Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mark R. Warren is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Harvard University.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"Mark Warren's comprehensive case study of the Industrial Areas Foundation is a major contribution to the growing literature on coalition politics. Indeed, it is the best empirical study ever written on multiracial collaboration to address social inequality. Featuring careful and systematic analysis of rich data on local organizing, Dry Bones Rattling will be ancinfluential book and is must reading for those committed to revitalizing American democracy through interracial political cooperation."--William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

"Dry Bones Rattling is timely, important, and inspiring. Timely, because this study of the most successful faith-based movement for social justice in America appears just as faith-based social initiatives have reached the top of the national political agenda. Important, because it is a deeply grounded contribution to the rapidly growing field of social capital theory. Inspiring, because by showing how civic malaise has been reversed in some of the nation's most impoverished, ethnically divided settings, this book should raise the aspirations of democratic reformers. Must reading for social theorists and civic activists."--Robert Putnam, Harvard University, author of Making Democracy Work

"Mark Warren has written a comprehensive and insightful analysis of a profoundly important community-based movement. I have seen how the Industrial Areas Foundation organizations this book examines have revitalized communities across America, both physically and spiritually. In San Antonio, the city I know best, I watched Communities Organized for Public Service empower poor neighborhoods and give voice to their concerns. Capable new leaders emerged and the city entered a new era of citizen democracy. Dry Bones Rattling provides a compelling eyewitness account of the transformations these organizations bring, showing us a sacred force rooted in human dignity at work."--Henry Cisneros, Chairman and CEO of American CityVista

"Dry Bones Rattling is an important addition to the literature on community organizations, populist politics, and--more than anything--religion-based politics."--James Morone, Brown University

"Original scholarship built on strong ethnographic work, Warren's book is among the best of the outstanding scholarship on the dilemmas of American democracy that has emerged in recent years. As such it will be highly useful to specialists on grassroots movements and on the intersection of religion and politics in American life, as well as broadly useful to political scientists and political sociologists. This is excellent scholarly work on an important political phenomenon that until now has eluded adequate scholarly attention."--Richard L. Wood, University of New Mexico, author of Faith in Action

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

DRY BONES RATTLING

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface..............................................................................................ixIntroduction: Dry Bones Rattling.....................................................................31. Community Building and Political Renewal..........................................................152. A Theology of Organizing: From Alinskyto the Modern IAF...........................................403. Beyond Local Organizing: Statewide Power and a Regional Network...................................724. Bridging Communities across Racial Lines..........................................................985. Deepening Multiracial Collaboration...............................................................1246. Effective Power: Campaigning for Community-Based Policy Initiatives...............................1627. Congregational Bases for Political Action.........................................................1918. Leadership Development: Participation and Authority in Consensual Democracies.....................2119. Conclusion: Restoring Faith in Politics...........................................................239Notes................................................................................................265Index................................................................................................309

Chapter One

This chapter argues that the key to reinvigorating democracy in the United States can be found in efforts to engage people in politics through their participation in the stable institutions of community life. It draws from recent scholarly work on social capital to help us understand why a strong community foundation is necessary for a vibrant political life. Yet I argue that strong communities can often be isolated and politically weak. Or they can be narrowly protectionist, working against the interests of communities different from their own. Therefore, the chapter elaborates a framework for understanding the challenges to be faced in building social capital in a way that promotes multiracial cooperation and generates effective power in the political arena. The chapter then summarizes the key elements of the strategy developed by the IAF to meet these challenges, and ends with a discussion of how the network located alternative resources to generate civic and political participation at a time when other organizations found participation waning.

Social Capital and Democracy

American democracy has suffered during the last half of the twentieth century as our political institutions have become disconnected from strong community-based organizations, which, in turn, have weakened. Robert Putnam has shown that America's stock of social capital, that is, "features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit," has suffered a dramatic decline in the United States, weakening our democracy. Putnam has emphasized the decline of social capital in almost all forms of associational and group life. But I think we need to be particularly concerned with the decline of the more stable institutions of community life which used to play a particularly important role in sustaining an active democracy through connections to our political system.

Americans participated in politics at much higher levels when political parties served to connect people to government at least in part through community-based organizations. Parties used to compete to get people out to vote through their local branch organizations. A candidate's election depended upon the ability of the party's local branches to mobilize in neighborhoods and through a rich array of social and cultural organizations. This model of political mobilization reached its height in the late-nineteenth-century urban North, where parties fought highly competitive elections. As Michael McGerr has shown, local party organizations interpenetrated with a dense network of social organizations, like fraternal associations, volunteer fire departments, Catholic parishes, and local business associations. Political campaigns typically included marches and local fairs where bands played and people socialized. In the thirties labor unions became another organized institutional base for the expansion of democratic participation to immigrant workers. Through their unions, and through ties maintained by such institutions as churches, fraternal orders, and veteran's associations, workers made a significant impact on the Democratic Party, some of its urban political machines, and on the national political system.

Since the sixties, the connections between electoral politics and community institutions have frayed as elections have become candidate-centered, rather than party-centered, affairs. With the rise of television, candidates have had a means to reach the electorate without going through local party organizations. The expense of television advertising has forced candidates to rely upon fund-raising. To supplement big donors, direct mail technology has provided a means to collect money from citizens, again without going through party organizations. Consequently, while political parties still play an important role in elections as nominating and fundraising vehicles, their local party organizations have atrophied as mobilizing vehicles.

Along with political parties, America used to have a rich network of locally rooted, but nationally federated, organizations that also connected people to government. As Theda Skocpol has shown, organizations like the PTA and the American Legion played important roles in constructing some of America's most successful social policies, but have faced sharp declines recently. These community based institutions structured the engagement of people in political action around a range of issues. They represented a place where people could meet and develop relationships with each other out of which emerged a sense of common purpose and programmatic plans of action. Higher levels of federation allowed local chapters to influence state and federal policy. At the turn of the century, federations of locally rooted women's clubs (including the forerunner to the PTA) initiated and won passage of some of America's first social welfare legislation to protect mothers and their children, even at a time when women did not have the right to vote. The American Legion helped create the GI Bill.

By the early nineties, many Americans reported both that they felt the social fabric of their communities had seriously frayed and that they were alienated from our political system. Scholars of social capital have stressed the connection between these two phenomena. They point out that, historically, the United States has relied upon a rich tradition of civic life to support democracy, a connection first noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his study of nineteenth-century America. Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, came to the United States in the 1830s to determine why American society supported a democratic form of government while his native France was so easily controlled by a central political authority. The key to democracy in America, according to Tocqueville, could be found in a set of social and political institutions—voluntary associations, town meetings, a free press,...