Diversity in flowering plants and their characteristics: integrating humans as a driver of urban floral resources

Urban neighborhoods vary in development intensity and in the life style and demographics of their residents. Decisions made by urban residents affect plant communities, their functional characteristics, and the floral resources they provide. We recorded flowers in front-facing yards in 58 neighborhoods in Chicago, IL (USA) and examined patterns in community composition and species turnover between neighborhoods. We investigated how species richness and plant characteristics, including origin, cultivation intent, and life cycle, are affected by neighborhood socioeconomic factors. Urban plant species tended to be perennial, ornamental, and non-native. White clover had the broadest distribution and the highest floral abundance but was not present in several of the highest-income neighborhoods. Although we found 144 morpho-species across neighborhoods, most occurred infrequently. Species turnover was highest for ornamental species and lowest for weedy species, suggesting that intentional plantings are driving beta diversity across the landscape. We found the highest species richness in neighborhoods with intermediate numbers of Hispanic and white residents and with intermediate number of residential lots; neighborhoods with racially or ethnically homogenous populations had fewer plant species. The high frequency of weeds in low-income neighborhoods, the occurrence of certain ornamental plant species in whiter, wealthier communities, and high turnover of species from one neighborhood to another, all suggest a disparity in plant-related ecosystem services across cities. Complexity in urban plantings may be influenced by the suite of perspectives that residents bring towards habitat management. Cultivation sustains a diversity of plants and creates a disparity in plant traits by neighborhood socioeconomics.     

Ethnic Identity,Self-Esteem,and Interpersonal Relationships Among Multiethnic Adolescents

A sample of 70 multiethnic adolescents (22 Asian/white, 23 black/white, 25 latino/white adolescents) were surveyed regarding their ethnic identification, self-esteem, and familial and peer relationships. The adolescents identified as multiethnic and reported feeling a high degree of comfort and acceptance in bothh white majority and ethnic minority communities. An average level of self-esteem was found. The relationship bonds were strong with both sides of the family, although somewhat stronger with the family of the minority parent. The adolescent reported feeling accepted by both white majority and ethnic minority peers, but indicated a preference for an ethnically diverse group of friends.     

Using peer‐interviewing methods to explore place‐based disadvantage: dissolving the distance between suits and civilians

Collaborative and participatory research methods reflect ideals to undertake research in consultation and partnership with communities and to advance community empowerment and capacity. They offer ethical and practical approaches for conducting research addressing socioeconomic and health disparities particularly in marginalised or vulnerable communities. Peer‐interviewing is one such participatory strategy employed in studies involving hard‐to‐reach populations. However, while the value of peer‐interviewing for researchers is noted in the methodological literature, there are few discussions that critically examine the benefits and challenges of using peer‐researcher approaches, either for the interviewers themselves or the communities they represent. This study reports the findings from a qualitative study that explored the experiences of peer‐interviewers who were involved in undertaking community surveys of residents in the socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in which they lived. We discuss the benefits and challenges that participants reported from their involvement.     

Is ethnic prejudice declining in Britain? Change in social distance attitudes among ethnic majority and minority Britons

Most literature on racial prejudice deals with the racial attitudes of the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities separately. This paper breaks this tradition. We examine the social distance attitudes of white and non‐white British residents to test if these attitudes follow the same trends over time, whether they are driven by the same social processes and whether they are inter‐related. We have three main findings. Firstly, social distance from other ethnic groups has declined over time for both white and ethnic minority Britons. For the white majority there are both period and cohort elements to this decline. Secondly, we see some evidence that social distance between the majority and minority groups is reciprocal. Specifically, minorities who experience rejection by the white British feel a greater sense of distance from them. Thirdly, we find that all groups share the perception of the same ethnic hierarchy. We see evidence of particularly widespread hostility towards Muslim Britons from all ethnic groups suggesting that Muslims are singled out for negative attention from many British residents of all other backgrounds, including a large number who do not express hostility to other groups.     

Beyond the “Usual Suspects”? Reimagining Democracy With Participatory Budgeting in Chicago

This article examines whether democratic innovations in the United States attract citizens who are typically underrepresented within existing political institutions. We focus on participatory budgeting, an intervention where residents decide how to allocate a particular pot of public money. Taking “PB Chicago” as our case study, we use survey and interview data to examine whether organizers realized their stated goal of involving residents other than the “usual suspects.” We find that residents who voted in PB Chicago were more often white, college educated, and from higher‐income households relative to both the local population and politically active residents in Chicago. While these residents were not necessarily the most active across other stages of the PB Chicago process, we find little evidence that lower socioeconomic status and minority residents were accessing the civic learning and empowerment gains associated with participatory forms of democracy. Outreach made the process more inclusive but was insufficient to overcome several important structural constraints. Of particular note, the needs and interests of less privileged residents were not met by the narrow capital works focus of PB Chicago. We suggest that when implemented under such conditions, participatory budgeting risks deepening existing political and social inequalities.     

A Survival Analysis of Timing of Entry into Prostitution: The Differential Impact of Race, Educational Level, and Childhood/Adolescent Risk Factors

Using survey data obtained from 309 women working in street-level prostitution in Phoenix, Arizona, this investigation examines the influence of minority status, educational level, and the experience of risk factors in an individual's childhood or adolescence on the hazard rate for age of entry into prostitution. Findings of this study show that women engaging in prostitution have limited educational backgrounds and often do not complete high school. Results indicate that both white and minority women engaging in prostitution experienced high rates of physical and sexual abuse in childhood, as well as parental substance abuse. When compared to minority women, white women are more likely to have experienced any one of these three risk factors thought to influence entry into prostitution, yet event-history analysis indicates that minority women consistently experience significantly higher hazard rates for entry into prostitution. Findings suggest the need for future research to better assess the impact of race—in the form of socioeconomic and social disadvantages associated with minority status—as it relates to entry into the sex trade.     

White Supremacists and the (Pan-)Ethnic Imperative: On "European-Americans" and "White Student Unions"

Working from literature on the social construction of ethnicity and on white ethnic identity, I explore contemporary white supremacist discourse aimed at presenting whites as a "pan-ethnic" community of European descendants, whose ethnicity is equivalent to that of established ethnic and minority communities. First, I look at how white supremacists struggle with uniting all "whites," negotiate the meanings and boundaries of "whiteness" and "European-American," and conceptualize their putative ethnicity as lamentable. Second, I look at discourse on efforts to organize "White Student Unions." The use of the hyphenated-American strategy and the development of white student unions both reflect tactical breaks with the past and are part of a "new racist" focus on putting forth a more presentable image for white supremacy and presenting whites as an ethnic/minority group, with ethnic-like concerns and traits. If indeed there is an emergent pan-ethnic phenomenon among "European-Americans," then it may prove important to recognize when this phenomenon is rooted in white supremacy and when it is not.     

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE,SWINE PRODUCTION AND FARM LOSS IN NORTH CAROLINA

Since the early 1990s, North Carolina has been the fastest growing swine-producing state in the country and the leading innovator in vertically integrated, industrially structured hog farming. Although the growth and concentration of swine production has been associated with a host of negative social and environmental impacts on the states air, land, and waterways, environmental justice and farm loss concerns have played a particularly key role in the evolution of the controversy in North Carolina. Using multivariate analysis of statewide census and agricultural data, we identified the county-level sociodemographic characteristics associated with farm loss between 1982 and 1997. We found that recent patterns of farm loss were more pronounced in Black communities, regardless of income, and low-income communities, regardless of race. Furthermore, counties that had greater hog industry growth in the early 1980s and had large hog populations by 1992 have suffered greater farm loss since the early 1980s than counties where the hog industry growth did not intensify until more recently. The implications of these findings with reference to an expanded environmental justice framework regarding the discriminatory impacts of swine facilities on minority and low-income rural communities are discussed.     

Contradictions in Agrarian Ideology: Restructuring Gender,Race-Ethnicity,and Class1

Abstract Contradictions in agrarian ideology are revealed through an analysis of social dimensions of economic restructuring in rural Iowa. Data are culled from field observations and in-depth interviews with white European American residents. How rural residents cope with and make sense of the changes within their communities are two interrelated dimensions of social restructuring. The research highlights a perception of sharpening social and economic divisions within two small communities. The social and economic changes challenged residents' self-definitions, perspectives on rural community life, and previously taken-for-granted notions of gender, racial-ethnic, and class relations. Analysis of field data demonstrates contradictory ways that discourses on agrarianism and gemeinschaft serve as resources as well as impediments to social support and community development.     

Class,race, and the disposal of urban waste: Locations of landfills,incinerators, and sewage treatment plants

This study compared the socioeconomic status, racial composition, and ethnic composition of 49 randomly selected U.S. cities with those of the census tracts containing the solid waste disposal facilities and sewage treatment plants for those cities. Contrary to the environmental racism and classism hypotheses, residents of tracts with landfills or incinerators had higher incomes and were less likely to be minority group members than residents of the cities that generated the refuse—although they did have somewhat lower education levels. There were few differences between the population characteristics of the cities and the census tracts that contained their sewage treatment plants. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.     

The Collateral Consequences of Prisonization: Racial Sorting,Carceral Identity,and Community Criminalization

In this paper, I employ analyses of the collateral consequences of mass incarceration to consider how high‐incarceration communities are impacted by socializing processes instilled in the prison. Collateral consequences researchers have found that neighborhoods with high rates of incarceration suffer cumulative disadvantage, intensified policing, and the criminalization of residents. But overlooked in this literature is how socializing processes that are institutionalized in the prison shape the criminalization of community residents as gang‐involved. For example, I argue that the fallout of sorting imprisoned Latinos into gang‐associated groups has been the emergence of prison‐based Norteña/o, Sureña/o, and Bulldog identities in criminalized Chicana/o neighborhoods, complicating the implications mass incarceration has for marginalized communities of color. The geographic concentration of both mass incarceration and its collateral consequences not only directs aggressive policing into these residential spaces but also structures a relationship between prison and neighborhood that reinforces the recognition of community members as criminal. The appearance of Norteña/o, Sureña/o, and Bulldog identities in Latina/o neighborhoods represents some of the unanticipated consequences mass incarceration has for high‐incarceration communities, both in terms of the exportation of prison culture to the street and in terms of the extension of the prison's ability to define and construct criminality.     

Social Isolation and Lethal Violence Across the Metro/Nonmetro Divide: The Effects of Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Poverty Concentration on Homicide*

Abstract This study extends the macro‐level criminological research tradition by examining the links between socioeconomic disadvantage, poverty concentration, and homicide in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan U.S. counties. Most research in this tradition has tested structural theories using urban areas as the unit of analysis. This “urban bias” has resulted in a limited understanding of the social forces driving violence in nonmetropolitan areas. To partially address this problem, we link the literature on the spatial and social organization of nonmetropolitan communities with the social isolation perspective from the urban poverty literature. We hypothesize that the spatial concentration of poverty drives up rates of homicide in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas regardless of levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Negative binomial regression for 1,746 nonmetropolitan and 778 metropolitan counties suggest that both socioeconomic disadvantage and poverty concentration elevate homicide in metropolitan areas. However, in nonmetropolitan counties only socioeconomic disadvantage has a significant impact. We conclude by discussing the implications of these differential findings for the social isolation perspective.     

She Was Born in a Small Town: The Advantages and Disadvantages in Political Knowledge and Efficacy for Rural Girls

Recent work suggests that girls learn more about politics and are more efficacious in places with less conflict and greater homogeneity. Given that rural communities are often more homogeneous than metropolitan areas across several dimensions, this article asks whether young girls growing up in rural communities have higher levels of political knowledge and efficacy than those in more urban, diverse communities. It argues that the average girl benefits from the stronger social bonds between residents in smaller places, but young women who hold minority views about the importance of equality are likely to suffer in their levels of knowledge and efficacy. Being in the minority seems to be particularly difficult for girls in smaller places. This article raises questions about the ways in which gender gaps vary across different places and the varying effects of minority status.     

COMMUNITY INFLUENCES ON WHITE RACIAL ATTITUDES: What Matters and Why?

Tracing the roots of racial attitudes in historical events and individual biographies has been a long-standing goal of race relations scholars. Recent years have seen a new development in racial attitude research: Local community context has entered the spotlight as a potential influence on racial views. The race composition of the locality has been the most common focus; evidence from earlier decades suggests that white Americans are more likely to hold anti-black attitudes if they live in areas where the African-American population is relatively large. However, an influential 2000 article argued that the socioeconomic composition of the white community is a more powerful influence on white attitudes: In low-socioeconomic status (SES) locales, “stress-inducing” deprivations and hardships in whites' own lives purportedly lead them to disparage blacks. The study reported here reassesses this “scapegoating” claim, using data from the 1998 to 2002 General Social Surveys linked to 2000 census information about communities. Across many dimensions of racial attitudes, there is pronounced influence of both local racial proportions and college completion rates among white residents. However, the economic dimension of SES exerts negligible influence on white racial attitudes, suggesting that local processes other than scapegoating must be at work.     

Critical Race Theories,Colorism, and the Decade's Research on Families of Color

In the millennium's inaugural decade, 2 interrelated trends influenced research on America's families of color: the need for new knowledge about America's growing ethnic/racial minority and immigrant populations and conceptual advances in critical race theories and perspectives on colorism. Three substantive areas reflecting researchers' interests in these trends emerged as the most frequently studied topics about families of color: inequality and socioeconomic mobility within and across families, interracial romantic pairings, and the racial socialization of children. In this review, we synthesize and critique the decade's scholarly literature on these topics. We devote special attention to advances in knowledge made by family‐relevant research that incorporated ways of thinking from critical race theories and the conceptual discourse on colorism.     

The salience of terminology: Housing research with older people from minority ethnic communities

In this article we focus on recent literature on the housing needs of older people from minority ethnic communities. Such research has undoubtedly benefited particular communities in demonstrating that their needs have been neglected to date. However, the terminology used to describe ethnicity often assumes an unproblematic black-white divide in that it defines communities as discrete and homogeneous groups. Moreover, whilst much research in this field is described as concerned with 'black and minority ethnic' communities, it is in effect about specifically defined 'black' communities with little or no room for other minority ethnic communities. We argue in this paper, using two examples, that this has consequences for resource distribution and for funding of initiatives to help minority ethnic communities.     

Minority environmental activism in Britain: From brixton to the lake district

Historically, the British environmental movement has been devoid of minority participation, but this is changing very slowly, with the emergence of ethnic minority environmental groups and multiracial environmental alliances. These groups have argued that ethnic minorities have little or no access to public funds earmarked for countryside and wildlife preservation issues. They argue that white environmental organizations do not pay attention to the needs of inner-city minority residents and minority access to the countryside. Increased access, community improvement and beautification projects, environmental education, youth training, community garden projects, and issues of environmental racism are all foci of ethnic minority environmental movements. While some white environmentalists have been supportive of them, others have been uncomfortable with them or even hostile to their existence.     

Community Solidarity,Political Competitiveness,and Social Rigidity: Relationships With Social and Health Services1

Previous work suggests that solidarity, political competitiveness, and rigidity influence the nature of social and economic change. Hypotheses that these three phenomena affect social well-being at the institutional level of the community beyond the effects of basic socioeconomic and population characteristics are examined in this study. Using data from a sample of North Carolina county-seat communities, a regression analysis with six controls indicates positive relationships of community solidarity and political competitiveness with social and health services. However, there is little indication that social rigidity has any effect on such services. Contrary to theories claiming the relative unimportance of communities, results indicate that community populations with high levels of solidarity and political competitiveness can have a positive influence on institutional growth and structural change.     

Is it Race,Immigrant Status,or Both? An Analysis of Wage Disparities among Men in the United States1

The intersection of race and immigrant status forms a unique social space where minority group members and immigrants are afforded or denied the privileges that are routinely accorded to native-born, non-Hispanic whites. Yet recent research on the intersection of race and immigrant status is inconsistent in its findings, limited to a small number of racial groups, and does not account for the geographic distribution of racial/ethnic groups. In this paper, we shed light on the intersection of race and immigrant status by answering two questions: (1) Do racial disparities in socioeconomic outcomes vary by nativity? and (2) Do native-immigrant disparities in socioeconomic outcomes vary by race? Using 2000 Census data linked to metropolitan area and sending country data, we find that racial disparities are similar and significant among natives and immigrants (Question 1). Asians, blacks, and Latinos fare significantly worse than their white counterparts in both the native and immigrant populations. Furthermore, our analysis of native-immigrant wage disparities by race reveals that the immigrant experience is considerably worse for Asians, blacks, and Latinos (Question 2). These groups also receive fewer wage returns to years spent in the U.S. and their wage disparities are magnified by the percentage of immigrants in a metropolitan area – whereas all whites receive a wage premium when living in an area with a larger share of immigrants. The results suggest that race and immigrant status work in concert to uniquely influence the social experience of immigrant minorities in the U.S.     

“Let’s talk about the real issue”: Localized perceptions of environment and implications for ecosocial work practice

ABSTRACT

This interpretive study investigated how residents from socioeconomically challenged communities in North St. Louis understand and make meaning of environmental change and its impact on their well-being. Based on these localized data, we argue that racial minorities facing socioeconomic challenges may experience some environmental issues as less of an immediate concern than violence and racism. However, race and racism shape both the realities of environmental threats as well as residents’ perceptions about environmental injustice in their communities. This study informs ecosocial work practices such as educating communities on local environmental issues and mobilizing community members toward environmental decision-making.