Why Do They Stay? Rootendness and Isolation in an Inner-City White Neighborhood

Author: Patricia Stern Smallacombe

Dissertation School: University of Pennsylvania

Abstract:

My dissertation research will address conditions and experiences of white poverty in an urban setting and the precarious position of white working-class residents amidst economic, social, and political transformations. I will study the impact of structural changes on the social organization of two inner city neighborhoods in Philadelphia's Milton area: New Milton, a working class and increasingly poor and racially and ethnically mixed area; and Dockside, a more stable white working class-community. My central goal is to show how the restructuring of the global economy, urban blight, and demographic change are affecting the lives of white individuals and families, especially women and children, who stay in these neighborhoods. Due to dramatic decline of the local economy since the 1970's and increasing demographic change, residents of New Milton and Dockside are experiencing new kinds of economic insecurity as well as erosion of traditional social identities as working people and as Americans. This research will document how residents respond to urban change with resilience as well as resistance through their complex identification with geographic and symbolic “place”.

While there is growing research in this area, downward mobility and increasing poverty among whites living in the inner-city are still relatively undocumented in urban sociology. These phenomena have implications for the debate about an emerging urban “underclass”, which is most often represented as a minority constituency. This dissertation will primarily explore and document what place-based identity means to inner-city white residents. These findings will have particular policy relevance for guiding appropriate “place-based” and “people-based” investment strategies for community revitalization through partnerships with government, community organizations, and the private sector in such urban areas and populations. Finally, my research will contribute to a more complete understanding of gender and generational relations in urban white working-class and poor communities during a time of rapid social and economic change.

My dissertation research will combine ethnographic documentation of daily life with political economic context to examine change and dislocation in these white working class and poor neighborhoods for Philadelphia. For this ethnographic study, I will focus my field observations and interviews on local community institutions and those who participate in them. These institutions include the local worksite, private house and residential block, playground and recreation center, school, and church. Specifically, I will look at how social organization around location operates in these white neighborhoods in ways that both perpetuate geographic and social isolation and foster social and employment networks enhanced by geographic proximity. Data from participant observation and interviews will be situated in a historical context of neighborhood conditions through the use of census information on housing, population, income, and education. I will also include an analysis of the local economy using data on businesses and employment in the area.

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