Future Projects

1. Stapleton urban redevelopment
I am continuing work on project analyzing the development of a new, large, urban community in Denver, which I consider to be a remarkable example of an "institutionalized movement." This is a social change effort promoted by quintessential insiders among the foundation, development, city government, and education elite of Denver, and it provides a venue for asking such questions as, How do elite-sponsored social change efforts differ from grassroots efforts aimed at creating housing equity and diversity? To what degree can non-profit foundations and community organization boards wield power with their for-profit development allies? Can movements that come from "within" an institution change the field?

2. Transitional Housing
I am working on a new project that examines poverty, educational processes, and organizational structures and cultures at a "transitional housing" site called Warren Village in Denver, Colorado. This HUD-subsidized, non-profit organization is a service-enriched residential program that provides two years of housing, child care, and family case management services to 93 self-identified "motivated" homeless single parents and their families who are seeking to be "self-sufficient."

In the first of two concentrated phases of field work, I have collected interview, ethnographic, and archival data at this site with three units of analysis in mind: the micro level-individual residents' experiences of poverty, mediated by the organization's (Warren Village's) interventions; the meso level-the establishment and maintenance of the organization's structures and cultures; and the macro level-how the organization fits into the wider public policy environment.

The first analytical work that I am doing on this project is to examine educational settings and educational ideologies at Warren Village as "cases" of organizational decision-making, and to study how this intermediary non-profit organization refracts bureaucratic welfare state policies into its educational practices (such as TANF priorities on "work first," rather than continued education).

The second major work on the project will be to explore the organization's ongoing efforts with a few others in its institutional sector to create a movement for transitional housing. This second part of the study places me at the center of a new body of work seeking to synthesize organizational and social movements scholarship around the concept of "field," making it a fitting follow-up to my 2002 book entitled "Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools" (Princeton University Press 2002). At the substantive level, I also hope to provide a description of a little-studied organizational form that influences poor people's lives. While on NAE/Spencer leave in Spring 2004, I will finish collecting and analyzing data and will begin writing the book manuscript.