Neighborhoods, communities, and collective goods and bads

1. Neighborhoods, communities, and collective goods and bads Beate Völker Dept. of Sociology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

2. Today’s message: • Communities in Dutch neighborhoods exist, but they consist of weak relationships, which are nevertheless often connected. • The association between community and social/physical order is only indirect: the mechanism is informal control. • Context effects of social diversity on trust and participation are weak and not robust. Relational similarity and structural embeddedness are much more important.

3. Why sociological research in neighborhoods? • Shift from ‘ascribed’ to ‘achieved’ also within networks? • Assumption: trend towards less cohesion and community implies less contacts among neighbors • People cannot avoid neighbors – what does come out of these opportunities for contact? • Social integration depends largely on having weak ties more than on ties to family or close friends

4. Ongoing research projects/interests of BV Community and solidarity behavior in neighborhoods Economic and social conditions for individual well being in neighborhoods Community failure: social and physical disorder in neighborhoods (1) Community failure: Troublesome neighborhood relations (2) Trust and collective good production neighborhoods 4

5. Ongoing research projects/interests of BV Community and solidarity behavior in neighborhoods Economic and social conditions for individual well being in neighborhoods Community failure: social and physical disorder in neighborhoods (1) Community failure: Troublesome neighborhood relations (2) Trust and collective good production neighborhoods 5

6. What is a neighborhood? • Geographical area • Administrative area – zip code • What people consider to be a neighborhood • Neighbors who interact with each other more than with other people (who live also close by)

7. Neighborhoods in the SSND (the Survey of the Social Networks of the Dutch)    • Sample of 160 neighborhoods in 40 municipalities taking urbanization and region into account • Neighborhood: 5-position zip code area (i.e. 230 addresses on average) this resembles the route of a postman • 6-8 respondents in each neighborhood • Neighborhood characteristics partially via respondents, partially via national bureau of statistics (CBS, ‘wijken en buurten’) • Analyses: multilevel analyses: respondents nested in neighborhoods

8. The Survey of the Social Networks of the Dutch (SSND) – municipalities where we collected data -

9. Facilities in the neighborhood • Supermarket • Butcher • Bakery • Green grocery • Fish grocery • Cinema • Shop for building equipment • Shop for clothes • Market for fresh vegetables etc. • Flowery shop • Snack bar • Physician/general practitioner • Police station • Church • Garage/gas station • 16. Sport field • 17. Cafe • 18. Restaurant • 19. Day care center • 20. Neighborhood center • 21. School • 22. Park • 23. Swimming center • 24. Sport- or fitness center • 25. Post office • 26. Bus station • 27. Train station • 28. Theatre, opera, concert hall • 29. Public library • 30. Playground

10. Who are neighbors? Exchange method: name generating questions – partially standard, partially focused on own research interests; step 1: • Who did help you get your current home? • Who has the keys to your house? • Who do you ask for helping with odd jobs in/around your house? • With whom do you discuss personal matters? • Who are your direct neighbors? • How did you get your current job? • Who do you ask for advice concerning matters at your job? Whom do you give advice concerning these matters? • With who do you have a problem? • Who is your boss? Neighbors enter the network in two ways: via name generating questions and via the direct question

11. Characteristics of network members and the relation between network member and respondent (= step 2) • Characteristics of Alter: • Sex, age, education, occupation, religion, family situation • role relation with ego • Characteristics of relationship Ego-Alter: • Intensity, trust, liking • Duration of relationship • Where met first, where meeting currently • Frequency of contact • Geographical distance

12. What are activities among neighbors and what is the quality of neighbor relationships? • Neighbors who are directly delineated do only rarely have any additional function • Neighbors are in particular important for odd jobs, one does visiting neighbors and they are also sometimes member in ones core discussion network • Segregation between working and dwelling, private and public: one rarely discusses work matters with neighbors • Neighbor relations belong to the weakest relationships in ones network

13. Activities among neighbors… Source: SSND, 2000, example: of all network neighbor relationships, 2.4 are mentioned being important for getting a job

14. Strength of neighbor relationships in the Netherlands

15. Strength of neighbor relationships in the Netherlands

16. Strength of neighbor relationships in the Netherlands 70% of the direct neighbors – which is asked for directly – do not have any other relational function besides being just direct neighbors!

17. Local communities in the Netherlands

18. When does a community exist? • If people realize a number of important goals within the same group of other • This does not imply that one needs many relationships for experiencing a community • But is does imply that a community offers something for the individual and not the other way around • Hence: community= joint production of wellbeing • Note: this is very efficient!

19. Conditions for the creation of local communities • Chance to meet (e.g. much facilities) • ‘Mating’ motivation – social capital • Interdependency • Few alternatives

20. Meeting opportunities – opportunities of joint production • ‘No mating without meeting’ (Lois Verbrugge) • Depending on • Time spent in the neighborhood • Degree to which one is bounded to the neighborhood (e.g. because of having young children) • Places and facilities enforce meeting (places, parks with benches, shops etc.) • Synchronic rhythms of life (e.g. when do you and your neighbor leave your house?) • Residential stability – probably on both, micro and macro level

21. ‘Mating motivation’- Social capital – motivation of joint production (i) • Depending on • Shadow of the future (e.g. the intention to stay in the neighborhood) • Shadow of the past (investments in specific others in the neighborhood) • Resources (e.g. education, social status of ‘ego’ and ‘alter’) • Similarity concerning relevant characteristics, e.g. social and marital status, family situation

22. Alternativesmotivation of joint production (ii) • A neighborhood is not the only setting where one can achieve his or her goals, also at work or in a voluntary club important goals can be realized. • Not only relational alternatives are of importance here but also material property can constitute an alternative for starting relationships (in the neighborhood) e.g. one can derive status from having a luxury car.

23. Interdependencies -ease of joint production • Different forms of dependencies: • Structural: network embeddedness • Cognitive: common frame of reference, e.g. belonging to the same culture, religion or: neighborhood • Functional: dependency on others for achieving a goal, e.g. writing a petition, making an arrangement on parking cars etc. • Note: dependency is highest if these different forms coincide in the same relationships

24. Measurement of Wellbeing/Community Combination of items in a Cobb Douglas function: Community= stimulation2*comfort2*status2*affection2 • Cobb Douglas function (a production function in economics) allows to model diminishing returns of scale. If all exponents are equal to 1, there are constant returns to scale. If they are smaller than 1, returns are diminishing. It also allows to model substitution effects, i.e.: one does not have status but lots of affection and therefore experiences community.

25. Local communities (1): goal achievement

26. Local community (2): Combination of goals

27. Local communities (3) Multilevel Analysis Note: in this analysis it is controlled for sex, age cohort, being married, length of residence, urbanism and number of foreigners in the neighborhood

28. Local communities (3) Multilevel Analysis Note: in this analysis it is controlled for sex, age cohort, being married, length of residence, urbanism and number of foreigners in the neighborhood

29. Conclusion, so far • Community in neighborhoods depends on a number of conditions • In particular, interdependencies are very important • Facilities, meeting opportunities do matter also, facilities have not only an economic function but also a social one! Yet, there is a differential effect of meeting places, not all work in the same direction • Residential stability is – as always - of importance, yet in the Netherlands this effect seems ot be smaller than, e.g. in the US • Effect of relational alternatives is only weak

30. Furthermore: • Relations with neighbors are weak, they belong to the weakest relationships individuals have • It is not necessary to have many neighborhood relationships for developing a sense of community • E.g., higher educated people have more relations with neighbors yet experience less community in their neighborhood • Effects of urbanization and migrants vanishes, if controlled for (a.o.) education

31. Community failure? Social and physical disorder in neighborhoods

32. Background • Studies and arguments by Sampson, e.g. Sampson et al. 1997, Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999 • Popular idea (in criminology): social order is a consequence of physical order: e.g. broken window hypothesis (Wilson & Kling, 1982) • Sampson c.s. : the correlation between physical and social order is spurious, it is influenced by another common condition, i.e. social control. Networks and community are a condition for informal control

33. Social and physical order in the neighborhoods are collective goods. • Who sanctions those who do not contribute to the production of collective goods? • This is known as a second order collective good problem (Coleman, 1990, 266 en passim).

34. Physical order Meeting places Informal Control Networks Community Social order Model of assumptions on neighborhoods and social and physical order

35. Analyses • Description of all elements of the model • Association between the different elements • Multivariate multilevel regression model (controlling for age, sex, education, family situation)

36. Informal social control:Do you expect that people in your neighborhood do something, if they observe the following in the neighborhood:

37. Physical disorder(asked to the interviewers)What do you thing about the neighborhood of the respondent?

38. Social disorder:Is there sometimes vandalism in the neighborhood?

39. Physical order Meeting places Informal Control Networks Community Social order .133 (.011)** .200 (.034)** .225 (.102)** .083 (.029)** .399 (.072)** • Note: • Low income neighborhoods create more community • No strong correlation between social and physical order: .30 • Ecometric analyses are partially done, no difference in conclusion

40. Most important conditions/associations (yes= significant association, while controlling for all other conditions)

41. Conclusion, so far • Actual relations are not a necessary condition for community, as long as ties are not negative, weak ties are sufficient • Conditions in neighborhoods and facilities/meeting opportunities are interesting conditions for relations, community, control as well as social/physical order

42. Furthermore: • The effect of pubs, snack bars etc. on social and physical disorder is much greater than the effect of migrants! • Community has no direct effect on disorder, the effect is indirect via social control and interventions of residents • Why? Possibly, because members of a community do not necessarily conform to general norms, community norms can be different from general social norms 42

43. Therefore: • Policy measures should not focus on: • Creation of cohesion and strong ties in neighborhoods • Rather, they should aim at: • Stimulating social control and intervening on behalf of common goods in public places 43

44. Collective good production, trust and diversity in neighborhoods- the turtle effect

45. Three important contributions by Putnam • Putnam on ‘Making democracy work’ (1993). • Putnam on ‘The strange disappearance of social capital in America’ (1995) and ‘Bowling alone’ (2000). • Putnam (2007) on ‘Diversity and community in the twenty-first century’.

46. E pluribus unum Three contributions of E pluribus unum • Shifting the problem from ‘bowling alone’ to ‘bowling apart’. It matters who is bowling with whom! • New data allow for testing hypotheses on bridging and bonding, which could not yet be tested in bowling alone • Not only data on macro-phenomena but also micro level data in individual characteristics and behavior.

47. Bridging and bonding Different forms of social capital: Bridging and bonding ties to different others ties to similar others Both might have different consequences for individual action. Bridging and bonding show a positive correlation, according to Putnam

48. Claims of E Pluribus Unum (1) 1) Ethnic diversity will increase substantially in virtually all modern societies over the next several decades. Increased immigration and diversity are not only inevitable, but over the long run they are also desirable. Ethnic diversity is an important social asset.

49. Claim 2 and 3 2) In the short to medium run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital. 3) In the medium to long run, successful immigrant societies create new forms of social solidarity and dampen the negative.

50. Evidence presented is merely on claim 2: the undesirable consequences of diversity