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The effects of climate change are both acute and chronic, leaving many communities in a perpetual state of uncertainty. For others, there is no such uncertainty—their communities will soon be uninhabitable. Some levels of government have begun to recognize and slowly respond to communities facing the possibilities of relocation. This paper considers the impact of transdisciplinary thinking and collaborative moments in the planning phase of one of the few community‐scale managed retreat attempts in the United States. In January 2016, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded the state of Louisiana $48.3 million to plan, design, and implement a structured and scalable resettlement with former and current residents of Isle de Jean Charles. The paper uses data from surveys and interviews with the practitioner team, fieldnotes, review of published reports, and a sample of more than 400 media accounts. Our analysis highlights how developing a transdisciplinary process may render a new understanding to the tasks and meanings of planning resettlements in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding traditional sociological conceptions of community to include environmental considerations in community research, this paper stresses the importance of documenting both subjective and objective environmental concerns, as well as reconciling such differences as are presented and details precedence. Some recent data on the nature of social contact in high-rise ‘communities’ illustrate this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an integrative analysis of voluntary associational leadership and reputational influence. It is noted that the degree to which leadership in voluntary organizations contributes to reputational influence patterns in the general community is not an easily predictable phenomenon. It becomes clear that no "a priori" assumptions can be made about the role of voluntary groups in the general leadership of any given community. There is a need, however, to distinguish the "organizational community" from the community in which formal voluntary groups are of considerably less significance. The study results of the overlap of reputational influentials and formal leaders in four towns are given in tabular form. The factors are number of reputational individuals, number of formal leaders, maximum possible overlap, actual overlap and percentage overlap. From the point of view of influence structures, it was discovered that the larger the town the greater the number of persons who receive a given proportion of nominations as an influential. The results of the study presented in this paper justify the trend toward the use of a combination of the positional and reputational methods of identifying leaders.

The ideas of community and social capital have received much attention in the last decade, but are plagued by a multitude of conceptualizations, definitions, and operationalizations. This confusion is problematic for both researchers and policymakers trying to use these concepts. While numerous efforts have been made to clarify “social capital” and “community,” too often the two are simply conflated. This paper attempts to distinguish between them by looking at the various ways they are related in concrete examples. Drawn largely from the literature, five examples are offered that together describe the complex interactions of place-based communities and social capital networks. These examples also demonstrate distinctions between community and social capital with regard to boundaries, the qualities of social relations and trust in each, instrumentality, the consequences of one for the other, and issues related to multiple communities in a single place. It is hoped that these distinctions will inform the ongoing efforts to develop unique and useful conceptualizations of these two terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on interviews and participant observation, this paper presents a narrative account of the reactions of people in a small, Arkansas community to the religious claims of prophecy and divine mission made by an individual who temporarily comes to reside in the community. Public interpretation and evaluation of the prophecy is conducted informally through the rumor construction process. Naturalistic interpretations of fraud or delusion are mostly suspended as supernatural interpretations by community members become ascendent. People are eventually forced to rationalize their reactions when events fail to materialize in the manner originally prophesied. The unfolding of events is viewed from a sociology of knowledge perspective and treated as a case study of the social construction of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents comparison between the associations of British and American voluntary associations. The development of postwar research on the structure and functioning of voluntary associations has been uneven, and there have been marked differences between British and American research in this field. This paper offers a narrow definition of voluntary associations. It defines voluntary associations as groups in which membership is in no sense obligatory, which have a formal constitution, but which do not have paid officials at the local level. The next section of this paper places the subsequent analysis in context by pointing briefly to the very substantial similarities between research in Great Britain and the U.S. The third section discusses differences in the research environments of the two countries, and suggests their relevance to the main problem. The fourth section assesses the differences in research orientations between the two countries, as it has influenced the study of voluntary associations. The final section considers the effect of these differences upon the functional analyses that have been made.

In recent years numerous discussion of urban communities have given great weight to themes of disorganization and disorder. This paper critically examines several important conceptual, procedural, and substantive issues inherent in most treatments of community disorganization. To illustrate such fundamental problems as ‘overgeneralization’ and dominant group bias five specific topics—migration, disasters, slums, ghettos, and collective violence—were selected for intensive analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decisions about climate change adaptation are informed by technical information, but they are also shaped by social and political factors and impacted communities. Given the realities of a changing climate, more research is needed to examine how technically trained practitioners and other actors describe their work in relation to social and political factors. This article contributes to knowledge on this topic by analyzing the narratives of 62 organizational actors in coastal Louisiana. Actors include scientists, engineers, modelers, planners, project administrators, government staff, and non‐profit employees working on climate adaptation and coastal risk reduction projects outlined in Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan. While scholars critique the Master Plan as overly technocratic, I show that people weave morals and values into narratives about science. However, I show how the motivations of acting boldly, morally, and urgently in the face of emergency clash with climate justice. Some individuals within these organizations do advocate for reforming or rethinking Master Plan projects to better serve coastal communities; however, these individuals also face resistance from colleagues who frame this work as secondary or outside of their organizational purview. To conclude, I argue that research connecting technical aspects of climate adaptation planning to power and social justice outcomes has the potential to bridge disciplinary divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is currently confronting two water crises, a developmental crisis concerning populations who lack access to water and an environmental crisis regarding water scarcity and freshwater resource depletion. Are we as academics addressing the complexity of these issues? Using network analysis of over 5,000 articles that address water development and water scarcity, I generate a co‐citation network to identify the overlap between development and environmental water literatures in academic journals. The results suggest that the development literature only has a 6.28 percent overlap with the environmental literature and the environmental literature has a mere 1.92 percent overlap. Overall, this research suggests that there is an extreme lack of academic articles that address water scarcity and water development concurrently. Until we as an academic community become more nuanced in our studies of water, we will lack a full understanding of how to solve these seemingly contradictory problems. I conclude by drawing on critical Marxist and "Frankfurt School" perspectives to explain this apparent disconnect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on disenchantment, sociology undertheorizes wonder. Our analysis of 30 interviews is the first sociological study of Americans' wonder experiences. Contrary to Weber's theorization of disenchantment, this study shows people experience wonder that is transformative and try to cultivate states of mind open to wonder experiences. Our study shows wonder follows from particularity, difference, and encounters with the mysterious; wonder connects people to expansive concerns; people experience acute self‐awareness during wonder encounters; and people seek wonder experiences. Wonder communities influence wonder experiences, but stages of wonder experiences are similar outside communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines membership and participation in neighborhood improvement associations. Individual-level and contextual-level structural variables associated with the community of limited liability model are important for the decision to join associations but not to participate in them. Also, social ties in the community are more important than psychological attachment for both membership and participation. However, neither social ties nor attachment serve as intervening variables in the relationship between structural variables and membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of white violence as carried out against a subordinate black community in a small southern town during 1900. The aftermath, as perceived by present-day residents, and the emergent constructions of the event are explored. It is suggested that the present reality constructions of blacks and whites continue to reflect the significance these historical events have had for group meanings and intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional food initiatives often aim to increase food access through market‐based, needs‐driven models, leaving basic food requirements unmet for many in the current U.S. food system. Employing qualitative community‐based participatory methods, we examine the asset‐based developmental stages of a local‐level Food and Resource Center (FRC) in rural Stillwater, OK. We consider the ways that social capital can be activated as a community asset for development, articulating how social networks are used to identify, mobilize, and galvanize community support. How has the community identified and mobilized a "stock" of social capital to employ an asset‐based approach to developing a food resource center? How can the FRC enhance social capital for the community as a whole? We provide insight into how individual, agency, and institutional actors act as pivotal resources for community development, delineating the ways in which community social capital and asset‐based development can influence an organization's operational goals. Additionally, we explore strategies used to enhance linking and bonding forms of social capital as well as obstacles to bridging social capital in the broader community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the literature (produced mainly by sociologists, architects, and geographers) about gated and cohousing communities, this work analyzes how these communities differ from each other. The analysis suggests that cohousing and gated communities are different in the nature of relationships between residents and in the reasons why they arise, even if there are some points of similarity. The risk of a degeneration of cohousing in the gated type is linked in particular with a complete transformation of the grass-roots model (typical of cohousing) to the top-down speculative scheme (typical of gated communities). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant farmworker networks are vital components in their job seeking and underemployment minimization strategies. Yet, farmworker cultural, physical, and institutional isolation along with the itinerant and clandestine features of farmwork have become major obstacles in the development of robust lateral communitywide network ties that would otherwise favor reciprocity and resource sharing. Thus, contrary to the positive social capital assumption, we argue that the paucity and fragmented features of farmworkers’ lateral ties have increased their vulnerability and locked them in exploitative relationships in a hostile social environment that makes impractical or impossible the formation of alternative ties. Our study is based on participant observation through a 6-week stay in three North Carolina farm labor camps. On-site evidence shows that the two larger groups of solitary male farmworkers and farmworking families break up into smaller groups, each group in pursuit of its own short-term goals. We conclude that, even though farmworker networks help them to find and ensure temporary jobs, their inability to use the networks to share resources is ultimately detrimental for participants’ long-term socioeconomic prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal accounts suggest that athletic contests affect the psychological well-being of members of the community represented by the competing teams. While these effects are sociologically plausible, there is virtually no systematic evidence that documents the relation between athletic contests and well-being. This study examines the relation between the play and performance of major athletic teams at a large university and use of the campus psychiatric clinic. Upon introduction of appropriate controls, the initial zero-order relations between team play and performance and clinic usage disappear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated conceptual framework acceptable across different disciplines and theoretical perspectives is presented. The scheme promotes one aspect of organizational environments, the cultural context, as crucial to explaining organizational structure or behavior. By cross- tabulating member consensus and community consensus consistent predictions regarding survival, ‘character,’ and goal behavior are achieved for a diverse range of case studies. It is suggested, therefore, that community consensus be treated as a common denominator in future attempts to ferret out the necessary and sufficient conditions associated with particular organizational structures and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model facilitating the prediction of organizational persistence or dissolution is presented through a series of propositions. Environmental change, community demands for service, organizational capacity, formalization, and tack orientations are identified as important dimensions in determining the probability of organizational emergence, maintenance, or demise. The emergence and development of Neighbors in Need (NIN); a Seattle, Washington based welfare organization, is described to illustrate the viability of the model. NIN's career pattern shows a persistence beyond the period of environmental disruption because of the long-term progressive nature of the system's stress, NIN's formalization, and its tack specificity. But a reduction in system stress, the adoption of a more disuse goal, and the organization's failure to promote interorganizational relations with the local agencies Indicates the probable demise of the NIN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utopian communities—an alternative community form—vary flora large, comprehensive settlements in which most aspects of life are collectively organized to small informal households low on comprehensiveness and collectivization, like many contemporary communes. The initial stages, organizational problems, politics, and economic organization of both highly-structured large communes and minimally-structured small communes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative empirical evidence is presented to show the basic instrumentally, of low-income urban dwellers to the existential circumstances they face. In Latin America, urban dwellers have seemingly internalized the urban/industrial values of capitalist society and, depending on the availability of jobs and other urban resources and facilities, choose the most rewarding strategy for obtaining benefits. Given the general lack of a well-established structure of secondary industry and the particularistic procedures presently most appropriate for getting jobs and other resources, the motives and basis for communal and collective action are lacking. This is seen most clearly in the example of squatting, where short-term collective action does not develop further, once the objectives of the squatters are achieved. Various forms of instrumental action are expressed in a typology based on subjective orientations and objective opportunities. In the light of the evidence cited, discussions of ‘marginality,’ ‘urban social movements’ and ‘'restructuring of community’ are misplaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of urban politics is vast and rapidly increasing. Students of a number of disciplines with a plethora of specific interests work within its hazy boundaries. The purpose of this essay is to attempt a contemporary synthesis of the field by linking a set of social structural changes to a variety of patterned political outcomes. Concretely a number of trends affecting urban social organization are summarized with three dimensions. Next the political consequences of change along each of these dimensions are discussed in some detail. Finally, the variable effects produced by the interplay among dimensions are dealt with in a way that gives rise to some data-based speculation about the future of urban politics. In addition to advancing a number of researchable hypotheses, it is hoped that the essay will sensitize the reader to some of the more fundamental issues that loom ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the decline in the relative importance of communities as bases of collective action. The author emphasizes that the relative decline in communities as bases of collective action has resulted from changes in the structure of power inside and outside communities, from shifts in the relative efficiency of concentrated and dispersed groups in mobilizing resources, and from stabilization of the claims made by communities on other groups. Urbanization played a part in the transformations and so did other changes which have been generally associated with urbanization in the Western experience, but are by no means intrinsic to urbanization.

Two main controversies—over territorial grounding and over the range of functions—have divided theoretical research on community into four main research traditions. Each of these is discussed in terms of its development, contributions, and inadequacies. Other controversies—over participatory democracy, over local autonomy, and over the role of physical design—are examined in relation to efforts to construct communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a discussion of the ten variables involved in identifying types of multilingual communities in sociology. Among variables identified by the author are types of speech communities, number of languages used by individuals, types of personal and impersonal bilingualism, legal status, segments involved, degree of distance and attitude toward linguistic stability. The term community means all citizens in a given state but excluding members of those whose mother tongue is spoken natively by less than three per cent. This group is referred to as the national core community or NCC. Regarding the mother tongue or tongues used by these NCCs, the author distinguishes three major types: the monolingual type, the bi- or trilingual type and the multilingual type. These three types represent the first variable types of speech communities. If number of languages used by the people are considered, there can be other types as type 1, denoting a fully monolingual citizenry; type 2, a diglossic citizenry; type 3, one that is bilingual and Type 4, a trim or multilingual citizenry.

The article presents a discussion on the role of voluntary associations as integrative forces in urban society. A basic distinction in the conceptualization of integration has been suggested, and a number of significant factors pertinent to the social-psychological and sociological levels of analysis have been explored. The article revolves around study of role played by voluntary organizations for the participants and the place of these groups in the community, or the interrelationships between associations. It further discusses the social psychology of affiliation. Where sub-issues like extent of affiliation,involvement in organization,type of association,age and life cycle,organization locus are discussed. Then it discusses the sociology of associations, which describes organizational function, size and formalization,neighborhood stability, organizational prevalence, community size and ecology of associations. It has been emphasized that most students of associations have neglected to explore the complexity of integration and the role voluntary groups play in the process.

This article is concerned with the role of a strategic minority community member in the process of desegregation, that of the Negro public school teacher. Several studies completed before the 1954 Supreme Court decision addressed themselves to this topic either directly or indirectly. Four reasons are given for the suggestion that the Negro teacher is of strategic importance. The article will endeavor to determine that how do Negro teachers feel school desegregation will affect them and their jobs? To what extent are the teacher's attitudes and behavior in the community and classroom a function of the community context and his perceived self interest? The results clearly shows that the study of social change requires a multilevel approach. It was found that the militancy of Negro teachers increases with increases in social scale, suggests that Negro attitudes and goals bear a complementary relationship to white attitudes and goals. It has been shown that the pressure for desegregation from the Negro community is greatest in those urban-industrial areas where whites are likely to be least resistant to the change. On the other hand, it is in the areas where the whites are most resistant that the Negroes are least desirous of the change.

This article focuses on the empirical universe of communal actions. Under the assumption that relevance to a specific locality is the most important criterion which differentiates community from non-community activity, the community action universe may be defined as all those actions having unique relevance to, or significance for, the residents of a particular locality because of their residency. Such a universe is always a set of actions peculiarly relevant to some specified IocaIity. All acts having some meaning for the people of a particular place which they do not have for the people of other places are classified fled as communal for that place. The universe may be conceived as having three overlapping, component sets of actions: those included because action takes place within the locality, those included because some or all the actors (individuals or groups) are of the locality, and those included because, in whatever location they occur and by whomever they are taken, they affect the locality of reference in some way different from the way they affect other locality systems.

This article discusses various issues related to interpersonal conflicts in Chulsanto, a village in Chiapas in Mexico. Chulsanto is a community of one thousand people who speak a Mayan language. It is located in the southern highlands of Mexico. The article author has observed a few types of interpersonal conflicts and the means by which they are reduced. The source of conflict in relationships seems to be a failure to meet expectations of one or both parties to an existing relationship. Each role relationship between two individuals or coalitions of individuals has a recognized range of jeopardy or imperfection of performance which is acceptable, that is, which does not require the dissolution of the relationship. The severance of some role relationships is more serious than the severance of others. The source of conflict in highly relational role is in fact functional in one's role as community member. An individual can be a bad community member and continue to be a good husband if the imperfection in his role performance is specific to the lowly relational role. Individuals are constantly coming into conflict and restoring or severing role relationships while the community at large remains essentially disinterested. Conflicts which involve role performance demonstrate various regularities.

This article focuses on the influence of decision-making on the process of social and cultural change of a Mexican colony, Yalcuc. The colony of Yalcuc was founded under the leadership of Don Alonso Vasquez by a few members of the village of Huajam, together with families from various villages. Later, Don Alonso became president of Yalcuc. Despite internal differences, Yalcuc is a tightly knit community with a high degree of cooperation in community projects. In matters of community concern, the decision-making in Yalcuc follows various stages. Don Alonso decides what course of action to recommend to the community at large. At next stage, a meeting of adult males is called to discuss the matter publicly, and here Don Alanso states the issue and presents his recommendation. The general discussion that follows may be meager or heated, depending on the topic, but the recommendation of the president is almost always accepted. A final decision is reached by the consensus of the meeting. In Yalcuc Don Alonso's infIuence varied with different kinds of decision-making processes and among different subgroups within the community. Yet if developmental programs aim to cultivate democratic values it is essential that they locate community leaders like Don Alonso and give them the freedom of choosing innovations which seen to them appropriate for their groups.

This article discusses various issues related to Indian community in Mexican society. How the Indian part of Mexican society is distinguished from its wider matrix has great consequences for most sociological analyses of Mexico. Many investigators begin with a list of traits winch are supposed to characterize the Indian. Yet upon examination these traits prove unsatisfactory. Even characterization of the Indian sector of Mexican society by language proves inadequate. Indianhood does not consist of a list of discrete social traits; it resides in the quality of social relations found in communities of a certain kind, and in the self-image of individuals who identify with these communities. If the Indian community has occupied continuously shifting ground, how it has maintained its integrity and autonomy in the Mexican society, and how one can explain that there are still Indians in Mexico, the answer to these questions lies in the specific way in which the Indian participates in the national economy; and in the specific way in which the Indian community rewards its members for cleaving to it, in times of prosperity as well as in times of strain.

This article focuses on the concept of state among the ancient Aztecs. In this article the author draws primarily upon the wealth of documents recorded in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Although the historical sources provide material for studies of a wide range of Aztec institutions, this article concerns the effect of a radical political innovation, carried through in 1428 in the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, upon the Aztec conception of the state. The subject is important for sociological theory since it brings into relief the dynamic and heterogeneous character of Aztec society. The early Spanish chronicles recognized the mixed aristocratic and democratic political institutions of the various Nahuatl city-states. Only the Aztecs, who arrived late in the Valley of Mexico, undertook any radical reform of Nahuatl society. The mystical-military conception of the state was an outstanding means by which the Aztec community that in 1428 was an exploited tributary of Azcapotzalco became within a century the supreme ruler of Middle America.