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56 books match the query 'Community organization' and 4 start with g

cover of Ghosts of Organizations Past: Communities of Organizations as Settings for Change

Ghosts of Organizations Past

Communities of Organizations as Settings for Change

Dan Ryan

Temple University Press, 2015

In Ghosts of Organizations Past, Dan Ryan asks, “Why are urban communities such hard places to implement community improvement programs?” Looking at New Haven, Connecticut, and a now-defunct program called Fighting Back, which was created to build community coalitions against the abuse of alcohol and other drugs, Ryan shows how the normal properties of organizations generate apparent pathologies. He shows how the “ghosts,” or artifacts, of past organizations, both inhibited and enhanced Fighting Back's chances of success.

Ryan draws on concepts from the study of organizations, social capital, and social networks to re-think questions such as “What kind of thing is a community?” and “Why is it so difficult to build community initiatives out of organizations?” He provides a social organizational explanation for problems familiar to anyone who has been involved in community programs, issues that are usually understood as personal incompetence, turf wars, greed, or corruption.

Ghosts of Organizations Past describes the challenges of using organizations to create change in places in dire need of it.
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cover of Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts

Grassroots Activisms

Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts

Edited by Lisa L. Phillips, Sarah Warren-Riley, and Julie Collins Bates

The Ohio State University Press, 2024

What is the nature of grassroots activism? How and why do individuals get involved or attempt to make change for themselves, others, or their own communities? What motivates activists to maintain momentum when their efforts to redress injustices or paths toward change seem difficult or personally risky to navigate? These questions and more are addressed in Grassroots Activisms: Public Rhetorics in Localized Contexts. Featuring a diverse array of both local activist profiles and original scholarly essays, the collection amplifies and analyzes the tactics of grassroots activists working locally to intervene in a variety of social injustices—from copwatching and policy reform to Indigenous resistance against land colonization to #RageAgainstRape.

Attuned to the demanding—and often underappreciated—work of grassroots activism, this book interrogates how such efforts unfold within and against existing historical, cultural, social, and political realities of local communities; are informed by the potentials and constraints of coalition-building; and ultimately shape different facets of society at the local level. This collection acknowledges and celebrates the complexity of grassroots activist work, showing how these less-recognized efforts often effect change where institutions have failed.

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cover of Grassroots Library Advocacy

Grassroots Library Advocacy

Lauren Comito

American Library Association, 2012

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cover of Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910-1949

Groping toward Democracy

African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910-1949

Priscilla A. Dowden-White

University of Missouri Press, 2011

Decades before the 1960s, social reformers began planting the seeds for the Modern Civil Rights era. During the period spanning World Wars I and II, St. Louis, Missouri, was home to a dynamic group of African American social welfare reformers. The city’s history and culture were shaped both by those who would construct it as a southern city and by the heirs of New England abolitionism. Allying with white liberals to promote the era’s new emphasis on “the common good,” black reformers confronted racial segregation and its consequences of inequality and, in doing so, helped to determine the gradual change in public policy that led to a more inclusive social order.

In Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910–1949, historian Priscilla A. Dowden-White presents an on-the-ground view of local institution building and community organizing campaigns initiated by African American social welfare reformers. Through extensive research, the author places African American social welfare reform efforts within the vanguard of interwar community and neighborhood organization, reaching beyond the “racial uplift” and “behavior” models of the studies preceding hers. She explores one of the era’s chief organizing principles, the “community as a whole” idea, and deliberates on its relationship to segregation and the St. Louis black community’s methods of reform. Groping toward Democracy depicts the dilemmas organizers faced in this segregated time, explaining how they pursued the goal of full, uncontested black citizenship while still seeking to maximize the benefits available to African Americans in segregated institutions. The book’s nuanced mapping of the terrain of social welfare offers an unparalleled view of the progress brought forth by the early-twentieth-century crusade for democracy and equality.

By delving into interrelated developments in health care, education, labor, and city planning, Dowden-White deftly examines St. Louis’s African American interwar history. Her in-depth archival research fills a void in the scholarship of St. Louis’s social development, and her compelling arguments will be of great interest to scholars and teachers of American urban studies and social welfare history.
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