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+Concept of community?
+#####################
+
+:date: 2005-09-23T23:45:00
+:category: research
+
+First of all, this is what I’ve got from a member of my dissertation
+committee:
+
+    What you propose so far is quite interesting, but I still do not get
+    a clear sense of how you propose to study the Boston Miracle. The
+    theories you review are there for explaining crime, but how you link
+    them to the kind of response that produced the so called Boston
+    Miracle needs to be better delineated. I was disappointed in the
+    methodology.  This seems to need considerable work. Your proposal to
+    look at newspaper reports is quite sensible. But that doesn’t go far
+    enough in telling what exactly you’ll be looking for in those
+    reports. You need to expand this section. All I can tell from your
+    proposal is that you wish to study newspaper reports and how they
+    represented minorities during this time of crisis. If so I would
+    think that the data at various points are rather thin. You might
+    want to take a sample of what you think might be out there and code
+    accordingly to make the better case for what you propose to do and
+    how you propose to do it.
+
+    Suggestion:
+
+    Given your interest in bureaucracy and where you were raised why not
+    take a critical and deeper look at the concept of community? It is
+    so often used and yet it has come to mean so many things to say many
+    people. You use it. Others do as well. Community policing, community
+    organization, etc. etc.… You could show how the concept of community
+    has driven the Boston miracle, and how the term community has been
+    used in the media. This I think would allow you to work with a wider
+    set of data and enable you to draw on the Boston miracle as just one
+    example of how community is used as a concept and as a way of
+    explaining social change.  You can even divide this literature into
+    that which relates the internal and external attributions of
+    community. For instance, you could suggest that the Boston miracle
+    is empirically related to newspaper attributions that see the change
+    related to internal as opposed to external representations of
+    community. External representations I would say link the community
+    to the broader political economy, while internal representations
+    emphasize the local political economy and the values of those
+    directly involved in the community. External would be foundation
+    support, federal and state economic aid, etc.…
+
+This is a lot. Basically, if I understand this correctly, he suggests to
+throw away most of what I have done so far and begin again. On the other
+hand, there is a part of me agreeing with him—it seems that there really
+may not be that much explicit about the image of the community. I would
+have to interpret even more from the given material—which could lead to
+pretty stupid conclusions (given my lack of local knowledge), or to
+something really interesting and new.
+
+Which leads me again to the necessity of going through fundamental
+conceptual stuff and makes me less certain that I know what I am talking
+about. I mean, is it really possible to find out something that’s really
+going on out there, or do I just write again my superstitions into the
+previously created myth of “The Boston Miracle”? Should I just write how
+wonderful it is when people work together, talk about each other nicely,
+and kill each other less often? All that could be covered into nice
+“scientific” labels of “social capital”, “trust”, or “civic society”?
+
+I am afraid, that after all scientific talking is said and done, it may
+come down to the question which story I am willing to take as a base of
+my own thinking. Unfortunately, there isn’t just one story to be
+told—the one about good pastors raising up the community and empowering
+themselves to fight crime. There is also much more sad story about the
+Ten-point Coallition which is (according to some spoken and unconfirmed
+information) more or less broke, about former co-workers (Rev. Hammond
+and Rev. Rivers) who were bashing each other in public (that was couple
+of years ago—what is the situation now?). The latter story may be really
+about the non-profit organization paid by the federal money which run
+out (was it because its own success and thus less need to prevent crime
+or because of the general economic downturn and need to save federal
+money or maybe even about the cutting down the federal budget?). The
+last possible story which comes to my mind is altogether nasty—about
+white voters supporting government’s support of the anti-crime
+prevention when fearing blacks to kill them (while killing each other),
+but hesitant to continue when the situation has turned better. The last
+two stories have in common that they understand TPC success as a seed of
+its own problems—maybe that is worthy to be investigated.
+
+However, the last story, about fearful voters, can be at least to some
+degree verified, because at least some (indirect, self-censored,
+politically very correct, to be sure) footprints should be possible to
+find in newspapers, if there is at least some level of this discussion
+in the readers’ community (whatever such community means, yes).