In this article, we compare two nationally recognized museums located in Chicago and Boston: The Art Institute of Chicago and the Boston Fine Arts Museum. We find that while both museums are colonial projects and White sanctuaries, there are variations in the racial mechanisms in place that help maintain White supremacy. Specifically, we look at three such mechanisms and compare and contrast between the two museums. We contend our findings suggest that while White supremacy is universal in its national (global) depth and breath, place matters. We argue that the physical context of the museums—their location within each city, the lay out of their locations, and the physical space of the museums themselves—help explain this variation. We end with specific implications for our work, centering on how we might dismantle current ideas of high culture (read: White) in favor of museums that are more inclusive, recognize their colonial project histories, and have antiracism in their mission as socially responsible institutions for the cities in which they reside and the people who reside there.

Purpose This paper examines the Art Institute of Chicago – a nationally recognized museum – as a white sanctuary, i.e., a white institutional space within a racialized social system that serves to reassure whites of their dominant position in society. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how museums create and maintain white spaces within the greater context of being an institution for the general public. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis of this study is based on collaborative ethnographic data collected over a three-year period of time conducted by the first two authors, and consists of hundreds of photos and hundreds of hours of participant observations and field notes. The data are analyzed using descriptive methods and content analyses. Findings The findings highlight three specific racial mechanisms that speak to how white spaces are created, recreated and maintained within nationally and internationally elite museums: spatiality, the policing of space, and the management of access. Research limitations/implications Sociological research on how white spaces are maintained in racialized organizations is limited. This paper extends to museums’ institutional role in maintaining white supremacy, as white sanctuaries. Originality/value This paper adds to the existing literature on race, place and space by highlighting three specific racial mechanisms in museum institutions that help to maintain white supremacy, white normality(ies), and serve to facilitate a reassurance to whites’ anxieties, fears and fragilities about their group position in society – that which helps to preserve their psychological wages of whiteness in safe white spaces.

This article examines how neighborhood disadvantage affects neighborhood collective action. Neither the urban poverty literature nor the collective action literature has adequately examined how poverty would affect neighborhood level collective action on their own. I seek to bridge these two literatures to examine how collective action operates in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Though the existing literature would argue that increased social disorganization due to depopulation, social isolation, and hyper-segregation would result in decreased collective action, I argue that other neighborhood characteristics may offset the lack of resources' and organization' available to disadvantaged communities. I use the Chicago Tribune from 1970 to 1990 to create a data set of neighborhood-level protest events. Using random effects negative binomial regression, I show that while disadvantage does indeed negatively impact mobilization, factors such as the racial composition of the neighborhood, organizational density, and prior mobilization rates can offset the impact of increasing neighborhood disadvantage.

The Central San Joaquin Valley, the agricultural heart of California (and the nation), is among the areas hardest hit by the latest economic downturn, and it stands on the leading edge of the foreclosure crisis. The downturns in construction caused by the recession, combined with limited employment opportunities in this region, led to skyrocketing unemployment rates. According to US Department of Labor estimates, nine of the 10 worst cities in terms of unemployment were in the San Joaquin Valley--including our three urban research sites of Fresno, Merced, and Stockton (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012). To this point, sociologists have failed to examine how foreclosures affect collective efficacy and civic engagement. In this article, we seek to fill this gap by applying Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earl's (1997) concept of collective efficacy to the study of two communities, one urban and one rural, in California's Central San Joaquin Valley. In their pioneering research on neighborhood dynamics in Chicago, Sampson et al. (1997, 918) argue that collective efficacy is the common intent to reduce the existing problems within a neighborhood. Since neighborhood collective efficacy is dependent on social cohesion and social control, these factors are crucial indicators of how foreclosures affect neighborhoods. Social cohesion is defined as the ability of neighbors to coexist and work well together. Social control is defined as the ability of neighbors to work together to prevent and solve problems within their community. To this point, much of our knowledge about this topic comes from anecdotal stories and news reports that suggest that neighborhood foreclosures cause a strain in neighborhood efficacy. The moving in and out of families disrupts the order of the neighborhood, causing relationships to be less stable than in neighborhoods where foreclosures are not as common. What Sampson et al. (1997) show is that increased neighborhood cohesion is associated with positive outcomes as well as fewer social dislocations. The greater the level of social cohesion within a neighborhood, and the greater overall social control, the better able a neighborhood is to ameliorate negative outcomes such as violence. For example, if a neighborhood has high cohesion, there is likely to be a greater sense of trust among its residents. In order to retain this trust, neighbors are more likely to exercise behaviors that reaffirm this belief and work together to prevent disruptions of trust (such as violence). Therefore, individuals are more likely to intervene in situations in which the common good of the neighborhood is threatened. Greater collective efficacy was positively associated in the study with higher socioeconomic status, homeownership, and older age. This reaffirms the association between residential stability on the one hand and neighborhood cohesion and social control (and therefore collective efficacy) on the other. Foreclosures interrupt this stability and negatively affect the lives of the people within the neighborhood. Sampson, Morenoff, and Earls (1999) show that diminished social control leaves the neighborhood more vulnerable to crime, or at least causes individuals to feel less safe. Empty houses within neighborhoods seem to decrease safety because they serve as an outlet for gangs, the homeless, drug addicts, and teenagers. Furthermore, when houses are empty for extended periods of time, they may become less presentable, lowering market values and discouraging potential new neighbors from entering the area. Again, this could result in less social cohesion since the neighborhood's population is shrinking, but the likelihood of crime is growing. Other scholars have used the concept of collective efficacy to study a variety of topics. For example, Browning and Cagney (2002) show that collective efficacy can be (along with financial stability) an indicator of the capacity of local schools to affect educational outcomes. …

The associations among sugar‐sweetened beverage consumption (water, milk, juice and soft drinks) with regards to body mass in Hispanics in rural areas are not well examined. Surveys collected self‐reported data on daily beverage consumption and related to direct measures of BMI from non‐Hispanic white (312 males, 301 females) and Hispanic (671 males, 610 females) adolescents (13– 17 years old.) On average, 49% of overweight and obese adolescents, regardless of race and gender, drank more water than their normal weight counterparts. 61% of normal weight non‐ Hispanic white females reported consuming more soft drinks per day than their obese and overweight counterparts regardless of race. Furthermore, 46% of normal weight and overweight Hispanic males drank more juice per day than white males. The lack of higher SSB consumption in overweight and obese adolescents suggests that either SSB consumption is not a principal cause of their increased weight or that most of these adolescents are beginning to reduce their intake to address their weight issues. The higher SSB consumption in normal weight females is alarming because we have reported reduced physical activity levels in this group, and thus, suggests that this group is susceptible to weight gain and increasing the prevalence of overweight and obesity in this population of adolescents, further burdening the epidemic that plagues the United States.Grant Funding Source: United States Department of Agriculture

Childhood ObesityVol. 7, No. 3 Reduced Physical Activity Levels Associated with Obesity in Rural Hispanic Adolescent FemalesRuben Rodriguez, Simón E. Weffer, Jessica Romo, April Aleman, and Rudy M. OrtizRuben RodriguezSearch for more papers by this author, Simón E. WefferSearch for more papers by this author, Jessica RomoSearch for more papers by this author, April AlemanSearch for more papers by this author, and Rudy M. OrtizSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:20 Jun 2011https://doi.org/10.1089/chi.2011.0007AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byDeveloping Adaptando Dieta Y Acción Para Todos (ADAPT): An Intervention to Improve Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Among Latino Parents and Children Living in Rural Communities12 June 2020 | Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, Vol. 23, No. 1Design and rationale for ADAPT+: Optimizing an intervention to promote healthy behaviors in rural, Latino youth with obesity and their parents, using mindfulness strategiesContemporary Clinical Trials, Vol. 101A Community-Based Participatory Assessment of the Health Status and Obesity Risks in Children From Rural Farmworker Families in the Midwest22 April 2019 | Hispanic Health Care International, Vol. 17, No. 4Dietary, Physical Activity, and Sedentary Behaviors Associated With Percent Body Fat in Rural Hispanic YouthJournal of Pediatric Health Care, Vol. 28, No. 1 Volume 7Issue 3Jun 2011 Information©2011 by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:Ruben Rodriguez, Simón E. Weffer, Jessica Romo, April Aleman, and Rudy M. Ortiz.Reduced Physical Activity Levels Associated with Obesity in Rural Hispanic Adolescent Females.Childhood Obesity.Jun 2011.194-205.http://doi.org/10.1089/chi.2011.0007Published in Volume: 7 Issue 3: June 20, 2011PDF download

A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and elevated systolic blood pressure (SBP) in ethnically diverse adolescents (1064 males; 974 females; 13-17 years) in a rural community. Prevalence of overweight was 20.4% in females and 17.5% in males. In contrast, the prevalence of obesity was 29.4% in males and 14.5% in females. African American males had the highest prevalence of obesity (33.3%) compared with non-Hispanic whites (26.3%). Prevalence of elevated SBP was higher than pre-elevated SBP in males regardless of race/ethnicity, but not in females. Obese females had 4-fold and 9-fold greater odds of developing pre-elevated SBP and elevated SBP, respectively, than their normal weight cohorts. Prevalence of obesity is almost twice that of overweight in males in our rural population suggesting that adolescent males from disadvantaged, rural populations are potentially at a greater risk for metabolic disorders than those in major metropolitan areas.

How can social indicator research improve understanding of community health as well as inform stakeholders about the assets disadvantaged communities have for coping with disparities? This paper describes the development and evolution of the Partnership for Assessment of Communities (PAC) and its best practices for social indicator research. The PAC will be of interest to researchers across multiple disciplines for a number of reasons. First, PAC is a working model of best practices for multidisciplinary scholarly inquiry. Second, it has developed an integrated model of quantitative and qualitative methodology to define and measure community health as compared to traditional quality-of-life indicators. Third, it serves as an example of “action research,” in that the findings have the potential to make an impact on community stakeholders and policy outcomes in the greater Central San Joaquin Valley of California, a region characterized by deep social and economic disparities.

We argue that the disproportionate attention accorded the struggles of the sixties has created a stylized image of social movements that threatens to distort our understanding of popular contention, not only in earlier periods and in nondemocratic contexts, but also in the contemporary US. This stylized view tends to equate movements with (a) disruptive protest in public settings, (b) loosely coordinated national struggles over political issues, (c) urban and/or campus based protest activities, and (d) claim making by disadvantaged minorities. Drawing on a larger study of trends and patterns in collective civic engagement in metropolitan Chicago, we employ new data on some 1, 000 protest events between 1970 to 2000 to assess these four stylized views and address a number of related questions. The data do not support the common imagery of social movements-since 1980 there has been a marked transformation of the movement form to the point where public protest is now largely peaceful, routine, suburban, local in nature, and initiated by the advantaged We discuss the implications of these findings for the rise of a "movement society" in the U.S. and suggest directions for future research.