RWJ and the grassroots: Race and administration in the social construction of inner city communities.
Item
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Title
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RWJ and the grassroots: Race and administration in the social construction of inner city communities.
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Identifier
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AAI3008845
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identifier
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3008845
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Creator
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Lindholm, Matthew Scot.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Charles Kadushin
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies | Sociology, Social Structure and Development
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Abstract
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This study compared implementations of a social program in ten U.S. cities. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded Fighting Back from 1989 to 1997, a community organizing project to address alcohol and other drug problems. Investigated were political and social organizational processes and consequences of a local administration in which inner city grassroots were to play a central role. Comparative case studies were developed based on in-depth interviews, field observations, and documents. First, the process of local program development was conceptualized as cooptation. At a leadership level of analysis, implementation was a mutual process of adaptation which incorporated minority grassroots into decision-making and resource distribution. Where found, this result depended on the following conditions: the relative cohesiveness and strength, respectively, of local grassroots and elite participants; compatibility between elite and grassroots framing of local drug problems; the relative disorganization and weakness of local service providing sectors. At an institutional level of analysis, grassroots inclusion in decision-making and resource distribution granted local elites some legitimacy but created dependencies between grassroots and resource providers and imposed on grassroots burdens of administration. This resulted in segmented incorporation of minority grassroots into racially ordered local and regional administration. Second, the study conceptualized administration as a community organizing and disorganizing process. Where program sites were multi-racial, program implementation organized minority grassroots as adversaries of administration. The following local institutional entry points for programming had differing civic and social organizational effects on grassroots. At the level of community organization, local grantees which were service providers disorganized grassroots as individual clients and subcontractors. Local government grantees organized grassroots as client groups or constituencies. Philanthropic grantees became potential vehicles for local grassroots leadership to create more broadly based civic organization. The following organizational and ecological factors were conditions for more cohesive grassroots organization at the community level: a history of less formally organized grassroots (relatively unarticulated and unorganized local interests), for example, only recent histories of ward-organized politics and of participation in federal programming; historically contiguous patterns of minority settlement. A direct cause of cohesion was professional grassroots organizing affiliated with national organizing networks.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
