Reddit mentions: The best urban sociology books

Of course! Dialogue is how we are best able to challenge each other! So important in our field. I tend to get wordy, so I’m approaching this in bullets to spare you something that isn’t digestible. (also, just FYI, I’ve worked with similar populations in residential settings so I totally get the frustration. There is a lot to be said about how our MH system, for e.g. has institutionalized people and created a culture of learned dependence. Totally relevant here but probably based stuck to the side and saved for a different post. I chose to NOT stay in this field because of what I assume are the same things leading you to this situation.)

1. I have to push back on need vs. want. I agree that there is a difference here, but I don’t agree that this is the approach to understand what is happening with these folks. We, as outsiders, really can’t determine what someone else’s needs and wants are. We may perceive it as not that important (a want) but to the person themselves they do NEED that item or service. Again needs vs. wants, without collaboration from the client, is a values judgement. Just saying this to be mindful of it as you work with these more challenging residents. They’ll pick up on that judgement. If they do ‘need’ the service that seems optional, you want to understand why that is perceived as a need. IME there is always something there once you start peeling away the layers. When you understand what is there, then you can start looking at strategies to help. Maybe they really do need what they ask for, maybe there are other more ‘legitimate’ ways of getting that help which you could assist them with. The conversation needs to start with them, and not you.
   
   
2. In terms of the resident you have, I can tell you have a handful! First I want to point out a few observations
   a. We learn to exaggerate our needs to get the services that we legitimately do need. I have had to coach clients to embellish their disability for certain services they are eligible for (and need) because otherwise we would need to deal with the lengthy appeals process. Folks who minimize their needs suffer. SO we as a society has created this situation – and your residents sounds like she is being very smart in figuring out how to manage it.
   b. She has a disability, there isn’t a question about that. Maybe she exaggerates the symptoms but let me point something else out. What does she have to gain for throwing out meds and not using her scooter? Don’t know what her disability is, what is clear is that she NOT being treatment compliant. She isn’t taking her meds (and they aren’t the fun kind to sell so no reason to exaggerate to get meds to throw out). She isn’t using the aids she needs, etc. I would be concerned about her taking care of herself. IME many people with degenerative issues avoid accepting that. Consider the possibility that both is true. She knows what she needs and exaggerates it to get what she is eligible for – but also is clearly not taking care of herself, and maybe has some ambivalence about what her care should be. This isn’t fraud. At best it is survival and at worst it is a woman who is sick and not taking care of herself. The sort of exception is selling Ensure. Technically this might be something should could get in trouble with – but why would you hurt someone who is trying to get by? Selling Ensure, for e.g. is VERY common. Our public benefit system is horrid and fails to address people’s needs. We don’t receive enough SNAP, PA, etc. People are barely surviving under the poverty. When we, as a society, do this to people – how can we then penalize them for trying to make the best of it and survive a little better off of nothing? Also, Ensure is $$$$ and I’m sure that the person she sells it to is getting a deal. Good. Again we give people nothing to survive on, let them try and make the best of it.
   
   My main point is that you can support this client, and get her help, without doing something you find unethical. To do this, though you need to move past you own mishegas associated with clients such as this resident. Your scenario describes, to me, a person in need of support. Your role is not to determine if she should qualify, or if she is needy enough for a service. It sounds like she could use an aid, and that you should continue to provide supportive, client centered, and judgement free services to her.
   
   
3. Ah this also makes sense. Welp, she tried, and it didn’t work ;-) I hope that dealing with that isn’t on you then. That really is a management issue to decide if they wish to enforce their own rrules. If so, great. If not, don’t sweat it – nothing you can do and not worth the ulcer. In the realm of messed up things, trust me, it could be VERY worse. I live in a city with a housing crisis and have had this come up with single people in 3-4 bedroom homes. They get angry when they need to pay more rent for the rooms – but refuse to downsize. I get it, but it can be INCREDIBLY frustrating from the outside.
   
   
4. The welfare queen is a myth. I would recommend reading more about it and thinking about the implications. Our jobs are not o be gatekeepers deciding who is worthy of services or needy enough. Our jobs are not to decide if you deserve what you are asking or investigate your circumstances to catch you in a lie and report you. Our job is to walk alongside you, follow your lead, and to the best of our ability help you manage, achieve, and thrive. A few quick reads: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/welfare-queen-myth/501470/ https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Welfare-Queen-Prize-Winning-Journalists/dp/0684840065 The myth of the welfare queen was based on one woman, and let me tell you, with confidence, she is far from a typical occurrence. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html If we have a .01% chance of coming across someone like this, is that reason enough to treat all of our clients suspiciously? Doing so is probably one of the many reasons that our field is fairly ineffective. Clients don’t trust us, because social workers treat them as criminals, and then the social workers blame them for not doing what they want. Really it is the social workers’ job to assess and engage.
   
   
5. I mean this is the absolute kindness, and most honest way possible. Given the lense with which you see your clients, it might be time to consider a different line of work. I don’t mean leave social work – but find something in a different population, with a different type of task. When you have these feelings towards your clients, at best you stop being effective. At worst you are causing harm. I can tell from your thoughtfulness throughout this thread that you are a smart and balanced person. It is ok to decide that a certain environment or population is not right for you and that you need to find somewhere else that is a better fit. Sometimes, once you are farther away from this situation you can more easily understand what was going on without being held down by your own feelings and viewpoints. As I said earlier – I’ve been there and the best thing you can do when you realize you can’t provide equal services to all your clients is to find a different setting where you can. It is a hard thing to tell yourself, but doing so is what makes someone a great social worker.
   
   edit: for some reason the formatting keeps renumbering the last 3 items - should be 3-5 ;-)

> Eye-opening. Thank you so much!!

Bureaucracies -- that is governments and other organizations & entities which are not subject to the "rule" of a free marketplace (and some others, like international/multinational companies which partially are) -- have a tendency to "expand the work/workers" in an exponential (and self-feedback) fashion like that. IOW it isn't "unique" to "social work" (just perhaps more egregious there).

--
The "classic" work on it is from circa 1955/1957 by C. Northcote Parkinson, entitled "Parkinson's Law" and published first as an essay with that title in The Economist (and then later expanded and published as a book in 1957) -- wherein he shows and the explains how the number of Admirals paradoxically increased across multiple decades, despite an actual & substantial decrease in the number of ships in the British Navy; and again how the number of "Colonial Office Officials" eventually quadrupled from 1932 to 1954 -- at the same time that Britain's colonies were becoming independent, and it's "Colonial Empire" being disbanded.

--
A more recent, and IMO even more illuminating work is the circa 1996 book (actually series of essays) by John L. Mcknight entitled "The Careless Society: Community And Its Counterfeits" wherein he dissects -- in a surgical if rather brutal "skewering" fashion -- the "invasion of 'helping' professionals into communities" and the the many and major debilitating effects they have (i.e. creating an expanding self-feedback system that is not only counterproductive and parasitic, but inevitably "kills" the proverbial host).

--
If you have the stomach for it, and WANT your eyes open even further... I highly recommend reading both (Parkinson's essay is available FREE from the online link I provided, and is both a VERY humorous and entertaining {as well as educational} read; and McKnight's book is available as ebooks, and very probably cheap in paper/print from "used" book vendors; as likely so is Parkinson's subsequent book... as both have been in continuous publication across the decades).

Hey there! I know you asked for online but the lists below are everything you probably need, in terms of policy 101:

Books
Thomas Birkland - "An Introduction to the Policy Process"
Dipak Gupta - "Analyzing Public Policy"
Thomas Dye - "Understanding Public Policy"

Blogs/Podcasts
Council on Foreign Relations - "The World Next Week"
NPR- "Planet Money"
Economistsview

Research Institutions
Brookings
Pew
RAND Corp

Those books are solid. The blogs are great at making succinct points and summarize current events well. The research places offer great objective research, and they produce research summaries that help provide key takeaways.

There's actually an entire book about this Hope and Despair in the American City: Why there are no bad schools in Raleigh. Basically not matter where you wind up you have a respectable school. Yes some are better than others, but those often come with their own set of problems (my friends from places like Cary HS came to college obsessed with academic success at the cost of pretty much everything else).


NC is currently not in a great place politically (for explanation) which is one of the reasons posting on here is slightly fraught with people freaking out. But as one of the people that's been regularly going to protest the state legislature, this is still the greatest place I've ever lived. And I'm happy my parents moved so I could grow up here.

> You can go to a vocational high school, but if you score well and take the right tests, it seems like you can go to whatever the equivalent of a 4 year university would be.

They only recently changed it so people could get into the Abitur if they were going to Realschule, and it's still harder to get a proper diplom if you're not on the 'right' track from the very start.

They're honest and simply separate people by ability from an early age onwards.

> cramming in some kind of schadenfreude towards the mythical "little Timmy" is just a little creepy.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Johnny-Still-Cant-Read/dp/B0043SCQZ2/ref=pd_sim_b_1/183-6685207-7008568?ie=UTF8&refRID=1WYAANZ4T6S6CMEWXQSR

http://jokes.cc.com/funny-little-johnny/2fy50k/little-johnny----name-that-animal

Little Johnny and Little Timmy and Little Tiffany (remember her getting shot in Men in Black) and diminutive names for example kids is fairly standard English idiomatic expression.


But you were just trying to distract from a point you can't contend with.

Your actions will speak louder than your words in convincing your students you understand them. Show them through your actions that you care about and respect them as holistic people (not just consumers of your subject matter). Also, it may be possible to go too far in trying to convince the students you understand ... there are aspects of their experiences you may not be able to understand, even if you went to a Title 1 school.
https://www.amazon.com/White-Folks-Teach-Hood-Rest/dp/0807006408

That's dependent on where the person lives and what resources he has. For you, it's simple to get on the internet and use a credit card to buy rice, beans, lentils, etc. But, for many people, that's not an option.

And, don't forget that time is valuable, too. The price of food isn't just in what you're charged at the checkout counter; you also need to factor in how long it takes to get the food. Would you take the bus across town and walk for eighteen blocks to get a meal that saves only pennies in nominal cost but costs you many dollars in lost income?

I highly recommend The Myth of the Welfare Queen by David Zucchino. It might help you get an idea of why choices that seem wasteful to you might actually make sense if you were in their shoes.

No articles, but For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood by Christopher Emdin is a great read.

Fixing existing developments and creating better ones in the future are very different beasts. One very influential group working on latter is the Congress for New Urbanism. A useful volume by a few of CNU's leading practioners is Suburban Nation. One pertinent critique of New Urbanism though is that is has been relatively ineffective about the retrofitting you describe. For that you might check out books like Retrofitting Suburbia.

If you want a good rant on how we got into the mess J.H. Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere is an angry read. On patterns that underlay places we like being in, there is the always present work of Christopher Alexander. For my money one of the most under-read great urbanists of our time is Richard Sennett, particularly his book The Uses of Disorder.

Finally, Jacob's has a lot of prescriptive stuff in Death and Life. I'll give you that it is not as rule-based as most contemporary approaches, but therein lies its greatness.

For easy reading, follow links for source data:
http://www.junkland.net/2012/01/8-myths-about-welfare-queens-debunked.html

And a famous book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Welfare-Queen-Prize-Winning-Journalists/dp/0684840065

An interesting book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-McNamee/dp/0742561682

I would recommend Krumholz or Forester (see also Planning in the Face of Power )

The Meritocracy Myth

http://www.amazon.com/MYTH-WELFARE-QUEEN-PRIZE-WINNING-JOURNALISTS/dp/0684840065
http://womenslawproject.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/debunking-the-myth-of-the-%E2%80%9Cwelfare-queen%E2%80%9D-who-actually-receives-tanf-benefits/
http://www.anitra.net/homelessness/columns/anitra/eightmyths.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

google. 0.22 secs

Old: Chicago Poems-Carl Sandburg. An absolute must-have.

New: Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect-Robert J. Sampson

*edit-formatting

>If you google "meritocracy myth", you'll see that there are plenty of lefties who are opposed to meritocracy.

Going from top to bottom:

1. http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm <- attacks the the myth is that America IS a meritocracy.
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/The-Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-McNamee/dp/0742561682 <- same as above
   
3. http://www.amazon.com/The-Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-McNamee/dp/0742561674 <- same book as above
   
4. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201006/the-myths-the-self-made-man-and-meritocracy <- attacks the the myth is that America IS a meritocracy.
   
5. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/meritocracy-myth-what-ever-happened-old-dream-classless-society <- attacks a definition of meritocracy with several baked in ideas that are incompatible with a rational conception of merit (genetics, for example)
   
6. http://www.uvm.edu/~vtconn/v31/Alvarado.pdf <- attacks the the myth is that America IS a meritocracy.
   
   
   What am I looking for here?

I suggest checking out this book by David Zucchino, because what you said is utter bullshit.

Again, I don't believe this post is saying here look this is the evidence of institutional racism. Its saying these are some of the results.

It does matter. Because as you well know asking a picture to explain to you the causes and "prove" racism is impossible. So I have to assume your point is to say that these disparities are not caused by racism, otherwise the comment is of little to no value.

If you want to read up on the causes, I suggest you start here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Meritocracy-Myth-Stephen-McNamee/dp/0742561682

http://www.amazon.com/Institutional-Racism-America-Louis-Knowles/dp/0134677382

i'll agree that the "yeahs!" to that point stuck out, and it definitely wasn't as poignant as the other complaints they were making (and probably falls under the larger theme of criminalizing behavior). but we've also got to account for the idea of youth alienation in spatially unjust cities and large schools.

>Schools as hierarchical, routinised and highly structured environments contrast with the world ‘beyond’ school, with which young people interact (increasingly through Information Communication Technologies), which is obviously complex, layered and presenting constantly changing challenges. (McGregor, "Space, Power and the Classroom")

think about how kids connect with others in the modern city. even walking down the street, people are isolated on phones or with headphones. cell phones give teenagers access to people and media. we can change the way they think about social connection, but we have to understand what social connection means to them first.

>As educators it is imperative to understand the inequity, loneliness, and disconnectedness that many youth face in large, impersonal urban schools. How can we infuse just practices into our education system? How can we redesign and restructure schools so kids don’t fall out of the system? What can we do as educators and community members to commit to and connect with our youth? (Sanchez & Eddine, "Big Cities, Small Schools: Redefining Educational Spaces in the Urban Contex")

i agree completely, however, that a walkout is counterproductive. i think they should be really Occupying--taking over the space and creating a democratic dialogue about the injustices they see. a teach-in, perhaps. but that would take the guidance of a facilitator who can help them make larger connections and target the right places for praxis. i think without students learning to protest in a productive way, you have these kinds of what i call unconscious, muted Occupations that just arise out of the youth's alienation from the city they know is unjust--but that they learn in school is guided by universal rights, liberties, and freedoms. i mean, this is America, right?

Crime has been down so far this year, but that's due to the weather, not policing. In Chicago shootings are correlated to temperature. It's unfortunate, but immediately after thinking about how nice the weather is, "how many people will get shot tonight?" is in the back of your head.

There are a few programs/organizations that temper the violence. [Cure Violence] (http://cureviolence.org/)(formerly known as CeaseFire) and Blocks Together both try to intervene to prevent escalation. But this problem is too big for any not for profit or politician's pet project.

The violence in Chicago is one of the many layers (or symptoms) to systematic social inequalities. Chicago politicians have been very good at throttling money going into developing these neighborhoods (the CPS school closings for instance), and draining any money that does go into these neighborhoods. Chicago is a microcosm of the relationship between the IMF and "developing" countries.

edit:
Check out these books if interested in learning more -
Great American City by Robert J. Sampson and Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh