequalities are embedded in spatially-related patterns, and spatial boundaries and distributions connect and exclude social groups in ways that influence their life outcomes. In this dissertation, I investigate how communities create and respond to these spatially-stratified contexts. The time and resources that people invest into their communities gives an indication of the degree to which these contexts will continue to be advantaged or disadvantaged places to live for the next cohort of residents, reproducing inherited contextual effects. What are the primary mechanisms by which community contexts relate to social outcomes? I investigate how an exit, loyalty, voice framework helps to explain the ways residents respond to their neighborhood contexts. To do this, I analyze nationally-representative survey data and linked Census data on the residential locations of survey respondents. I focus in particular on perceptions of context and find that people's subjective experiences of their neighborhood context matter just as much, if not more, than their objective structural neighborhood situations. Conference Announcements Call for papers: The American Journal of Sociology will sponsor a conference, Causal Thinking and Ethnographic Research, devoted to understanding the contributions of ethnographic research to contemporary causal thinking and scientific inference. Papers may be empirical or theoretical in nature. Is counterfactual thinking useful to ethnographers? Does ethnographic research help identify its flaws? Are the deductive methods underlying QCA appropriate to a research endeavor primarily driven by induction and abduction? Do mechanism-based explanations simply push the difficulties of causal inference deeper? What approaches to inference in ethnographic research would constitute a better alternative? Papers addressing these or any other questions concerning explanation, processes, or inference in ethnographic research, broadly defined, may be submitted. The conference will be moderated by Mario Small and held at the University of Chicago in early March 2012. Persons wishing to receive an invitation to participate should send 1-page abstracts via email to ajs@press.uchicago.edu (subject line: Conference Abstract) by December 1, 2011. Invitations will be issued January 2, 2012, and final accepted papers will be due by February 28. AJS anticipates offering a special issue on this topic in late 2012. Papers selected for participation will automatically be eligible (via peer review) for consideration in that issue, along with nonconference submissions received in 2012. SSSP 62nd Annual Meeting The Art of Activism August 16-18, 2012 - The Grand Hyatt Hotel, Denver, CO From the statement of Wendy Simonds, SSSP President, Georgia State University: "This year, let us celebrate a crucial part of what initially brought the SSSP into existence in 1951: the art of activism.  By focusing on the myriad intersections between art and activism, I mean to encourage the sharing of work that explores the creative spirit in activism as well as the sociopolitical power of art." Division Sessions Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, Social Movements, and the Shifting Boundaries of Community Organizer: Sean Brown, Northeastern University, brown.se@husky.neu.edu Non-profits, Community Organizations, and Activism: Seeking Change in Local Communities (THEMATIC) Organizer: Heather MacIndoe, University of Massachusetts Boston, Heather.MacIndoe@umb.edu Papers in the Round: Communities as the Focus of Social Inquiry Organizer: Shelley Kimelberg, Northeastern University, s.kimelberg@neu.edu Co-sponsored Sessions Schools, Community, and Inequality Organizer: Felicia Sullivan, University of Massachusetts Boston, felicia.sullivan@umb.edu (Division Co-sponsor: Educational Problems) Gentrification and Urban Redevelopment: Conflict, Opportunity, and Inequality Organizer: Jennifer Darrah, Harvard University, darrah@post.harvard.edu (Division Co-sponsors: Educational Problems, Environment & Technology, Racial & Ethnic Minorities) Segregated Communities: Questions, Trends, and Policies Organizer: Gesemia Nelson, Metropolitan State College of Denver, gnelso16@mscd.edu (Division Co-sponsors: Educational Problems, Racial & Ethnic Minorities) Community Gardens, Parks, and Public Places: Inclusion and Exclusion and the Meaning of Space Organizer: Tamara L. Mix, Oklahoma State University, tamara.mix@okstate.edu (Division Co-sponsor: Environment & Technology) Social Media, Flash Mobs, and the Relationship between Technology and Community Organizer: Onésimo (Ness) Sandoval, Saint Louis University, jsandov3@slu.edu (Division Co-sponsor: Environment & Technology) Revisiting the Economic Crisis: Housing, Employment, and Crime Organizer: Karen M. McCormack, Wheaton College, mccormack_karen@wheatonma.edu (Division Co-sponsor: Poverty, Class, & Inequality) Elder-Friendly Communities, Housing Policy, and Community Development Organizer: Mary Byrnes, Marygrove College, mbyrnes4404@marygrove.edu (Division Co-sponsor: Youth, Aging, & The Life Course) Submission Deadline: January 31, 2012 About the Community Research and Development Division: The CRD Division's mission is to provide opportunities for scholars, researchers, students, activists, and others to share and discuss their scholarship and experiences in a supportive setting. In order to further the goal of a just world the Division seeks to integrate the theory, empirical findings, and practice of both scholars/researchers and grassroots activists. We're on the Web! See us at: http://www.sssp1.org