Since the end of the civil rights era in the sixties it has become increasingly clear that social and political conflicts cannot be resolved entirely at the national level. Struggles between residents of poor neighborhoods and local interest groups or public authorities present some of our most explosive domestic political problems today. This study seeks insight into these problems through an analysis of efforts during the sixties to organize the poor to pursue their interests in local decision-making processes. David J. O'Brien holds that both organizers and scholarly observers of the grass-roots movement have failed to understand properly the process by which interest groups are formed. Arguing that the demise of neighborhood organization cannot be attributed to supposedly unique social, psychological, or cultural characteristics of the poor, he develops an analytical framework that emphasizes the strategic role of incentives and organizational resource problems. This framework helps explain not only the failure of organizers in the sixties to grasp the problems of interest group formation, but also the assumptions that prevented them from identifying the source of their frustration. The author assesses the different approaches that have been taken to neighborhood organization, and outlines a model for future efforts. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Description: Rural Reform in Post-Soviet Russia reviews change in agricultural and rural life since 1990 through historical, political, sociological, and anthropological investigation. The contributors' interest is not so much in agriculture itself but in agrarian issues such as the relationship between rural interests and changing Russian institutions, the economic and social organization of rural households, and the quality of life in rural families and villages...read more

Product Description: Using micro-level data, this text shows that rural Russian households have made significant adaptations to an emerging market economy in just a few years. It focuses on how household capital (household labour, social networks and comunity attachment) effect the economic and psychological adaptation of households to rapid socioeconomic change...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This book examines rural households' use of and views toward different types of services during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the market economy. Using data from 1991 and 1993 household surveys in two rural villages, one in southern Russia and the other in eastern Ukraine, the researchers describe how rural residents viewed the transition from state, mainly kolkhoz (collective farm), monopolies on the provision of retail food and consumer goods, health, housing, education, and communications/transportation, to the beginning of mixed public and private service provision...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by O'Brien, David J.

Product Description: In the wake of Vatican II and the social revolutions in modern America, Catholic colleges and universities are now groping for a sense of identity and mission. In the past, these institutions provided a haven and anchor for the sons and daughters of an immigrant church...read more

Product Description: This is the first full-length comprehensive biography of Isaac Hecker -- mystic, priest, journalist, and missionary -- and the most important person in nineteenth- century U.S. Catholicism.

Product Description: Book by

Product Description: "Slim, well-researched, and readable, this is not only a social history of an ethnic community but a gateway into the ancient psyche of the Japanese." —The San Francisco Review of Books"... straightforward... informative... " —Contemporary Sociology"The Japanese American Experience...read more

Product Description: Why do some groups retain their ethnicity as they become assimilated into mainstream American life while others do not? This study employs both historical sources and contemporary survey data to explain the seeming paradox of why Japanese Americans have maintained high levels of ethnic community involvement while becoming structurally assimilated...read more