Abstract
In this chapter, Widestrom investigates the relationship between residential economic segregation and civic and political engagement, focusing on highly segregated prosperous and impoverished communities. The chapter specifically argues for greater use of mixed-methods approaches when studying political behavior in the United States in order to move beyond large-scale surveyanalysis, which tends to dominate the field and also underrepresent the most disaffected in American political life. When she does this, the author finds that residential economic segregation affects the stability of families and communities, the social and economic assets of communities, and the mobilizing capacity of organizations within communities, all of which contribute to declining levels of civic engagement and voting in segregated, impoverished communities and higher levels of engagement and voting in segregated prosperous ones. A mixed-methods approach allows the author to highlight all the ways that civic/political participation is not just an individual act, but a communal one as well.
This chapter is largely drawn from the book, Displacing Democracy: Economic Segregation in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), by Amy Widestrom.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This database, originally developed as the Urban Underclass Database by the Urban Institute, has been updated to the year 2000 and is now distributed by GeoLytics, Inc. See Urban Institute, and GeoLytics, Neighborhood Change Database, CensusCD neighborhood change database (NCDB) (electronic resource): 1970–2000 tract data: selected variables for US CTs for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. Using CTs as a proxy for “neighborhoods” is an imperfect but necessary accommodation for a couple of reasons. While certainly a neighborhood is more than a geographic boundary—it is a sense of community, a physical space, a place that residents identify psychologically and emotionally—this complex notion is difficult to systematically operationalize. It is common, therefore, in studies of neighborhoods to use CTs as proxies for neighborhoods because CTs are “small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county,” usually having between 1000 and 8000 residents, though 4000 is considered optimal, and, when first drawn, are designed to be relatively stable and homogeneous regarding population characteristics, income status, and living conditions (U.S. Census Bureau 2001). This initial, and often contemporary homogeneity, captures some of the qualitative elements of neighborhood we are seeking to explore here, and given few other options, CTs offer the best way to proceed in any neighborhood-level study. Therefore, in the examination here, we will use “neighborhood” and “census tract” interchangeably.
- 2.
The case-study neighborhoods selected here are within large urban areas, but the calculation of the isolation and dissimilarity indexes is at the county level.
- 3.
The number of people below the poverty line for each neighborhood is calculated in the NCDB. The Urban Institute and GeoLytics calculated this by summing the total number of individuals and individuals in families below the poverty line. The federal poverty lines for families of four in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 were $3968, $8414, $13,359, and $17,604, respectively. The federal poverty lines for individuals in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 were $1954, $4190, $6652, and $8791, respectively. Each dollar amount is adjusted from 1959 dollars to reflect its value in that year.
- 4.
The average poverty rate in the average US CT was 11 percent in 1970 and 1980, and 13 percent in 1990 and 2000. Throughout the text a “high-poverty” CT is defined as one that has a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher, as is common in the literature (see Jargowsky 1997).
- 5.
This excludes the consideration of Cook County, which is home to Chicago. I deliberately chose not to use Chicago as a case study because of the complexity of racial and economic segregation in the city and the fact that it is such a high-profile city that warrants a deeper analysis of this case in light of the findings here. In short, the complexity and prominence of Chicago make it difficult to compare with other cases. The same is true of other potential options for case-study cities, including Los Angeles, CA, and Washington, DC.
- 6.
In all analyses, and in the case-study selection process, I only used census tracts that had been established in 1970 or before, that had either not changed or had changed in name only, and that had populations of 200 or more in 2000. Table 5.1 contains other interesting case-study options for analysis: Chicago (Cook County), Washington, DC, and Boston (Suffolk County). San Diego or even Los Angeles would have been reasonable choices as well. However, in many ways the politics of these cities have been well covered and in some cases the scope (San Diego or Los Angeles) or the politics (Washington, DC) of the city might complicate the research design. My aim here was to identify the best case studies allowing for geographic and racial variance. However, these other cases could be used in a confirmatory analysis of the findings offered here.
- 7.
The terms “impoverished” and “prosperous” are used here not only to evoke the economic consequences of increasing poverty or wealth within a neighborhood but to draw attention to broader political and social consequences as well.
- 8.
It is important to note that this means that the explanatory variables of interest do vary to some degree; this is a challenge of doing this type of qualitative work. However, carefully structuring interviews and reviewing similar types of historical and archived documents within each case allow for the researcher to see when variation emerges and incorporate that variance into the type of thick description on which this kind of study relies. Additionally, quantitative data that would provide some control for variance across these cases simply do not exist.
- 9.
As said, in Atlanta, both the prosperous and impoverished neighborhoods are nearly 100 percent African American in 2000, while in Rochester, the impoverished community was 66 percent African American and 33 percent Hispanic in 2000 and just 6 percent African American or Hispanic in the prosperous counterpart. This means that if similar civic and political trends emerge across similar economic contexts, whatever the racial or ethnic composition, we can say something specific about the effects of economic contexts separate and distinct from racial context. This is not to suggest that race is entirely removed as a factor that contributes to the shaping of a civic environment, but to note that if similarities in civic and political mobilization and voting behavior can be determined across the case studies presented here, it seems as though economic factors may be more important than previously appreciated by scholars.
- 10.
The real added value of Goertz and Mahoney’s work is to clearly articulate the different “cultures” of quantitative and qualitative research, and to try to facilitate communication between these two camps, who are often disdainful of the other’s work; quantitative scholars see qualitative scholars as lacking rigor, while qualitative scholars see quantitative scholars as bean counters with little say about the processes and/or contexts that drive their results. In A Tale of Two Cultures, Goertz and Mahoney are trying further understanding of each type of research highlighting that the difference between these two approaches to research is simply about data—it is not that quantitative scholars use hard data and qualitative scholars use case studies, interviews, archival research, and so on. Rather, the difference between these two approaches rests on a fundamental logic of research. Fundamentally, the authors “reject the assumption that a single logic of inference founded on statistical norms guides both quantitative and qualitative research.” Instead, the authors argue that “the two traditions are best understood as drawing in alternative mathematical foundations: quantitative research is grounded in interferential statistics (i.e. probability and statistical theory), whereas qualitative research is (often implicitly) rooted in logic and set theory” (Goertz and Mahoney 2012, 2.).
- 11.
One of the main concerns about case-study selection is “selection bias,” which is generally understood to occur when the investigator selects cases based on the dependent variable (i.e., in studying revolutions, the researchers select cases in which only revolutions occur), which leads to underestimating the effects of the independent variables. What George and Bennett are arguing here is that there are actually much greater risk and more dire consequences of a researcher selecting based on both the dependent and independent variables, which could lead to either understating or overstating relationships. This is why the authors articulate six types of theory-building research and urge researchers to clearly identify which will be the guiding logic of their case-study selection.
- 12.
Remember, the CTs I chose for this study have not changed their boundaries from 1970 to the present, so I did not need to account for changes in the CTs examined here. One critique of this choice might be that it introduces bias into the findings presented because this selection criterion may favor finding increased segregation of poverty because older CTs may be more likely to be located in urban centers, have aging housing stock, and so on. This, however, is not the case. As the maps in my work showed, and the wealthy case-study neighborhoods exemplify, most cities have very wealthy neighborhoods characterized by stable CT boundaries, but none of the urban blight plaguing other parts of the city. As a result, selecting CTs that have not changed simply provides a way to control neighborhood boundaries over time and nothing more.
- 13.
In many cases, this interdecade redistricting did not alter the way in which I calculated voter turnout because it was minimal enough or did not affect the specific EDs analyzed. However, I did locate all maps in order to determine what, if any, changes had been made to the EDs of interest.
- 14.
In some cases, boundaries followed CTs closely enough that percentages of EDs were not required to calculate turnout.
- 15.
Refer to Appendix A in Displacing Democracy (Widestrom 2015) for border/CT calculations and more information on the ways I sought to address this problem.
- 16.
When thinking about voter turnout, it is important to keep in mind that the US Constitution leaves the regulation of voting and elections largely to the states, which means that individual states decide voter eligibility. For example, only 2 states have unrestricted voting rights for convicted felons, whereas 12 states have laws that could result in permanent loss of voting rights depending on the felony conviction. Moreover, while there are no states that allow non-citizens to vote, the number of non-citizens within each state varies greatly. This means that the population eligible to vote in any given election can vary widely from state to state, which is why the traditional measure of VAP tends to be biased toward lower turnout rates; the denominator is bigger than it should be when calculating turnout. “In the case of the states, this bias is much greater for those states with harsher felon disenfranchisement laws and with large non-citizen populations” (see Holbrook and Heidbreder 2010).
- 17.
These scholars argue that VAP and VEP are substantially different because the VEP includes only those eligible to vote, removing from the equation non-citizens, convicted felons, and the like. This lowers the total population able to vote when compared to the VAP, or all people over the age of 18, thereby increasing turnout rates; the percentage of the VEP that votes is higher than the percentage of the VAP that votes, 54.2 percent to 50 percent, respectively, in 2000, for example. See McDonald and Popkin 2001, 963; Michal McDonald, http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm, accessed on July 24, 2013.
- 18.
To calculate VAP, I used population data from the Census of Population and Housing: Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas from 1970, 1980, and 1990 for each of the case-study CTs. For the year 2000, I used the American FactFinder application, available through the website of the US Census Bureau. These data provided the total population for each CT from which I subtracted the population under 21 for years prior to 1972 and under 18 for 1972 and later. I used linear interpolation to calculate the VAP for the intercensus years.
- 19.
Blackwell wrote about the anticipated low turnout of low-income citizens in the 1976 elections in which he cited Eddie N. Williams, the then president of the Joint Center for Political Studies (now the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies). In this article, Williams is quoted as saying, “[t]hey are casting doubt on their continuing commitment to self-determination and to use every available means, including politics, to achieve their goals and aspirations … To practice political abstinence is to commit political suicide.”
References
Abramson, Alan J., Mitchell S. Tobin, and Matthew R. VanderGoot. 1995. The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Opportunity: The Segregation of the Poor in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1970–1990. Housing Policy Debate 6 (1): 24–72.
Anderson, Elijah. 1992. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Bartels, Larry M. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Beauregard, Robert A. 2003. Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. New York: Routledge.
Blackwell, Edward. 1976. In the Inner City. The Milwaukee Journal, November 2.
Burtless, Gary. 1999. Growing American Inequality: Sources and Remedies. In Setting National Priorities: The 2000 Election and Beyond, ed. Henry J. Aaron and Robert D. Reischauer, 137–166. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Campbell, David E. 2006. Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shaper Our Civic Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Darden, Joe T. 1987. Detroit: Race and Uneven Development. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Dawson, Michael C. 1995. Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fenno, Richard F. 1978. Home Style: House Members and Their Districts. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Frazier, John W., Florence M. Margai, and Eugene Tettey-Fio. 2003. Race and Place: Equity Issues in Urban America. Boulder: Westview Press.
George, Alexander L., and Andrew Bennett. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Glaser, James M. 1994. Back to the Black Belt: Racial Environment and White Racial Attitudes in the South. The Journal of Politics 56 (1): 21–41.
Goertz, Gary, and James Mahoney. 2012. A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Holbrook, Thomas, and Brianne Heidbreder. 2010. Does Measurement Matter? The Case of VAP and VEP in Models of Voter Turnout in the United States. State Politics & Policy 10 (2): 157–179.
Hood, M.V., III, and Irwin L. Morris. 2000. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? Racial/Ethnic Context and the Anglo Vote on Proposition 187. Social Science Quarterly 81 (1): 194–210.
Huckfeldt, Robert H., and John Sprague. 1987. Networks in Context: The Social Flow of Political Information. The American Political Science Review 81 (4): 1197–1216.
———. 1992. Political Parties and Electoral Mobilization: Political Structure, Social Structure, and the Party Canvass. The American Political Science Review 86 (1): 70–86.
Jargowsky, Paul. 1997. Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation.
Key, V.O. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Kneebone, Elizabeth, Carey Nadeau, and Alan Berube. 2011. The Re-emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000s, The Metropolitan Opportunity Series. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1988. The Dimensions of Residential Segregation. Social Forces 67 (2): 281–315.
———. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McDonald, Michael P., and Samuel L. Popkin. 2001. The Myth of the Vanishing Voter. The American Political Science Review 95 (4): 963–974.
Oliver, J. Eric. 1999. The Effects of Metropolitan Economic Segregation on Local Civic Participation. American Journal of Political Science 43 (1): 186–212.
Oliver, J. Eric, and Janelle Wong. 2003. Intergroup Prejudice in Multiethnic Settings. American Journal of Political Science 47 (4): 567–582.
Pierson, Paul, and Jacob S. Hacker. 2010. Winner-Take-All-Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Quillian, Lincoln. 1999. Migration Patterns and the Growth of High-Poverty Neighborhoods, 1970–1990. The American Journal of Sociology 105 (1): 1–37.
Rosenstone, Steven J., and John M. Hansen. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan.
Schneider, Mark, and Thomas Phelan. 1993. Black Suburbanization in the 1980s. Demography 30 (2): 269–279.
Sigelman, Lee, and S. Welch. 1993. The Contact Hypothesis Revisited: Interracial Contact and Positive Racial Attitudes. Social Forces 71 (3): 781–795.
Sugrue, Thomas J. 2005. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Taylor, Marylee C. 1998. How White Attitudes Vary with the Racial Composition of Local Populations: Numbers Count. American Sociological Review 63: 512–535.
Teixeira, Ruy. 1992. The Disappearing American Voter. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Tolnay, Stewart E., Robert M. Adelman, and Kyle D. Crowder. 2002. Race, Regional Origin, and Residence in Northern Cities at the Beginning of the Great Migration. American Sociological Review 67: 456–457.
U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration Office of Planning, Environment & Reality. 2000. Census 2000 Population Statistics.
United States Census Bureau. 2001. Census Bureau Touts New Data Delivery System, press release.
Van Evera, Stephen. 1997. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Ithica: Cornell University Press.
Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Watson, Tara. 2006. Metropolitan Growth, Inequality, and Neighborhood Segregation by Income. In Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs: 2006, ed. Gary Burtless and Janet Rothenberg Pack, 1–52. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
———. 2009. Inequality and the Measurement of Residential Segregation by Income in American Neighborhoods. Review of Income and Wealth 55 (3): 820–844.
Western, Bruce, Deirdre Bloome, and Christine Percheski. 2008. Inequality Among American Families with Children, 1975 to 2005. American Sociological Review 73: 903–920.
Widestrom, Amy. 2015. Displacing Democracy: Economic Segregation in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wolff, Edward N. 2002. Top Heavy: The Increasing Inequality of Wealth and What We Can Do About It. New York: The New Press.
Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Steven J. Rosenstone. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Widestrom, A. (2018). Combating Modeling “at the Expense of Relevance”: Moving the Study of Political Behavior Past Large-n Survey Analysis in American Politics. In: Kachuyevski, A., Samuel, L. (eds) Doing Qualitative Research in Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72230-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72230-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72229-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72230-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)