Analyzing "the things that connect them"
By Patrick T. Reardon
Published: October 31, 2011
Related stories: The links — and lack of links — between schools and neighborhoods and "To what end?"
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"It's much easier to analyze outcomes for individuals or organizations than it is to analyze the things that connect them," said Michael E. Stone, a professor of community planning and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston (right).
Gordon Walek
People don't exist in a vacuum. Nearly four centuries ago, John Donne wrote, "No man is an island."
That realization was at the root of Saul Alinsky's relational power approach to community organizing, and it's remained so for anyone doing neighborhood revitalization efforts today.
People are in relationships with one another. They're linked, they're in networks. They join together to accomplish something. They form book clubs, pray in the same temple or church, play basketball, establish block clubs. On the negative side, some create gangs.
But it's difficult to tease out how those relationships work — among people and among groups, among neighborhoods and regions.
"It's much easier to analyze outcomes for individuals or organizations than it is to analyze the things that connect them," said Michael E. Stone, a professor of community planning and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Stone was among a set of researchers, community organizers and funders who, at two meetings on Oct. 18, grappled with the many questions revolving around how these social relationships — social networks — affect neighborhoods and people.
And also what can be done to strengthen, refine and focus those networks to help improve the lives of individuals and the quality of life in a community.
"[Raising] the question of networks is great," said Anne Kubisch, director of the Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Community Change (left), "because it's putting it on the table as a legitimate thing that we want to study and, therefore, a legitimate thing we want to invest in."
Gordon Walek
The two meetings, held in a Boston hotel, were hosted by the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, an affiliate of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC). One meeting was a research roundtable, attended by more than 50 experts. The second, later in the day, was a gathering of the Institute's advisory board.
"A legitimate thing to invest in"
"[Raising] the question of networks is great," said Anne Kubisch, director of the Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Community Change, "because it's putting it on the table as a legitimate thing that we want to study and, therefore, a legitimate thing we want to invest in.
"Are we giving it the right kind of place in our strategy? We're taking [networks] to a different level, and taking them much more seriously, and naming them, and studying them, and bringing them back to the field as a legitimate thing to invest in."
Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson — described by Kubisch as "the king of measuring networks" — drew a laugh at the roundtable after two researchers made presentations about studies they have undertaken.
He said, "To study networks is really difficult territory, so......good luck!"
In one of the presentations, Donna Haig Friedman, director of the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, described a study that she and several colleagues are now pursuing in Boston's Fairmont Corridor.
Donna Haig Friedman, director of the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston
Gordon Walek
The Corridor is along a commuter rail line through four of the city's poorest neighborhoods: Roxbury, Dorchester, Hyde Park and Mattapan. But the future of the area is looking up. New stations are being installed on the line, and four efforts are underway to help individuals and neighborhoods improve.
Friedman's Fairmont Initiative, sponsored by The Boston Foundation, is beginning to look at those four efforts, particularly at the networks they are seeking to develop. The four are:
- Fairmont/Indigo CDC Collaborative, a coalition of community groups which was responsible for obtaining the four new rail stations and for constructing nearly 200 units of new housing.
- Boston LISC's Resilient Communities/Resilient Families initiative, launched in three communities in the spring, aimed at engaging a wide array of leaders in each community and assisting them in determining their priorities, putting together a plan to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood and implementing that plan.
- Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership's Family Self-Sufficiency Program, designed to increase by 150 percent the number of families participating in an under-utilized federally funded approach which links Section 8 rental assistance with case management to help participants reach financial independence.
- Family Independence Initiative, in which families recruit other families to establish a network of support and accountability for a two-year period.
The goal of the study, Friedman said, is to develop a theory of change:
"The idea is that people and families can do certain things to make their life better. When they're connected positively in networks and engaged with community leaders for local action and chance, there are certain kinds of things that these networks are able to do that those individuals and families are unable to do alone."
However, Friedman cautioned, "Individual people doing what they can do and a network doing what it can do is not enough. There has to be resources like housing that is affordable, like opportunities for business, like opportunities for employment, like safety — formal and informal supports."
"The unit of measure is the relation"
The other presentation was by David Greenberg of MDRC, a New York City-based research organization. MDRC is preparing to study organizational networks in eight of the fourteen Chicago neighborhoods where LISC's New Communities Program has been in place for the past decade.
The New Communities Program, like Boston's Resilient Communities/Resilient Families initiative, is focused on the engagement of a multitude of local leaders and the development and implementation of a quality-of-life plan.
David Greenberg of MDRC, a New York City-based research organization (left), and Joe Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC)
For the study, Greenberg said, "the unit of measurement is actually the relation itself, not the individual organization that takes part in it...We are really interested in studying how a neighborhood as a whole works and how different segments of a neighborhood define its goals.
"Networking matters, not just at the inter-organizational level, but also how these networks may inform the life trajectories of these organizations."
Networks are complicated animals, noted Sampson. "In doing such research," he said, "you need to think hard about what networks you really want to reach, and related to that is the notion of bridging and bonding — how networks vary across neighborhoods, but also how they jump boundaries.
Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson
Gordon Walek
"You may have a community where ties look sparse, and yet there's a small number of ties to other communities [playing an important role]."
"The glue"
And all networks — all relationships — aren't equal.
"I want to urge some caution and care here about using the term 'network' to encompass everything good and valuable," said Stone. "We need to distinguish among networks in terms of function, as well as what we hope they might achieve, what they might possibly achieve, for individuals or families or organizations."
Nonetheless, Stone said, "The relationship is the glue. It's the rubber band, if you will, that connects the elements together."
Gail Latimore, executive director of the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corp., the convening agency for the Resilient Communities/Resilient Families effort in her area
Gordon Walek
Speaking as someone on the front lines of community revitalization, Gail Latimore, executive director of the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corp., the convening agency for the Resilient Communities/Resilient Families effort in her area, said, "It's good for us as practitioners to think about how we go about building social networks."
Right now, she said, "I look at things and I go at things organically — get it done!"
Her hope, she said, is that research into the nature of networks will give her more insight into what she's doing and how she should do it.
"Reducing uncertainty"
However, Joe Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC), wasn't so sure that research would be able to explain much.
"One of the reasons we want evidence of the efficacy of the network is — to put it bluntly — so people will support us in creating networks," he said. "If you don't have evidence and data, then it must not be true.
"I have to say I'm somewhat skeptical about whether it's possible to find a way to document social networks at any reasonable cost and in any reasonable time in ways that actually help us."
He noted that he'd met Friedman at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston, and, more than 15 years ago, Greenberg had been an intern at MACDC. "It's been ten years since I've seen him, and now I'm sitting next to him," Kriesberg said.
How, he asked, could those sorts of links be identified by research?
Ken Nickerson of the Eos Foundation
Gordon Walek
In response, Ken Nickerson of the Eos Foundation mentioned the 2010 book "How to Measure Anything" by Douglas W. Hubbard.
"One of the things he does is, he turns the idea of measurement upside-down," Nickerson said, "and starts with the idea that there's no such thing as a precise measurement. So, he says, the definition of measurement is a reduction in uncertainty.
"You never know anything [completely]. The question is how to reduce your uncertainty. As soon as you ask that question in that way, there's always, always, always an economical way to further reduce your uncertainty."
"Opportunities emerge"
If there was disagreement during the two meetings on whether networks can be usefully measured, there was also two perspectives on whether the creation of a network is a worthy goal.
"Networks," said Ellen Gilligan, president of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, "are a means to an end, not an end in themselves."
Yet, other participants, such as Jim Capraro, the former executive director of the Greater Southwest Development Corp. in Chicago, contended that, by breaking down the barriers between people and groups, a network can't help by lead to improvements.
"All networking is always good at all times at every level," said Capraro.
Once a network is established, he said, "opportunities emerge that you can't even begin to know in advance until people know each other."
Indeed, he said that, even when a network is set up with specific aims, the partners will soon see new and better goals to add to or substitute for the original ones. "You really don't know if you're going to pursue the outcomes you start with," he noted.
Parsing out the dynamics of networks in a meaningful way is a daunting objective, Greenberg acknowledged.
"There are network overloads that happen — too many hands are stirring the soup. In contrast, Jim says unexpected things can happen when networks are with each other," he said.
"Our challenge [as researchers] is not to end up with a Goldilocks answer — not too hot, not too cold, just right. "
Even so, Kubisch of the Aspen Institute noted, "The research really needs to catch up with what the practitioners feel they're doing and support that and capture that."
Posted in Notes from the Field