Free Sample Essays > North American
Looking at Hoop Dreams and Wilson’s Novel, When Work Disappears
In William Julius Wilson’s book When Work Disappears, we learn about the qualities of the inner-city community from firsthand accounts, statistical evidence and social theory. Throughout the book, examples are given of poverty, inequality and ‘ghetto related behavior’ that helps to preserve a cycle of disorganization preventing any development or progress for those residents in the workplace. When you look at the structural implications, you have to think of the ghetto, where there exists therein a less than affluent, but large population of minorities that are fairly concentrated within their own segregated groups. Living conditions are hampered by both a formidable level of crime and a shortage of decent, affordable housing, usually made worse by unemployment and a lack of education towards family planning.
Dealing with structure, you must also consider the amount and availability of resources in a given community, where, in a ghetto, the resources are very much limited. ‘Resources’ is a broad term that covers a variety of necessary components in a community that allow for it to function correctly. Even with such facilities and services for education, health and employment, organization is a necessary element that makes cause for progress. Wilson supports this idea in the third chapter saying that disorganization is a “form of social isolation that operates in the inner-city black neighborhood as a result of the lack of access to resources provided by stable working residents”. He later goes on to mention specific important resources within a given community, including informal job networks, which he regards as being crucial to development.
Social Disorganization Theory tells us that organization comes from interaction between individuals and groups that share norms and values while maintaining a place where people within the community can gather. The results of community organization include social control, solidarity and increased networks. With control and solidarity comes an increased sense of awareness, where people care and look out for one another, while bonding more and more. However, many factors make this type of organization unlikely, and this can be seen in the incomplete structure of an inner-city ghetto. Whether it be a lack of a safe meeting place or simply a fear of leaving your home, prejudice and overall deficiencies in status can make cause for a lack of potential in a given community.
Cultural implications are equally as important as the structural, and when dealing with the inner-city, culture has a tendency to be associated with race. In the introduction, Wilson claims that “Race, which reflects both an individual’s position (in the sense of social status defined by skin color) and network of relationships in society, is a social structural variable”. I find Wilson to be saying that the cultural aspects of a given community are flexible (a ‘variable’), but while related to structural characteristics, they can and will remain rigid without any outlet for change through opportunity. A given person’s disposition and ethnicity can definitely hinder their ability to [next page]