A look at the benefits and consequences of the rise of community-based organizations in urban development
Who makes decisions that shape the housing, policies, and social programs in urban ...neighborhoods? Who, in other words, governs? Constructing Community offers a rich ethnographic portrait of the individuals who implement community development projects in the Fairmount Corridor, one of Boston’s poorest areas. Jeremy Levine uncovers a network of nonprofits and philanthropic foundations making governance decisions alongside public officials—a public-private structure that has implications for democratic representation and neighborhood inequality.
Levine spent four years following key players in Boston’s community development field. While state senators and city councilors are often the public face of new projects, and residents seem empowered through opportunities to participate in public meetings, Levine found a shadow government of nonprofit leaders and philanthropic funders, nonelected neighborhood representatives with their own particular objectives, working behind the scenes. Tying this system together were political performances of “community”—government and nonprofit leaders, all claiming to value the community. Levine provocatively argues that there is no such thing as a singular community voice, meaning any claim of community representation is, by definition, illusory. He shows how community development is as much about constructing the idea of community as it is about the construction of physical buildings in poor neighborhoods.
Constructing Community demonstrates how the nonprofit sector has become integral to urban policymaking, and the tensions and trade-offs that emerge when private nonprofits take on the work of public service provision.
From the 1950s to the end of the twentieth century, Boston transformed from a city in freefall into a thriving metropolis, as modern glass skyscrapers sprouted up in the midst of iconic brick ...rowhouses. After decades of corruption and graft, a new generation of politicians swept into office, seeking to revitalize Boston through large-scale urban renewal projects. The most important of these was a new city hall, which they hoped would project a bold vision of civic participation. The massive Brutalist building that was unveiled in 1962 stands apart -- emblematic of the city's rebirth through avant-garde design.
And yet Boston City Hall frequently ranks among the country's ugliest buildings. Concrete Changes seeks to answer a common question for contemporary viewers: How did this happen? In a lively narrative filled with big personalities and newspaper accounts, Brian M. Sirman argues that this structure is more than a symbol of Boston's modernization; it acted as a catalyst for political, social, and economic change.
A look at the benefits and consequences of the rise of
community-based organizations in urban development Who
makes decisions that shape the housing, policies, and social
programs in urban ...neighborhoods? Who, in other words, governs?
Constructing Community offers a rich ethnographic portrait
of the individuals who implement community development projects in
the Fairmount Corridor, one of Boston's poorest areas. Jeremy
Levine uncovers a network of nonprofits and philanthropic
foundations making governance decisions alongside public
officials-a public-private structure that has implications for
democratic representation and neighborhood inequality. Levine spent
four years following key players in Boston's community development
field. While state senators and city councilors are often the
public face of new projects, and residents seem empowered through
opportunities to participate in public meetings, Levine found a
shadow government of nonprofit leaders and philanthropic funders,
nonelected neighborhood representatives with their own particular
objectives, working behind the scenes. Tying this system together
were political performances of "community"-government and nonprofit
leaders, all claiming to value the community. Levine provocatively
argues that there is no such thing as a singular community voice,
meaning any claim of community representation is, by definition,
illusory. He shows how community development is as much about
constructing the idea of community as it is about the construction
of physical buildings in poor neighborhoods. Constructing
Community demonstrates how the nonprofit sector has become
integral to urban policymaking, and the tensions and trade-offs
that emerge when private nonprofits take on the work of public
service provision.
In colonial America, the system of "warning out" was distinctive to New England, a way for a community to regulate those to whom it would extend welfare.Robert Love's Warningsanimates this nearly ...forgotten aspect of colonial life, richly detailing the moral and legal basis of the practice and the religious and humanistic vision of those who enforced it.Historians Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger follow one otherwise obscure town clerk, Robert Love, as he walked through Boston's streets to tell sojourners, "in His Majesty's Name," that they were warned to depart the town in fourteen days. This declaration meant not that newcomers literally had to leave, but that they could not claim legal settlement or rely on town poor relief. Warned youths and adults could reside, work, marry, or buy a house in the city. If they became needy, their relief was paid for by the province treasurer. Warning thus functioned as a registration system, encouraging the flow of labor and protecting town coffers.Between 1765 and 1774, Robert Love warned four thousand itinerants, including youthful migrant workers, demobilized British soldiers, recently exiled Acadians, and women following the redcoats who occupied Boston in 1768. Appointed warner at age sixty-eight owing to his unusual capacity for remembering faces, Love kept meticulous records of the sojourners he spoke to, including where they lodged and whether they were lame, ragged, drunk, impudent, homeless, or begging. Through these documents, Dayton and Salinger reconstruct the biographies of travelers, exploring why so many people were on the move throughout the British Atlantic and why they came to Boston. With a fresh interpretation of the role that warning played in Boston's civic structure and street life,Robert Love's Warningsreveals the complex legal, social, and political landscape of New England in the decade before the Revolution.
How the attorney-client relationship favors the
privileged in criminal court-and denies justice to the poor and to
working-class people of color The number of Americans
arrested, brought to court, ...and incarcerated has skyrocketed in
recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and
economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly
different ways. Privilege and Punishment examines how
racial and class inequalities are embedded in the attorney-client
relationship, providing a devastating portrait of inequality and
injustice within and beyond the criminal courts. Matthew Clair
conducted extensive fieldwork in the Boston court system, attending
criminal hearings and interviewing defendants, lawyers, judges,
police officers, and probation officers. In this eye-opening book,
he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court
interactions. When disadvantaged defendants try to learn their
legal rights and advocate for themselves, lawyers and judges often
silence, coerce, and punish them. Privileged defendants, who are
more likely to trust their defense attorneys, delegate authority to
their lawyers, defer to judges, and are rewarded for their
compliance. Clair shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often
backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color, and how
effective legal representation alone is no guarantee of justice.
Superbly written and powerfully argued, Privilege and
Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are
perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today's criminal
courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them.
An engaging yet objective look at the 350-year old history of "Southie," a neighborhood that has survived largely unchanged since the early days of immigrant Irish families and old-time political ...bosses. Originally published by Quinlan Press in 1988 and reprinted by Northeastern University Press in 1994. With a new foreword by Lawrence W. Kennedy.
Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic ...disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger's test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily on public schools. She examines how workplaces came to depend on an army of white-collar staff, largely women and second-generation immigrants, trained in secondary schools. But Groeger finds that the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, and so shift workplace power toward management. And advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality.The idea that more education should be the primary means of reducing inequality may be appealing to politicians and voters, but Groeger warns that it may be a dangerous policy trap. If we want a more equitable society, we should not just prescribe more time in the classroom, but fight for justice in the workplace.
Perhaps the most spectacular reaction to court-ordered busing in the 1970s occurred in Boston, where there was intense and protracted protest. Ron Formisano explores the sources of white opposition ...to school desegregation. Racism was a key factor, he argues, but racial prejudice alone cannot explain the movement. Class resentment, ethnic rivalries, and the defense of neighborhood turf all played powerful roles in the protest. In a new epilogue, Formisano brings the story up to the present day, describing the end of desegregation orders in Boston and other cities. He also examines the nationwide trend toward the resegregation of schools, and closes with a brief look at the few school districts that have attempted to base school assignment policies on class or economic status.
Boston National Historical Park is one of America's most popular
heritage destinations, drawing in millions of visitors annually.
Tourists flock there to see the site of the Boston Massacre, to
...relive Paul Revere's midnight ride, and to board Old
Ironsides -all of these bound together by the iconic Freedom
Trail, which traces the city's revolutionary saga. Making sense of
the Revolution, however, was never the primary aim for the planners
who reimagined Boston's heritage landscape after the Second World
War. Seth C. Bruggeman demonstrates that the Freedom Trail was
always largely a tourist gimmick, devised to lure affluent white
Americans into downtown revival schemes, its success hinging on a
narrow vision of the city's history run through with old stories
about heroic white men. When Congress pressured the National Park
Service to create this historical park for the nation's
bicentennial celebration in 1976, these ideas seeped into its
organizational logic, precluding the possibility that history might
prevail over gentrification and profit.
The event known as the Boston Massacre is among the most familiar in U.S. history, yet one of the least understood. Eric Hinderaker revisits this dramatic episode, examining the facts of that fateful ...night, the competing narratives that molded public perceptions, and the long campaign to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity.
