Impact of Community on Personal Well-Being in Urban China

ABSTRACT

As the work-unit system fell after economic reform in China, neighborhoods replaced work units as the primary provider of vital social services for the urban population and became a new social space for enhancing the quality of people's well-being. This study examined the neighborhood characteristics that influenced personal well-being of residents. Drawn by multistage sampling and administered by face-to-face interviews, the survey included a sample of 976 participants from 31 neighborhoods in urban Shanghai. Results indicate that neighboring behaviors enhanced subjective well-being of the young and middle-aged residents but had no impact on older people. Sense of community, on the other hand, was found to contribute to well-being of all age groups and was particularly strong among older people in more deprived neighborhoods. Findings inform development of community practice strategies for vitalizing community efficacy and fostering individual well-being in urban China. Recommendations for future research are made using the results of this study.     

Community Mobilization and Credit: The Impact of Nonprofits and Social Capital on Community Reinvestment Act Lending*

Objective. Recent trends in urban research emphasize the importance of local nonprofits and social capital in the revitalization of poor and minority neighborhoods. This article tests the idea that urban communities able to mobilize themselves by establishing development nonprofits and overcoming collective action problems will be better able to make use of urban‐development policies. Methods. Measures operationalizing nonprofit presence and social capital are used in an empirical test to see if they can, through the medium of the Community Reinvestment Act, increase the number of mortgage and business loans in Washington, D.C. Results. These variables show only weak effects on mortgage lending, but very strong results for small‐business lending in all types of communities. Conclusions. The results suggest that nonprofits and social capital may have only limited benefit in the revitalization of urban neighborhoods and researchers and practitioners should be careful when relying on them.     

Communities do act: Neighborhood characteristics,resource mobilization,and political action by local community organizations

Some communities act, and some do not. By action we refer to political actions that challenge existing authority, and by communities we refer to urban neighborhoods and their local voluntary organizations. By combining recent theories and research on local urban communities and neighborhoods with the resource mobilization perspective of collective political action we develop a synthetic model specifying the characteristics of local neighborhoods that affect their capacity to mobilize resources in local community organizations to engage in collective political action. Structural characteristics of neighborhoods (such as size and heterogeneity) are hypothesized to affect their ability to mobilize resources (funds and members) in local organizations. The degree of external support for local organizations is also hypothesized to affect resource mobilization. These in turn are hypothesized to affect the amount of organized political action engaged in by local urban communities. The model is tested in a secondary analysis of data from a pooled sample of 181 community organizations in neighborhoods in three cities. We conclude that structural characteristics of local neighborhoods do affect political action, but only indirectly through their effects on resource mobilization. Larger, more homogeneous local communities and neighborhoods mobilize more funds, but this in turn reduces the likelihood of political action. Smaller local communities and neighborhoods are more likely to mobilize members, however size of membership does not affect political action. In short, members do not count, and money matters—the more the money, the less the political action.     

Coordinating community organizations in urban China

Since its introduction in the 1980s, China's housing privatization reform has gradually transformed urban residents into private homeowners, and reinforced disparities in housing allocation and living conditions. Various studies have analyzed the mobilization of private homeowners in newly built, upscale apartment complexes. Using data from field observations and in-depth interviews conducted in five low-income, urban neighborhoods in Beijing in 1999–2000, this article investigates the shifts in the organizational and power structure in older, working-class communities. The article describes the changing status of traditional and newly developed organizations and agencies within these neighborhoods, and analyzes the underlying reasons for the displacements and conflicts they experienced. Drawing on the author's subsequent fieldwork with community organizations in the USA in 2001–2002, the article suggests means of coordinating community organizations in low-income, urban neighborhoods in China, and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the social work profession in its attempts to deliver social services and advocate social justice.     

Coordinating community organizations in urban China

Since its introduction in the 1980s, China's housing privatization reform has gradually transformed urban residents into private homeowners, and reinforced disparities in housing allocation and living conditions. Various studies have analyzed the mobilization of private homeowners in newly built, upscale apartment complexes. Using data from field observations and in-depth interviews conducted in five low-income, urban neighborhoods in Beijing in 1999–2000, this article investigates the shifts in the organizational and power structure in older, working-class communities. The article describes the changing status of traditional and newly developed organizations and agencies within these neighborhoods, and analyzes the underlying reasons for the displacements and conflicts they experienced. Drawing on the author's subsequent fieldwork with community organizations in the USA in 2001–2002, the article suggests means of coordinating community organizations in low-income, urban neighborhoods in China, and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the social work profession in its attempts to deliver social services and advocate social justice.     

社会性个体的生成：杜威的儿童研究及其社会理论意涵

本文通过集中讨论杜威基于儿童研究而进行的行动力教育,揭示实用主义思想对个体主义的具体理解。在美国镀金时代,孤立个体主义加剧了现代美国人的道德危机和社会分裂。杜威此时进行的儿童研究与教育改革,首要的目标是重新理解现代个体的行动结构和人格形态,以克服孤立个体主义造就的行动难题。利用“刺激—反应”的行动机制,杜威同时结合了自然力量和社会意识,力图在开展行动力教育的过程中塑造一种“社会性个体”。社会性个体一方面保留了源于自然的神圣性,另一方面又不断吸收来自社会的文明传统,以应对现代世界在人心和社会两方面的挑战。本研究有助于我们进一步理解美国社会学的早期思想根基并反思当下的生存处境。     

Opportunities for making ends meet and upward mobility: differences in organizational deprivation across urban and suburban poor neighborhoods

Objectives. Given the recent rise of poverty in U.S. suburbs, this study asks: What poor neighborhoods are most disadvantageous, those in the city or those in the suburbs? Building on recent urban sociological work demonstrating the importance of neighborhood organizations for the poor, we are concerned with one aspect of disadvantage—the lack of availability of organizational resources oriented toward the poor. By breaking down organizations into those that promote mobility versus those that help individuals meet their daily subsistence needs, we seek to explore potential variations in the type of disadvantage that may exist.Methods. We test whether poor urban or suburban neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived by breaking down organizations into three types: hardship organizations, educational organizations, and employment organizations. We use data from the 2000 U.S. County Business Patterns and the 2000 U.S. Census and test neighborhood deprivation using logistic regression models.Results. We find that suburban poor neighborhoods are more likely to be organizationally deprived than are urban poor neighborhoods, especially with respect to organizations that promote upward mobility. Interesting racial and ethnic composition factors shape this more general finding.Conclusion. Our findings suggest that if a poor individual is to live in a poor neighborhood, with respect to access to organizational resources, he or she would be better off living in the central city. Suburban residence engenders isolation from organizations that will help meet one's daily needs and even more so from those offering opportunities for mobility.     

Pathways to age-friendly communities in diverse urban neighborhoods: Do social capital and social cohesion matter?

ABSTRACT

Using a social capital and social cohesion lens, we reposition the concept of civic engagement among older adults to examine pathways for building age-friendly communities. We analyzed data drawn from a Community-Based Participatory Research study in the Southern U.S. that explored lived experiences of older adults, age 55 and above, who participated in individual interviews (n = 15) and six focus group discussions (n = 45) to examine their perceptions of social identity, social connectedness, and civic engagement geared toward an age-friendly city. Findings indicated that several older adults had access to social networks and socially invested resources, thereby having opportunities for civic engagement and building age-friendly neighborhoods. However, social, cultural, linguistic, and structural barriers were more evident among certain diverse ethnic populations. Marginalized low-income minorities and immigrants, such as Hispanic participants, felt the lack of social cohesion among the larger society limited their ability to give back, thus decreasing their civic engagement activities. In contrast, Caucasian and African-American older adults were able to contribute to the political process through more civic participation activities. We provide implications for examining the role of social capital and social engagement to bolster civic engagement among older adults in building age-friendly communities.     

Moral Motivation as a Dynamic Developmental Process: Toward an Integrative Synthesis

The real‐life complexity of moral motivation can be examined and explained by reintegrating time and development into moral inquiry. This article is one of the possible integrative steps in this direction. A dynamic developmental conception of moral motivation can be a useful bridge toward such integration. A comprehensive view of moral motivation is presented. Moral motivation is reconceptualized as a developmental process of self‐organization and self‐regulation out of which moral judgment and action emerge through the interplay of dynamically intertwined cognitive and emotional components. Moral identity is proposed to emerge from long‐term self‐organization of moral motivation. In turn, as a higher‐order construct, moral identity has a top‐down influence on real‐time self‐organization. The article includes an account of short‐term changes in moral motivation, and an account that connects real‐time moral functioning with long‐term changes. Moral motivation is qualified as a dynamic developmental process on the basis of self‐organization, multicausality, nonlinearity, interconnectedness of time scales and substantial intrapersonal variability through motivational pluralism.     

Rule utilitarianism,rights, obligations and the theory of rational behavior

The paper first summarizes the author's decision-theoretical model of moral behavior, in order to compare the moral implications of the act-utilitarian and of the rule-utilitarian versions of utilitarian theory. This model is then applied to three voting examples. It is argued that the moral behavior of act-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a noncooperative game, played in the extensive mode, and involving action-by-action maximization of social utility by each player. In contrast, the moral behavior of rule-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a cooperative game, played in the normal mode, and involving a firm commitment by each player to a specific moral strategy (viz. to the strategy selected by the rule-utilitarian choice criterion) — even if some individual actions prescribed by this strategy, when considered in isolation, should fail to maximize social utility.The most important advantage that rule utilitarianism as an ethical theory has over act utilitarianism lies in its ability to give full recognition to the moral and social importance of individual rights and personal obligations. It is easy to verify that action-by-action maximization of social utility, as required by act utilitarianism, would destroy these rights and obligations. In contrast, rule utilitarianism can fully recognize the moral validity of these rights and obligations precisely because of its commitment to an overall moral strategy, independent of action-by-action social-utility maximization.The paper ends with a discussion of the voter's paradox problem. The conventional theory of rational behavior cannot avoid the paradoxical conclusion that, in any large electorate, voting is always an irrational activity because one's own individual vote is extremely unlikely to make any difference to the outcome of any election. But it can be shown that, by using the principles of rule-utilitarian theory, this paradox can easily be resolved and that, in actual fact, voting, even in large electorates, may be perfectly rational action. More generally, the example of rule utilitarianism shows what an important role the concept of a rational commitment can play in the analysis of rational behavior.     

灾后社区重建中的社会工作介入——从地区发展模式的视域展开

本文立足于汶川灾后社区重建的现实,通过分析目前国内外有灾后社区重建的实践和研究资料,提出以地区发展模式为视域是社会工作介入灾后社区重建的有效途径,这主要取决于灾后社区重建的现状和需求以及地区发展模式的本身的特性。地区发展模式是在充分整合地域现有资源的基础上,在一个地域内鼓励居民通过自助及互助来解决社区内的问题,实现共同发展。置于地区发展模式视域下,笔者尝试从服务理念、服务内容、方法和过程三个方面构建社会工作介入灾后社区重建的服务框架。文章最后指出以地区发展模式为视域的社会工作介入灾后社区重建,既是社会工作实务拓展的契机,同时也是实现社会工作职业化的一条重要路径。     

The Beneficial Effects of Social Identity Protection on the Performance Motivation of Members of Devalued Groups

For members of socially devalued or stigmatized groups, work and educational settings can threaten social identity, inducing the use of coping strategies that lower their motivation (e.g., self-segregation, domain disengagement) rather than improving their position in the social hierarchy. We review a recent research program on women and ethnic minorities to show that members of these stigmatized groups can maintain their motivation in threatening work and educational contexts when they are offered ways to protect their social identity. For example, organizations that communicate value for the social identities of women and ethnic minorities allow members of these groups to focus on success and motivate them to improve their performance on dimensions that increase their social status. Furthermore, social identity protection has important benefits over more individualistic forms of identity protection because it maintains group members' concern for their group's plight, increasing opportunities for successful collective action. The practical implications of this work are discussed.     

身份认同的内在二维图式——以鄂西北HL村艾滋病人的身份认同研究为例

根据身份认同的定义,个体身份认同具有内在二维属性,即对身份角色的确认和对所属群体的情感归属。而这两个维度并不一定是同时发生,也不一定向同方向发生转化。而身份认同的内在二维性是导致个体身份认同的张力和矛盾的重要原因。在此基础上,本文对XY市HL村的艾滋病人身份认同进行分析,尝试勾勒出作为特殊群体的艾滋病人身份认同的图示,说明身份认同的非单线和非单向性,个体身份认同的建构是内在主体行动和社会外在力量共同作用的结果。     

Community Service and Political Identity Development in Adolescence

This article addresses the interconnection of political socialization and identity development. We begin with Erikson's work, which identified the development of political commitment in adolescence as a key aspect of identity formation. We then seek to shed light on the social processes through which youth become engaged in political activities and issues. We discuss the influences of family and peers as well as participation in community service and other civic activities. The development of social responsibility and agency, and an understanding of the complexity of social issues are considered as important facets of political commitment. Data from a case study of Black urban adolescents who participated in a year-long service learning program are used to illustrate our perspective. We conclude that social-historical context, instantiated in social relationships and actions, plays a pivotal role in the process and shape of political socialization and identity formation.     

Resident-Managed Elder Intentional Neighborhoods: Do They Promote Social Resources for Older Adults?

Social isolation has serious negative public health impacts for older adults. Survey data were collected at three resident-managed elder intentional neighborhoods in the United States (n = 59), to determine if these neighborhoods, each based on the cohousing model, promote development of social resources for their residents. Social resources were measured on three dimensions: social networks, neighborly support, and satisfaction with the neighborhood community. Respondents were White, mean age of 73.3 (range = 63–91), primarily female (76.3%), and generally had high levels of education and self-reported health. Almost half (47%) were never married/divorced and 37% were childless. Inclusion of neighborhood ties ameliorated risk of social isolation. Satisfaction with support and a variety of neighboring behaviors were reported. These neighborhoods are meeting the needs of a potentially at-risk population as an avenue to promote social resources and reduce social isolation. The implications for gerontological social workers include a role in helping to mobilize and support these types of neighborhoods as a way to encourage mutual support among older adults. With the increase in the aging population, such models of proactive interdependence and communal coping have the potential to lessen or delay the demands that socially isolated elders place on social workers.     

中国人的信仰认同模式:以儒教信仰为中心

英语中的“宗教”,就西方基督教而言,是一种制度宗教;汉语中的“宗教”,则不一定指称宗教制度。中国儒教当然不等同于西方语义中的制度宗教,但无疑是一种具有宗教特征的信仰结构。杨庆堃所谓“扩散宗教”的概念,与本文讨论的中国“信仰”,及其在权力秩序和制度宗教之外那种私人、扩散式的信仰认同模式非常相似。为此,本文把儒教的信仰认同模式作为个人信仰与他人信仰、儒教信徒与其他社会成员的互动结果,并以信仰“认同”作为儒教的行动单位,同时亦作为一种分析工具,经由对儒教信仰认同规则的考察,讨论儒教信仰及其信仰群体的建构逻辑,进而分析儒教信仰经纬中中国社会的模式及其演变路径。     

Identity development across the lifespan: a biracial model

Traditional concepts of identity emphasize race to the exclusion of life span criteria. Race based models ignore the human behavior of biracial Americans in their social environment. Conversely, a substantial portion of the scholarly literature advocates social experience rather than physiological attributes as keystone to individual identity development. In the aftermath biracial Americans are conflicted. In an effort to insure their psychic health, scholars and practitioners must inculcate an identity development across the life span model to accommodate the nation’s increasing level of ethnic and racial miscegenation.     

和谐社会视野的学校德育新路径

在和谐社会视野中,应全面把握和落实科学发展观,使学校德育与整个社会文化建设的进程对接,把社会主义核心价值体系融入学校德育。在此基础上,基于建构学习模式,促进个体道德与社会道德的良性互动与对立统一。     

Digital Storytelling: A Narrative Method for Positive Identity Development in Minority Youth

This article explores the use of digital storytelling as a group narrative method for positive identity development in the case of African American youth residing in economically disadvantaged, urban areas. Factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and/or violence exposure may heighten normal youth challenges and affect identity development. Narrative tools that help minority adolescents produce agentic, coherent, affective, and adaptive self-concepts contribute to a proactive identity system and, therefore, an enhanced capacity for them to intervene in their own lives. The purpose of the afterschool digital storytelling group was for youth to gain opportunities in media production and in personal story construction. As a result, youth gained a valuable narrative medium for constructing their stories, and thus their identities, into ones of possibility, promise, and potential. Implications for helping professionals include how to use digital storytelling with youth to gain insight and understanding into a personally difficult life event.     

Rules, Social Ontology and Collective Identity

Mainstream game theory explains cooperation as the outcome of the interaction of agents who permanently pursue their individual goals. Amartya Sen argues instead that cooperation can only be understood by positing a type of rule-following behaviour that can be (and often is) out of phase with the pursuit of individual goals, due to the existence of a collective identity. However, Sen does not clarify the ontological preconditions for the type of social behaviour he describes. I will argue that Sen's account of collective identity can be best interpreted in the light of John Searle's notion of collective intentionality, while Sen's explanation of rule-following behavior and agency is best understood using the critical realist transformational model of social activity.