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This paper asks how organizations for girls construct the relationship between girls and the public sphere. Drawing upon document research and two intensive case studies, one at a Girl Scout camp and the other at a community based organization, I argue that there are two primary types of girls? organization: normative and transformative. Normative organizations, such as the Girl Scouts, rely upon a psychological understanding of the problems facing girls and avoid issues of race and class differences amongst girls. They imagine the public as a space of threat that girls must be protected from and full of barriers that girls must learn to overcome. When they do involve girls in their communities, it is only in the form of service. Transformative organizations engage girls in a more sociological analysis of the conditions of their lives, including analyses of the intersections of race, class and gender. They also believe that girls can and should have public authority and voice and encourage girls? involvement in a wide range of social change projects and political activities. Given growing social concern with youth civic engagement, this paper highlights these two models divergent implications for girls? public and political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of social and cultural capital are heuristic for understanding civic participation in urban U.S. communities as these theories help determine how decisions are made, who makes them and when does real decision-making occur. This paper examines the decision-making processes in a Southern California urban community targeted for renewal. Resident participation in the redevelopment of this area is analyzed through the social and cultural capital frameworks to ascertain the methods by which the transmission of participatory inequality continues to occur. This analysis shows that the acquisition of knowledge as a tool for meaningful civic participation is a gendered, classed and racialized process. Furthermore, the rules are not known to all participants. Similar to the ‘hidden curriculum’ that exists in educational settings, there are unwritten rules and knowledge of political processes that those from racialized minority groups are not fully made aware. As a result, participatory processes may on the surface appear democratic and inclusive, when in practice they are not open and available to everyone. This paper analyzes participation through cultural resource theory to problematize cultural and social capital within a culturally diverse urban setting. Through ethnographic methods this paper illustrates the ways that cultural resources are valued and devalued within the civic participatory sphere. More specifically, an analysis of three cultural resources integral to civic participation are examined through the eyes of Latino, Vietnamese, African American and Anglo residents active in the revitalization of City heights. The cultural resources analyzed are general cultural awareness, verbal facility and scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper and presentation will explore the use of digital storytelling and community-based performance to open dialogue between children and the adults in their communities by providing a unique and non-threatening forum focused on the assets, strengths, and experiences of the children. A community-based arts practice fundamentally reconceptualizes the roles of both audience and maker destabilizing the traditional model of art that isolates an artist in his or her studio making something that then will be hung in a gallery or performed on Broadway. Community-based arts focus, instead, on participatory techniques in order to maximize participant agency. A primary goal of this practice is active and emancipatory involvement in cultural and civic life. This paper explores the program Place: Vision & Voice?s pilot project with foster children in the Child Protective Services System. In particular, the project focuses on children in long-term care who are just about to make the transition to independent living. Using the youth?s digital artwork to ground discussion, this paper explores the theory and practice of positive youth development work as a feedback loop into civic and cultural systems of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews current literature on the impact of communication media on civic engagement. Studies examining the impact of television, telephone and the Internet are examined and critiqued. Special emphasis is placed on inadequacies of the Internet (or the Web) as a research construct in social sciences, and new five-factor model of communication media is proposed. According to the model, there are five basic dimensions to any communication technology: interactivity, directionality, mode, latency and capacity. The paper also proposes a reconceptualization of the social capital construct and introduces a network model of social capital for the information era. The models are then discussed in relation to a new communication policy initiative by the Aspen Institute that uses technical layers of a communication system as bases for regulatory action in the age of media convergence and transition to an IP environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey (2000), we examine the impact of religious participation on civic involvement for Asian Americans. Specifically, we compare the effect of class, gender and religion on civic participation. We also compare Protestant, Catholic, and traditionally Eastern religious adherents to non-religious Asian Americans. In this paper, we conceptualize civic participation as non-religious volunteerism and find that faith-based activity increases the likelihood Asian Americans will volunteer. Asian Americans who affiliate with Christian religions are more likely to volunteer than adherents of Eastern religions and the non-religious. These findings argue for the theoretical relevance of understanding how religious resources differently shape civic involvement for Asian Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the foundations of successful partnerships among organizations with diverse missions. It advances that successful partnerships build on a combination of interpersonal and structural factors. Interpersonal factors include aspects such as the personality and behavior of the individuals directly involved in the partnership. Structural factors include aspects related to the mission of the organizations as well as technical and political constraints imposed on the partnership. The study builds on a sample of 27 partnerships between institutions of higher education and community organizations in New England for the implementation of service-learning projects. Our factor analysis identifies 5 crucial factors that participants use to build and maintain successful service-learning partnerships; the methodology described in this study is of significance to scholars and practitioners seeking to better understand what makes service learning partnerships work. To our knowledge, the present study is the only empirical investigation of its kind designed for this research setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberal dilemma hypothesis explains the observed decline in civic engagement in the United States by noting that liberal states cannot cultivate the civic virtues on which their successful operation depends and at the same time maintain their standing as (neutral) liberal states. Applying this logic, as the United States became more liberal along a number of dimensions over the last four decades, it ceased to develop in its citizens the civic virtues that would move them to participate in civic life. Our paper challenges this hypothesis based on a limited test confined to its operation through military service, an institutional experience through which the civic virtues leading to civic engagement are often said to be forged. Drawing on data from a panel study of men living in Houston, we find no evidence that those who volunteered for military service subsequently had higher rates of civic engagement than those who did not volunteer. These findings cast doubt on the claim made by Putnam (2000) and others that military service is a mechanism that helps explain generational differences in rates of civic engagement. In sum, with respect to military service, the United States faces no stark dilemma forcing it to choose between a liberal recruitment policy that neglects educating citizens in civic virtue and a less liberal recruitment policy designed to cultivate civic virtues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 initiated a state of national emergency in the United States. The tragedy caused not only shock and fear, it resulted in activation in civic lives of many Americans. However, several studies showed that this civic reengagement did not last long. Individualistic American culture, absence of a well-pronounced call for public action on the part of the political leaders, and lack of relevant channels along which people could apply their civic energies were considered to be major reasons for why the post-September 11 civic reawakening did not turn into a reinvigoration of the entire civil society in the United States. Yet none of the research to date has looked at (or listened to) the ways in which ordinary people came to understand themselves as citizens during this time of national tragedy and compared these notions to available avenues of civic expression. This paper qualitatively analyzes a number of interviews from September 11, 2001 Documentary Project collection of Library of Congress. Two models of citizenship are identified in the narratives: citizen-followers and critical citizens, and the role of the media in these representations is discussed. The study concludes that for civic reawakening in American society, the transformation of the entire public sphere needs to take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, environmentalism has been associated with what has been called a movement toward ?civic renewal? (Siriani and Friedland 2001). Although it is true that the environmental movement has articulated conceptions of regional ecological citizenship, the very success of the environmental movement has produced deeply contradictory outcomes. In spite of explicit efforts among national social movement organizations to mobilize anti-sprawl initiatives, environmentalism has inadvertently reinforced conventional development and suburban sprawl at the local and regional level. In some cases, measurable improvements in environmental performance are associated with negative impacts on long-term sustainability of development patterns. Efforts to transform land use patterns often find environmental interests aligned as opponents in the public process. Experience in Florida provides examples of the way environmental crises associated with poorly regulated growth have been exacerbated by a breakdown of democratic politics that is at least in part an unintended consequence of environmental politics and the way environmental concerns have been incorporated into the regulatory and technical regimes that shape the built environment. This paper examines these contradictory outcomes in the institutional settings that produce and reproduce them: the incorporation of environmental concerns into the regulatory regime that determines the practical logic of the development industry; the professional division of labor that shapes the technology of place-making; the social construction of Nature in the context of environmental planning; and the spaces of democratic politics that are hollowed out (and, in a sense, left hollow) in the context of what Michael Sandel has called ?the procedural republic.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is intended to explore a theoretical integration of three perspectives on social capital -- social resources, civic engagement and generalized trust -- and report an empirical investigation examining it. It is contended that density and extensity of social networks constitute the fundamental basis for conceptualizing social capital. Further, functions (instrumental or expressive) dictate the theorizing effects of social capital. Thus, in the case of expressive functions (cooperation and maintenance of resources), dense or closed social networks are postulated to evoke civic engagement and trust, which in turn, bring about solidarity and sense of security to the group and its members. For instrumental functions (competition and search for additional resources), open and expansive social networks are seen as more likely to access better social resources (diversity and quality of resources embedded in the networks), which in turn brings about profits or gains to the individuals. In this formulation, functions (for groups or individuals) dictate differential effects of network features, as mediated through differential forms of social capital -- social resources, civic engagement and trust. The formulation also provides a micro-foundation for observed effects of social capital at both individual and group levels. The hypothesized relations among network density and extensity, social capital (as indicated by social resources, civic engagement and trust), and instrumental actions (attainment of socioeconomic statuses, and propensity to participate in collective actions) and expressive actions (psychological well-being and quality of life) were put to test with data from an island-wide survey conducted in Taiwan. Results strongly confirm: (1) the linkage between density of networks to trust and participation in localized organizations, (2) the linkage between openness and extensity of networks to diverse social resources and participation in cosmopolitan... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community cultural plans have become a common feature of local arts and cultural landscapes in the US in the past two decades. Planning constitutes an attempt to articulate needs for a community and set goals for addressing those needs, such as increasing funding, articulating guiding principles for distribution of resources, improving the image of a locality for economic reasons, or improving venues for attracting cultural tourism. In the process, plans also constitute ways of articulating the value of the arts through a variety of planning processes (planning styles) and according to various criteria of judgment (orders of worth). While planning styles provide various types of legitimate procedures in civic public space, orders of worth establish types of legitimate criteria of establishing and comparing the value of different plan recommendations. This paper closely analyzes one published plan ? and contrasts it to other plans ? in order to illustrate the author?s theoretical framework regarding how the planning process becomes a means of establishing value and rationality in civic contexts. The case study illustrates how different planning initiators (city, county, local arts agency or others) prefer specific planning styles, and how such styles shape the selection of planning partners, the collection and analysis of data and decision-making forums (public hearings, focus-group sessions, task-force meetings etc.), and ultimately the specific planning goals and programs adopted for the arts and culture. The selection of setting and context thus becomes a crucial means of shaping the boundaries of varieties of legitimate public talk and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the conditions for movement emergence, as well as for movement conflict and crisis, are set by the longer term trajectories of cohorts of activists through intersecting institutional sectors. We consider individual trajectories and relations in the field to be mutually constituting; as individuals move through multiple institutional affiliations, they construct relationships between sectors that go on to shape individual careers. Those active in a field at a given time learn to respond to problems and opportunities posed by intersecting institutional sectors; as they carry forward the repertoires and skills learned in earlier periods, they enter into dialogue (and sometimes struggle) with those entering in later periods, or from different regions of the field. Drawing upon a data set containing the affiliation histories of over 300 Brazilian youth activists, we study the changing institutional composition of activist trajectories across student, religious, partisan, community, NGO, professional, and business sectors. To map these changes, we employ several descriptive techniques, looking at changes in levels of group and sectoral participation as well as at sectoral combinations across cohorts and time periods. We also use optimal matching techniques to compare activist trajectories across institutional sectors, introducing a new lattice-based procedure that uses a mapping of intersections in the field to generate compound sequence elements. We use these mappings to develop a set of substantive arguments about the re-emergence and subsequent struggles of the Brazilian student movement following the impeachment mobilizations of the mid-1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of "geo-ethnicity" -- ethnically articulated attitudes and behaviors grounded in a specific temporal and spatial situation. Based upon survey data gathered in seven "geo-ethnic" communities, we demonstrate a unique effect of geo-ethnicity on individuals' neighborhood engagement. To test the unique geo-ethnic effect on neighborhood engagement, we analyze two types of cross-sectional comparisons: a comparison of different ethnic groups in a selected Los Angeles area, and comparisons of the same ethnic groups (Whites and Latinos, respectively) across different locations in Los Angeles County. To highlight the unique effect of geo-ethnicity, the analyses are done after controlling for individual's socio-economic status, immigration history, residential tenure and home ownership. The implications of these results are discussed from a "communication infrastructure approach" (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001), an ecological way of conceptualizing communication networks in the everyday lives of individuals in communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research seeks to contribute to the literature on American civic engagement by focusing on the gendered processes within civic associations. Three interrelated limitations in the current literature on associationalism drive this project. First, by focusing on historical and contemporary participation rates, the literature, with few exceptions, fails to address the processes that occur within associations. Second, the debate largely ignores gender and thus tends to treat associationalism as a gender neutral phenomenon. Finally, to the extent that scholars discuss gender, they tend focus on gender segregation across organizations. Segregation is important, yet it is not the only relevant dimension of gendered social practice. Gender-integrated groups, an improvement over gender-segregated groups, may also produce gender dynamics that are unavailable to scholars who focus on rates of participation or who otherwise neglect gender in their analyses. This research redresses this problem through a detailed ethnographic study of two mixed-gender civic associations. The findings suggest that there are at least three dimensions along which gender is salient in civic associations? processes: speaking frequency, the legitimacy given to certain speakers, and the types of labor undertaken by association members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent national study shows that aggregate levels of civic engagement among high school youth remain relatively high compared to previous generations, while political engagement lags. Authors conducted a large-scale community ethnography in which more than eighty high school aged youth were interviewed about the forms and meaning of their civic and community activities. The results raise questions about the deeper meaning of youth civic engagement. Current high levels of activity may be related more to achievement anxiety and college ambition generated by increasing uncertainty over life-chances than the development of moral motivation and transmission of community social capital. Minority and working-class youth were a significant, if partial, exception, exhibiting motives linked to both achievement and community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution -- and, in some national cases, the sustained decline -- of priestly vocations is a matter of enormous practical significance to the Catholic Church and considerable relevance to scholars of religion, politics and society, yet the phenomenon has been insufficiently studied and, we argue, inadequately understood. In U.S. social science, priestly vocations have been analysed from a primarily American and largely religion-oriented perspective yielding important, yet incomplete, findings. We instead examine cross-national patterns in the evolution of diocesan ordinations and on that basis we identify and analyze large differences across national cases. We assume that changes in the rate of vocations reflect multiple factors including not only the intensity of religious devotion but also broadly social, economic, and political currents that differ among national societies. Indeed, our findings suggest that rapid economic change that generates new winners and losers may be bad for religious vocations, collective orientations and instead encourage the growth of individualistic personal strategies inconsistent with civic engagement, clerical vocations and other collectively oriented outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent political participation and belief in the institutional legitimacy have been widely used as predictors of long-term prosocial behaviors within the field of political science. However, this topic has not been extensively examined within sociology or criminology. This study attempts to rectify gaps within criminology as well as extend related works in political science by addressing how political institutional legitimacy and civic participation are related to delinquency. Previous studies suggest that there is an inverse relationship between political beliefs and participation and antisocial behavior. The findings of the current study indicate a strong relationship between delinquency and faith in American political institutions. The relationships, however, vary in direction by type of political measure suggesting partial support for existing political science research. This study critiques the educational program policies based on existing research. Further policy implications of the current findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As rural America turns down the path of a new century, the independent, self-reliant farmer and small business owner of the last century may be disappearing from the landscape. In many rural communities, it is the large national and multinational corporations that seem to have set the development agenda. Yet, one of the paradoxes of rural America is that some communities retain educated and skilled residents. The civil class, comprised of these small business stakeholders, still thrives in many rural localities, yielding beneficial consequences for the communities. The fundamental attribute of this civic class is its relative autonomy from wage labor and from forces that steer workers towards wage-maximizing behaviors such as out-migration. This civil class is rooted in constellations of local relationships and localized markets. Our hypothesis is that, when this group of local business persons and small farmers succeeds, it serves to benefit the community and buffers it from external, global forces. Specifically we: define the civil class, describe fully individual and household attributes of its members, and contrast it with the wage and salaried middle class. We geographically locate the prevalence of the civil class in detailed spatial terms. We then analyze temporal changes in retention of individuals in this class using multilevel models of community economic, social and cultural contexts hypothesized to promote this class sector. We conduct this analysis primarily with confidential internal Census data files that are sufficiently large and detailed to address adequately these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing concern about the decline in community ties and social networks. Whether or not such concerns are merited, social scientists are increasingly employing the concept of social capital as a both a description and measure of the viability of our social cohesion and the quality of our public life. We should consider the role of schools as sources of social capital, working in the interest of the greater public good. From the common school to desegregation, schools have played similar roles in the past. However, even while many lament the supposed raveling of our connectedness to each other, education reform is increasingly focused on individual outcomes. Standards based reform emphasizes individual academic achievement and largely ignores the school?s potential for creating a new generation of civic actors. Schools can develop social capital among students and within the school itself, as well as in families and the larger community. As social capital has also been shown to have a positive influence on educational outcomes, schools can find a balance between individualism and the public good. Three educational approaches that offer potential for doing so are reviewed: place-based education, microsociety, and full-service community schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on popular support for democracy has generated important categories for scholarly consideration: individual attributes or traits (e.g., education, income, residence, gender), personal worldviews (e.g., tolerance and trust), social networks and civic engagement (e.g., membership in organizations, political discussion), and contextual settings (e.g., level of democratization, human development, globalization). However, in much research, the categories are not employed simultaneously in analysis. Using data from the World Values Survey, the research presented here aimed to develop a model of popular support for democracy. It improved measurement of commonly used variables and hypothesized about the ability of social networks, civic engagement, and national levels of globalization and democratization to influence positive attitudes. We found that political activism and engagement in groups that discussed politics enhanced support for democracy, especially for respondents who found comfort in religion, were more educated, had white-collar occupations, trusted governmental institutions and other people. Residence in globalized and democratized countries reduced gender gaps in support for democracy and rendered intolerance of racial and ethnic minorities irrelevant to democratic support. (169 words) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Many colleges and universities, including Towson University, are increasingly calling for a greater emphasis on civic engagement. The author discusses one successful example of using civic engagement to make it clearer to students how what they are learning in the classroom is relevant outside of the classroom. Students in a sociology of immigration class used what they had learned in the class to respond to a report calling for Baltimore to recruit and retain more immigrants as a way of revitalizing the city. After writing individual responses, they compiled a group report, which was then shared with the Mayor?s office. The author argues that this exercise not only helped students become more engaged citizens, but also, importantly, to better learn the course material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I attempt to link individual-level and country-level analysis of voluntary association memberships. Specifically, I examine how the structural contexts of a nation influence the level of gender and class disparity in voluntary association memberships. I hypothesize that (1) the effects of socioeconomic status on voluntary association membership are stronger in nations with higher levels of socioeconomic stratification, and (2) the effects of gender on voluntary association membership are stronger in nations with higher level of gender stratification. I test the hypotheses using hierarchical nonlinear models with individual-level and country-level data from 29 nations. Although none of the hypotheses were supported, the results show significant cross-national variations in the effects of gender and socioeconomic status on voluntary association memberships. This research shows the promise of a multi-level approach in the study of voluntary association memberships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores what I call civic adaptation among two different groups of second-generation Korean-American evangelicals. I compare how people in a second-generation Korean congregation and a multiethnic congregation, which includes Koreans, structure narratives of citizenship responsibility. Both groups describe themselves as having responsibilities to the wider non-Korean community, challenging previous research which finds that immigrants mainly feel a sense of duty only to their own ethnic groups. Those who participate in a second-generation Korean congregation connect church membership to communal obligations of American citizenship that include obligations to their congregation and the wider American society. In contrast, those who participate in a multiethnic church have a more individually negotiated model of citizenship. Their church participation gives them a vintage point from which to act as social critics. This research has implications for the impact second-generation Korean evangelicals will have on American civil religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing buildings as public symbols. Symbols are essential elements in the stories we tell ourselves and outsiders about the communities we live in. We build on the work of sociologist and media analyst Michael Schudson, establishing a way to talk about and make sense of the ways that certain places function as public symbols. We apply this framework to Fenway Park, the current home of the Boston Red Sox and the subject of much debate concerning its contribution to the civic landscape of Boston. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much as in the years just before the French Revolution, the private business sector can turn to charity, the purchase of public offices, and other collaborations with government. Exceptional efforts of this type can signal exceptional problems with business legitimacy and high uncertainty about government rule making. In the middle 1990s, newly emerging Chinese entrepreneurs shared many of these problems. National survey data for 2,865 Chinese private entrepreneurs show that these entrepreneurs give frequently, at levels exceeding those in the U.S. for similar size firms. High levels of giving were often converted into membership on political councils, which in turn increased their reports of status in society. Many other standard determinants ? peer pressure, retail marketing ? emerge in the patterns of giving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous scholars have sought to explain the underlying process behind Robert Putnam?s (2000) claim that television is responsible for much of the decline in American social capital over the last half-century (Shah, 1998; Uslaner, 1998). This analysis provides an empirical test of one such possible mechanism: materialism as an intervening variable. Given past literature indicating that a causal relationship exists between television viewing and materialism (Churchill and Moschis, 1979) and between materialism and social capital (Rahn and Transue, 1998), this analysis proposes that the relationship between television viewing and social capital can be explained through television?s effects on materialism, and materialism?s effects on social capital, measured here in terms of civic engagement. Results suggest that not only does materialism fail to explain the effects of television viewing on civic engagement, but materialism, as operationalized in these analyses, is actually positively associated with civic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many scholars have bemoaned declining levels of social trust and civic engagement in our society, yet there is a group of citizens that does participate actively in civic life and that is strongly involved in the community -- opinion leaders. Scheufele and Shah (2000) found that opinion leadership, or personality strength, is linked to civic engagement both directly and indirectly, mediated by various communication variables. However, they do not offer a complete theoretical account explaining the nature of these influences that relates them to the specific patterns of media use that foster participation. Accordingly, we explicate the construct of opinion leadership, outline it causes and consequences, and then examine hypothesized relationships using data from a large national survey conducted in 1998. We examine opinion leadership as an endogenous variable within a structural equation model. Our analyses show that opinion leadership is less a function of demographic variables than a number of psychological factors related to levels of self-esteem and confidence in one's own abilities. In addition, we find opinion leaders are strategic in their media use, with television hard news use prompting newspaper hard news use and subsequent on-line information search. Particularly important, the link between opinion leadership and media use is largely mediated by interest in politics, which triggers information seeking across all types of media. In turn, interest in politics, newspaper reading, and on-line searching are significant direct predictors of civic engagement. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay will explore "tolerance" in its application to rhetorical communities as a form of social capital within the broader context of a revived North American pragmatism. A review of communication-based literatures reveals that the building and sustaining of communities is perceived to be aided by an ethos of "tolerance" as applied social capital. The metaphor of "communication as a borderland" suggests, however, the weak character of this ethos. The melding that takes place in a borderland--the simultaneity of mixing, even as distinctions are held--better calls to mind an ethos of transcendence. This essay, then, will argue for supplanting "tolerance" with an ethic of "transcendence" in theorizations of community, civic communication, and public deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]