An interesting visit to a community center

I had an interesting experience on Saturday night. I was consulting with a woman who has started a community center in north central Houston and I was quite impressed by what she has pulled together. Go to http://aldineyouth.org/index.html and http://aldineyouth.org/html/history.html and have a look at the website for the Aldine Y.O.U.T.H. (Youth Organization United to Help) Center.

I called Sylvia at 7:30pm Saturday when I became available to meet and she came straight from a her previous engagement to meet with me (for over and hour and one-half) to discuss funding for a soccer program at her community center. I was pretty much awed by her energy and apparent commitment, but not surprised, as we had talked once or twice on the phone previously.

I was particularly interested in one aspect of her definition of community and want to share it with you. While most of the definitional components are familiar to us, she insisted on the importance of a limited geographical range (see website) for a couple of reasons. First, she didn't want to serve so many people that her clients became numbers and for whom she could only serve as a referral service. This is a "one stop shop." She wants kids to prepare themselves for adulthood through a variety of interactions, including business training. As she said, other people need to develop facilities in adjoining areas. She wants to do her piece of community development well and keep it going.


She noted that when people are referred out to services, they often elect not to participate because they don't want (or struggle) to travel. She is in the business of building relationships through which kids can develop and meet a range of needs. At present, Sylvia is working to obtain matching funding for facilities development. Have a look at her website and I will be open for conversation about this on Wednesday.
Ken

Glad to be here

Hello fellow classmates.

Sorry it took so long. The last couple of weeks have been crazy. I am just about ready to begin the semester. Hmmmm... was that the sound of the bus already having left the station!!??



I have been working on linking an individual level of human behavior [(perception control theory by William Powers (1973 - Behavior: the control of perception] with sociological theories for quite some time. Perhaps I will have a chance in this class. I want to do this because I think explicit connections will make social theory stronger and better able to explain what is happening with people. Some social theories are often based on weak models of human behavior that assume logical thought as the basis for action. I am not too sure about this. Observations of my own chocolcate chip cookie eating behavior in the face of knowledge of what sweets can do to you serves as a pretty good counterfactual.



So perception control provides a mechanistic explanation of human behavior that suits me pretty well. I use this theory as a lense when I enter new research contexts. I think it works pretty well for that purpose. Last winter I developed some individual level theory of resilience based on this theory and I was able to figure out a link into social theory. I have not followed this on to the organizational level theorizing, but I suspect that the connections are there because self organizaing systems thinking (of which perception control is one example) is pretty common in organizational research. Maybe that is the next frontier for my idle time theorizing (and work in this course).

If I can figure out how to do it, I will post a power point that I used in my conference presentation.