Browsing by Subject "Neighborhood"

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    Multicultural Community Building in an Urban Neighborhood
    (2015-06) Champe, John
    This is an anthropological ethnography of multicultural community-building among the almost all-white activists in Minneapolis' largest neighborhood, Whittier. It shows the effects that the discourses, theories, and activities of these neighborhood activists have on the social structures that reproduce class, racial, and ethnic inequality. The first chapter analyzes the acrimonious battle over the opening of an apartment building for homeless. It shows the construction of the symbols at play, including Stability, Burden, Stakeholders, Gentrification, and Over-concentration of the poor. Chapter two explains how politics in Whittier became so polarized between competing factions of white, liberal, middle-class homeowners, who all share a love of their neighborhood's diversity. The study also illuminates how the faction representing "homeowner interests"� achieved dominance. Chapter three shows that while many paint Whittier as very dangerous, statistically it is not. The chapter explains the role that fear, exaggerated talk of crime, citizen crime patrols, media sensationalism, personal identity, and class conflict play in the creation of place and racial segregation. Chapter four explains how ethnic identities and class hierarchies are socially constructed through neighborhood campaigns, and also how the meaning of "diversity"� itself gets produced. The chapter details how white and Somali ethnicities are manufactured by struggles over a Somali mall and the parking around it. Chapter five reveals the failures of democracy in Whittier politics, and argues that not only has elected, democratic governance failed, but that attempting it on the neighborhood scale is probably futile and destructive. Chapter six discovers that while the academic literature argues that Americans are largely ignorant of social structures that reproduce inequality, white Whittier activists of many viewpoints are actually cognizant of them, and of their own privilege. This study finds that the key to understanding the multiplicity of thought and policy on poverty and multiculturalism, is by investigating Whittier activists' theories on neighborhood development. For example, activists opposing more subsidized housing in Whittier espouse that Whittier's health requires more homeowners, fewer renters, and fewer residents needing housing subsidies. This activism modified class hierarchy, by re-imagining it along the lines of the housing one inhabits.
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    Neighborhood and individual characteristics and excessive drinking.
    (2011-05) Shimotsu, Scott Toshiro
    Objective. Excessive drinking contributes to 79,000 excess deaths annually and is associated with cardiovascular disease, several cancers, liver cirrhosis and social problems including drinking and driving, homicide, and other types of crime. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to test a model that examines how individual and neighborhood level characteristics contribute to excessive drinking. Methods. In Manuscript 1, we investigated the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and alcohol consumption, and whether the inverse relationship between low fruit and vegetable intake and higher alcohol consumption was more pronounced among the poor in a large multi-ethnic sample of 9,959 adults from Hennepin County, MN using the Survey of the Health of Adults, the Population, and the Environment (SHAPE). In Manuscript 2, we explored whether food and alcohol access are related, and whether the relationship between food and alcohol access differs in poorer neighborhoods in Hennepin County, MN using Census Decennial and InfoUSA business data. The 3rd manuscript investigated whether living in a low SES neighborhood was associated with excessive drinking and if the retail environment (e.g., mix of food and liquor stores) mediated this relationship using SHAPE, Census Decennial, and InfoUSA data. A variety of statistical methods were used to answer our research questions including hierarchical Poisson and linear regression models. Results. In Manuscript 1, we found higher fruit and vegetable intake was associated with lower alcohol consumption and this relationship was more pronounced among individuals with lower household incomes. In Manuscript 2, we found the relationship between food and alcohol access differed by neighborhood SES, with higher income neighborhoods having more supermarkets and grocery stores, and liquor stores (RR=1.47; 95% CI: 1.21, 1.80). In Manuscript 3, we found that individuals living in census tracts with only liquor stores had a 46% higher risk of binge drinking than individuals living in neighborhoods with only food stores (RR=1.46; 95% CI: 1.03,2.07) after adjusting for demographic and lifestyle factors. Conclusion. Neighborhood characteristics such as the mix of food and liquor in neighborhoods are important in understanding excessive drinking above and beyond demographic and lifestyle factors. Future research on social conditions impacting alcohol consumption should explore the mix of stores, not just the over-concentration of liquor stores in neighborhoods.