Grid Governance in China under the COVID-19 Outbreak: Changing Neighborhood Governance

Housing commodification seems to suggest that a process of a state is embracing private governance. However, private governance in Chinese neighborhoods is a two-way trajectory. This paper examined two types of housing neighborhoods, namely, a work-unit housing neighborhood and gated commodity housing to understand the changes in neighborhood governance. It is interesting to observe that during the Covid-19 epidemic period, the state government enhanced its presence and public trust in neighborhood governance by changing the former ways of self-governance. As a strategy for the state to return to local governance, the grid governance is the reconfiguration of administrative resources at a neighborhood level and professionalizes neighborhood organizations to ensure the capacities of the state to solve social crises and neighborhood governance. The potential side effects of changing neighborhood governance are that while the implementation of grid governance has improved internal connections among residents, the empowered neighborhood governments acting as the “state agent on the ground” leads to an estrangement between residents and private governance. The underdevelopment of neighborhood autonomy is not only due to the restriction of state government, but more importantly, the reciprocal relationship of state-led neighborhood governance in the context of housing privatization development in China.

Generational Lagging of Dignitaries, Main Cause of Technological Gaps in Community Leaders. Analysis of Generation X and Boomers from the Technology Acceptance Model

Community and neighborhood organizations are in the process of renewing the organizational culture, considering technological environments in the way of training, and advancing communally, being competitive in adaptation and learning, creating new solutions, promoting change, and altering the status quo, based on the advancement of technology over the last few years, currently applied in most organizations. The decisive factor is the ability of true leaders to appropriate the Technological Acceptance Model –TAM– principles, participating in programs and projects, adopting new technologies from the different actors involved, contributing to the welfare of each community. There is, however, a relative resistance to the use of technology as support in community management, due to the generational differences in leaders and dignitaries, according to collected reports in this study, in relation to the age range of dignitaries –Generation X and Baby Boomers predominate–. They present a challenge to digital inclusion with difficulties related to age, cognitive, sensory, difficulty in developing skills, and abilities required in Digital Technologies, necessary to face new scenarios post-pandemic and, in general, the need to use technological facilities.

Urban Ethnography

If ethnography is the study of people as they negotiate their everyday lives, then urban ethnography is the study of how urban residents and other inhabitants make sense of their daily social worlds, navigate surrounding communities, and manage the broader forces that structure the urban experience. Methodologically, it privileges deep, immersive fieldwork alongside research participants. Substantively, it focuses on interactions and institutions that define urban space, whether those are public streets, neighborhood organizations, or community events. Urban ethnographies have traditionally thought of “communities” geographically, examining how the central topics of poverty, crime, culture, and peer group formation play out in delimited spaces such as neighborhoods, wards, and districts. Theoretically, it has historically tended to draw on social-constructionist and interactionist orientations, conceiving of the urban life as something “built up,” so to speak, from repeated and ritualized encounters. As one of the longest-standing and iconic subfields of sociology, anthropology, and other humanistic social sciences, urban ethnography remains one of the most influential modes of understanding social life in cities. True to form as one of the most conflictual and controversial subfields, an increasing number of scholars are pushing back on convention, insisting on the need to embrace theoretical orientations that are more critical and structurally focused, and to more adequately consider the global forces and relational dynamics that exist beyond, but fatefully impinge upon, bounded field sites. As urban ethnography’s readership has grown, so too have methodological critiques regarding replicability, as well as concerns about potential exploitation and voyeurism among its practitioners and readership.

A Multiorganizational Cooperation Framework for Neighborhood Disaster Resilience

Climate change and growth in coastal population make many American communities increasingly vulnerable to coastal disasters such as hurricanes, winter storms, and tsunamis. This research argues that neighborhood-level organizations can and should play a significant role in preparation for and response to such events. In particular, neighborhood and homeowner associations routinely play key roles in mobilizing community response to safety, physical decay, and infrastructure problems, all central concerns in preparation for and recovery from natural disaster. Neighborhood organizations then can act as lynchpin actors in a multiorganizational cooperation framework for disaster preparation, recovery, and resilience.

Urban Popular Movements in Latin America

In Latin America, urban popular movements emerged in the late 1940s as thousands of low-income migrants and city residents banded together to claim land, build self-help housing, and forge neighborhood organizations that fomented community participation and mobilized to demand land titles and city services. These neighborhoods were characterized by informal housing; inadequate provision of electricity, water, sanitation, transportation, and social services; and informal employment and underemployment. During the authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1970s, some urban popular movements resisted military dictatorship while others forged clientelist ties. Democratic and authoritarian leaders alike were forced to deal with the steady influx of rural migrants to cities, and regimes of all types often came to view informal neighborhoods founded by urban popular movements as an acceptable solution to some of the challenges of urbanization. In the 1980s and 1990s, neoliberal privatization of public utilities and cuts to social safety nets harmed urban popular movements, but national and local democratization expanded some avenues of participation, and the regional trend of urban popular movements expanded in numbers and extended its geographic reach. In the 2000s, socialist “Pink Tide” governments delivered benefits to low-income sectors, and many popular sectors supported these leftist regimes. Material gains proved modest, however, and state-movement alliances were rocky, leaving urban popular movements in the awkward position of being dissatisfied with national leadership, yet preferring the Pink Tide incumbents to most alternatives. And in the 2010s, a new “right turn” emerged, as conservative leaders replaced many Pink Tide presidents, threatening to reintroduce the repressive over-policing of popular sectors. Throughout these periods, the core conceptual identity of some urban popular movements shifted from the poblador (the “founder” seeking to meet his or her family’s needs) to the vecino (the “neighbor” collaborating with other movement participants through collective efforts), to the ciudadano (the empowered “citizen” who recognizes his or her needs as rights to be secured through political engagement).

Recidivism and Neighborhood Governance

Recent research on recidivism emphasizes the importance of neighborhoods to successful prisoner reentry. This research analyzes two ways in which institutions of neighborhood governance affect reentry. First, offenders in neighborhoods with institutions supporting social control may have more success in reintegrating into the community. Second, neighborhood institutions may create barriers to entry for ex-offenders more likely to reoffend. To test this, we combine Arkansas Department of Corrections data on offenders returning to Little Rock between 2004 and 2014 with geocoded data on neighborhood and homeowner associations. We analyze this data using Cox proportional hazards and two-stage residual inclusion models of recidivism hazard. We find that a significant relationship exists between recidivism hazard and neighborhood governance, but that this is attributable to nonrandom assignment of ex-offenders to neighborhoods rather than the role neighborhood organizations play in facilitating reentry.

Resistance to the dominant economic discourses : making sense of the economy from a working-class neighborhood

This study explores the way that working-class people contest dominant economic discourses and how they develop alternative explanations for their economic situation. Based on qualitative interviews, participant observation, and archival research in an urban working-class neighborhood of Spain, findings are that the workers do not reproduce dominant economic discourses because there is an alternative economic discourse that has gained importance in the community. This alternative discourse, with a clear Marxist base, stands for workers' rights and the welfare state, rejects cuts on the budget for social services, and blames the national elites for the current economic crisis. The dissertation analyzes the three historical processes that produced this alternative discourse, (1) the neighborhood movement for the improvement of the living conditions in the community, (2) the resistance against the Franco dictatorship, and (3) the workers' struggle to achieve labor and social rights through the organized labor movement. Findings also reveal how the members of the community are socialized into this alternative discourse and how the discourse is used in the everyday life of the community to contest dominant economic discourses. The findings demonstrate that the very pro-worker economic discourse that allows workers to contest mainstream economic discourses constitutes a major element of demobilization of the community. Finally, the paper also provides important insights on the socializing role of neighborhood organizations and workers' unions and political parties, as well as an analysis of how Spanish urban workers understand social stratification.

‘Neighbourhood effects’ on children's educational achievement in Chile: The effects of inequality and polarization

This article studies the effects of the neighborhood in which a school is located on children's mathematics achievement in Chile. It uses data taken from a sample of 127,020 sixth grade students measured by the National Education Quality Measurement System [Sistema Nacional de Medición de la Calidad de la Educación]. The incorporation of a measurement of socio-economic polarization of the geographic environment, which is innovative in urban studies, allows us to qualify some critical aspects suggested in the academic discussion. A lagged dependent variable model is used, controlling for the score obtained by the same students in fourth grade. Using multilevel linear regressions, the results show positive effects related to participation in neighborhood organizations. One critical finding is that socio-economic polarization has a negative and significant impact on the educational achievement of sixth graders. The conclusions highlight the repercussions associated with acute inequalities in the neighborhoods, and speak to the importance of accessing dimensions which are more closely linked to cities' social structure.