How do nonprofit organizations attempt to facilitate collective efficacy? Through an inductive ethnographic case study of efforts to reduce gang violence in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, this study shows the importance of power and funding competition. Specifically, nonprofits’ efforts to facilitate collective efficacy depended on (1) strategic actions to manage competitors, and (2) their position in the city political field. Based on these findings, this article refines collective efficacy theory by integrating power relations and governance as forces that fundamentally shape neighborhood crime control efforts. The article concludes by discussing the implications for efforts to better integrate nonprofits, race, and the state into studies of collective efficacy and neighborhood crime control.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AlinskySaul. 1971. Rules for Radicals. New York: Vintage.
2.
BanduraAlbert. 1997. Self–Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Macmillan.
3.
BourdieuPierre, and WacquantLoïc J.D.1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4.
BragaAnthony A., and ClarkeRonald V.2014. “Explaining High–Risk Concentrations of Crime in the City: Social Disorganization, Crime Opportunities, and Important Next Steps.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency51(4):480–98.
5.
BrowningChristopher R., DietzRobert D., and FeinbergSeth L.2004. “The Paradox of Social Organization: Networks, Collective Efficacy, and Violent Crime in Urban Neighborhoods.” Social Forces83(2):503–34.
6.
BursikRobert J.Jr., and GrasmickHarold G.1993. Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
7.
CarrPatrick J.2003. “The New Parochialism: The Implications of the Beltway Case for Arguments Concerning Informal Social Control.” American Journal of Sociology108(6):1249–91.
8.
CarrPatrick J.2005. Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining Order, and Building Community Activism. New York: NYU Press.
9.
ClarkTerry N.1968. “Community Structure, Decision–Making, Budget Expenditures, and Urban Renewal in 51 American Communities.” American Sociological Review33(4):576–93.
10.
DahlRobert A.1961. Who Governs?New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
11.
DesmondMatthew. 2014. “Relational Ethnography.” Theory and Society43(5):547–79.
12.
DiMaggioPaul, and PowellWalter W.1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Collective Rationality and Institutional Isomorphism in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review48(2):147–60.
13.
DoeringJan. 2017. “‘Afraid of Walking Home from the ‘L'at Night?’: The Politics of Crime and Race in Racially Integrated Neighborhoods.” Social Problems64(2):277–97.
HirschArnold R.2009. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
HunterAlbert. 1985. “Private, Parochial, and Public Social Orders: The Problem of Crime and Incivility in Urban Communities.” In SuttlesGerald D. and ZaldMayer N. (eds.), The Challenge of Social Control, Pp. 230–242. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
21.
JanowitzMorris. 1975. “Sociological Theory and Social Control.” American Journal of Sociology81(1):82–108.
22.
KirkDavid S., and MatsudaMauri. 2011. “Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest.” Criminology49(2):443–72.
23.
LeeCaroline, McQuarrieMichael, and WalkerEdward. 2015. Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation. New York: NYU Press.
24.
Levi–MartinJohn. 2003. “What is Field Theory?” American Journal of Sociology109:1–49.
25.
LevineJeremy R. 2016. “The Privatization of Political Representation: Community Based Organizations as Nonelected Neighborhood Representatives.” American Sociological Review. 81(6):1251–75.
26.
LevineJeremy R. 2017. “The Paradox of Community Power: Cultural Processes and Elite Authority in Participatory Governance.” Social Forces95(3):1155–79.
27.
LiuSida, and EmirbayerMustafa. 2016. “Field and Ecology.” Sociological Theory34(1):62–79.
28.
LoganJohn R., and MolotchHarvey. 2007. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press.
29.
MaguireEdward R., NixJustin, and CampbellBradley A.2017. “A War on Cops? The Effects of Ferguson on the Number of US Police Officers Murdered in the Line of Duty.” Justice Quarterly34(5):739–58.
30.
MarwellNicole P.2007. Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
31.
McCarthyJohn D., BrittDavid W., and WolfsonMark. 1991. “The Institutional Channeling of Social Movements by the State in the United States.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change13(2):45–76.
32.
McQuarrieMichael. 2015. “No Contest: Participatory Technologies and the Transformation of Urban Authority.” In CarolineLee, McQuarrieMichael, and WalkerEdward (eds.), Democratiziing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, Pp. 83–101. New York: NYU Press.
33.
McQuarrieMichael, and MarwellNicole P.2009. “The Missing Organizational Dimension in Urban Sociology.” City & Community8(3):247–68.
34.
PapachristosAndrew V.2009. “Murder by Structure: Dominance Relations and the Social Structure of Gang Homicide.” American Journal of Sociology115(1):74–128.
35.
PattilloMary E. 1998. “Sweet Mothers and Gangbangers: Managing Crime in a Black Middle–Class Neighborhood.” Social Forces76:747–74.
36.
PattilloMary. 2007. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
37.
Rodriguez–MunizMichael. 2017. “Cultivating Consent: Nonstate Leaders and the Orchestration of State Legibility.” American Journal of Sociology123:385–425.
38.
RosenfeldRichard. 2016. Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.
39.
SampsonRobert J.2002. “Crime and Public Safety: Insights from Community–Level Perspectives on Social Capital.” Pp. 89–114 in Social Capital and Poor Communities. edited by SusanSaegert, ThompsonJ. Phillip, and WarrenMark. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
40.
SampsonRobert J. 2012. Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
41.
SampsonRobert J., RaudenbushStephen W., and EarlsFelton. 1997. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science277(5328):918–24.
42.
Sanchez–JankowskiMartin. 2008. Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods. Berkeley: University of California Press.
43.
SharkeyPatrick, Torrats–EspinosaGerard, and TaykarDelaram. 2017. “Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect on Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime.” American Sociological Review. 82: 1214–40.
44.
SimpsonRichard. 2001. Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council, 1863 to the Present. New York: Routledge Press.
45.
SmallMario Luis. 2008. “Four Reasons to Abandon the Idea of ‘the Ghetto’.” City & Community7(4):389–98.
46.
SmallMario Luis. 2009. Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
47.
SossJoe, FordingRichard C., and SchramSanford F.2011. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
48.
St. JeanPeter K.B. 2007. Pockets of Crime: Broken Windows, Collective Efficacy, and the Criminal Point of View. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
49.
StoneClarence Nathan. 1989. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
50.
TurnerVictor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
WacquantLoïc. 2002. “Scrutinizing the Street: Poverty, Morality, and the Pitfalls of Urban Ethnography.” American Journal of Sociology107(6):1468–532.
53.
WarnerBarbara D., and Wilcox RountreePamela. 1997. “Local Social Ties in a Community and Crime Model: Questioning the Systemic Nature of Informal Social Control.” Social Problems44:520–36.
54.
WikströmPer–Olof H., CeccatoVania, HardieBeth, and TreiberKyle. 2010. “Activity Fields and the Dynamics of Crime.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology26(1):55–87.
