Obstacles to collective action in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods : toward a radical planning theory of community crime prevention
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines the capacity of socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods to collectively mobilize around a significant local problem, in this case crime. The problem addressed is the inability of community crime prevention (CCP) programs to promote a broadly based mobilization of residents in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This study advances CCP scholarship by identifying and critically examining the obstacles that impede the mobilization of poor neighbourhoods around crime prevention. Based upon primary research conducted in a poor inner-city Vancouver neighbourhood, this study reveals that CCP programs have been unable to initiate and sustain a broadly based mobilization of local residents, despite a widespread concern over crime. The findings of this study reveal myriad factors that obstruct a mobilization of Mount Pleasant residents. These obstacles can be discerned at three levels: the community, the organizational and the structural. Obstacles at the community level can be identified by examining the demographic and sociopsychological factors related to non-participation, such as socioeconomic status, race, tenure of residence, social integration, and community cohesion. Organizational obstacles stem from the deficiencies of crime prevention groups and activities in promoting collective action, including inappropriate and ineffectual community outreach. Obstacles to collective action are rooted in the dominant institutions and ideologies of advanced western societies: individualism, the liberal political economy, the dominance of the state in social control, and technical approaches to local social problem solving. The iiiobstacles at the three levels are not mutually exclusive, but critically interconnected. A finding of the study is that the application of traditional CCP theory has failed to incite a broadly based mobilization of Mount Pleasant residents because of epistemological shortcomings, erroneous assumptions, and a lack of attention to processes essential to CCP. To overcome the obstacles, this study reconceptualizes CCP, emphasizing strategies that empower poor neighbourhoods. First, CCP is reconceptualized as a social movement so that its collective action processes can be isolated and the obstacles to a broadly based mobilization better understood. Second, CCP is imbued with radical planning theories that provide normative process-oriented strategies missing from traditional CCP theory, including: social mobilization, social learning, undistorted communication, and decentralized decision-making and control.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".