Streetwise for book smarts : culture, community organizing, and education reform in the Bronx

Abstract

Education organizing groups that have similar goals frequently employ divergent political strategies in their campaigns. In the literature on social movement organizations, such differences are usually attributed to variations in political context, or variations in resources. This dissertation builds on currently dominant social movement theories by investigating how cultural norms inside organizations also contribute to distinct types of political strategies. Specifically, it utilizes archival, direct observation, and interview data on five education organizing groups in the Bronx to explore the role of cultural norms, usually manifest in the form of rules of membership, activities, and protocols. All of the case study organizations have been engaging in grassroots political campaigns for similar goals in local school reform and funding increases in the South Bronx. The analysis contrasts the categories of Alinsky- and of Freire-derived norms inside these organizations, which, when applied, are more akin to cumulatively developed cultural tool kits than coherently formed, whole "cultures." The dissertation carefully delineates the key characteristics of the two categories. For example, the Freirian category is marked by leadership development that emphasizes the organizer as a partner rather than as a traditional teacher, rituals that focus on the individual member rather than the organization as a whole, and activities that tend to be unrelated to political campaigns at least at first glance. The two categories' respective cultural tool kits, in turn, are associated with differing capacities and preferences that emphasize certain political strategies over others.

(cont.) Through their cultural tool kits, the case study organizations attempt to mitigate three crucial tensions in their political strategies: the balance between pursuing collaborative strategies versus pursuing confrontational ones, the balance between focusing on strategies that aim for policy adoption versus ones that aim for policy formulation, and the balance between explicitly addressing issues of race in political campaigns versus building broad-based constituencies, sometimes at the expense of ignoring race-delineated issues.