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Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations

  • Textbook
  • © 2007

Overview

Editors:
  1. Ram A. Cnaan

    1. School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

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  2. Carl Milofsky

    1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • The theory of civil society is based on the notion that informal groups, social movements, civic associations, and small formal nonprofit organizations form a cohesion of social organization that integrates society. They address a local problem, become an important focus of life for participants, and a formidable presence in the political realm
  • This volume will present contributions from experts in the field of community life - groups such as PTAs, block associations, fraternal organizations and self-help groups (AA) to congregations, Internet chat clubs, and political action movements
  • Included will be the current theoretical perspectives for understanding of the empirical materials, descriptions of the transformations in what "community" is, and how the individual both defines the community and vice versa on many levels

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research (HSSR)

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Table of contents (27 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introduction

    • Ram Cnaan, Carl Milofsky, Albert Hunter
    Pages 1-19

  3. Contemporary Conceptions of Community

    • Albert Hunter
    Pages 20-33

  4. Symbolism, Tradition, Ritual, and the Deep Structure of Communities

    • Peter Dobkin Hall
    Pages 34-59

  5. Small Towns and Mass Society

    • Carl Milofsky
    Pages 60-73

  6. Small Nonprofits and Civil Society: Civic Engagement and Social Capital

    • Jo Anne Schneider
    Pages 74-88

  7. Community Elites and Power Structure

    • Rikki Abzug
    Pages 89-101

  8. The Political-Economic Gradient and the Organization of Urban Space

    • Robert P. Fairbanks II
    Pages 102-117

  9. Public and Private Space in Urban Areas: House, Neighborhood, and City

    • Eugenie L. Birch
    Pages 118-128

  10. The Development of Community Information Systems to Support Neighborhood Change

    • Dennis Culhane, Bradley Breuer
    Pages 129-145

  11. Describing the Community in Thorough Detail

    • Sonya Salamon
    Pages 146-162

  12. Communities as “Big Small Groups”: Culture and Social Capital

    • Michael Reisch, Dana Guyet
    Pages 163-178

  13. Sense of Community and Community Building

    • Mary Hyde, David Chavis
    Pages 179-192

  14. Friendship and Community Organization

    • Rebecca G. Adams, Koji Ueno
    Pages 193-210

  15. Self-Help Groups as Participatory Action

    • Thomasina Borkman
    Pages 211-226

  16. Online Communities

    • Gustavo S. Mesch
    Pages 227-242

  17. Alternative or Intentional? Towards a Definition of “Unusual” Communities

    • Ayala Cnaan, Steve Breyman
    Pages 243-256

  18. Frayed Community: The Gated Community Movement

    • Edward J. Blakely
    Pages 257-266

  19. Congregations and Communities

    • Joy Charlton
    Pages 267-280

  20. Ethnicity and Race as Resource Mobilization in American Community Civic Life and Participation: Traditional and Emerging Concerns

    • John H. Stanfield II
    Pages 281-294
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Keywords

About this book

Creating a Frame for Understanding Local Organizations RAM CNAAN, CARL MILOFSKY, AND ALBERT HUNTER In this book, scholars from anumber of disciplines present work focused on communities, with particular attention to community organizations. A few scholars have emphasized the imp- tance of the need to map this intellectual territory (Calhoun, 1992). In some ways community study seems to be well trodden ground; there has been influential work on social capital, for example (Coleman, 1987,1988; Putnam, 1995; Foley and Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Foley, 1998). Yet the rich diversity of communities and community organizations has rarely been studied from a perspective that is both conceptual and descriptive. The growing sense that - studied local organizations constitute a massive yet little understood portion of the nonprofit cosmos has led Smith (1997a,b) to call them the "darkmatter of the nonprofit universe. " An - terdisciplinary attempt to make community a unit ofstudy has not been previously undertaken, and thus we feel that this Handbook makes a unique contribution to scholarly understanding ofboth communities and nonprofit organizations that operate at the community level. A community is a group of people connected by the physical or virtual location (to some extent we can speak of "places" on the World Wide Web, e. g. ) in which they dwell or congregate, organizations they form, and cultural values and symbols they share. Communities are affected, and in a sense defined by, forces that affect community members and their space.

Editors and Affiliations

  • School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Ram A. Cnaan

  • Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, USA

    Carl Milofsky

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