Area Reputation Research Articles

Disadvantage, disorder and diversity

Disadvantage, disorder and diversity

"The Forgotten People of New Orleans": Community, Vulnerability, and the Lower Ninth Ward

Before Hurricane Katrina roared across New Orleans on August 29, 2005, few Ameri cans had heard of the Lower Ninth Ward. After the hurricane caused major levee breach es through which waves of water rushed and tossed homes and cars around like toys in the area, the Lower Ninth Ward came to represent the convergence of destructive forces on a society: the hurricane; the geographical vulnerability of New Orleans; government neglect; and urban poverty and racial polarization.1 In the half century before the storm, the Lower Ninth Ward had changed from a fairly integrated section of working-class neighborhoods to a predominantly African American community where family potlucks and poverty coexisted; yet the area's reputation as remote and irrelevant persisted from its founding through the opening years of the twenty-first century. Residents rebuffed these stereotypes, insisting that portrayals of the Ninth Ward as isolated and dangerous failed to capture what it meant to the people who lived there: family, friends, and neighbor hood. Indeed, soon after Hurricane Katrina forced them out, many residents were lobby ing to return home. It's a great community, one resident declared. We want it back.2 The narrative of two Ninth Wards emerging from rebuilding debates also distinguishes the area's history. Over time, the seemingly disparate characterizations of vibrant com munity and isolated backwater actually reinforced each other as the struggle to define the Ninth Ward, particularly the Lower Ninth Ward, shaped how the area grew, flourished, and suffered. Amid municipal neglect and increasing impoverishment, Lower Ninth Ward residents developed cross-generational neighborhood bonds that encouraged activist pur suit of better public services and nourished cultural traditions singular to New Orleans. In the postindustrial Crescent City, the spread of crime and poverty particularly afflicted the Lower Ninth Ward, but while homicide rates were among the highest in the city, so were home ownership rates.3 The Lower Ninth Ward story presents a complex challenge to residents and government officials alike: The area's unsteady terrain and social margin

MECHANISMS FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS EFFECTIVENESS: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE SILICON VALLEY.

The article looks at mechanisms for effectiveness of knowledge management systems (KMS). Due to the California's Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay area's reputation for progressive management practices, several KMS from corporations in the region were examined for the article. The article discusses the relationship between senior management support and KMS effectiveness, the relationship between socialization and knowledge use, the integration and accessibility of KMS, and the relationship between knowledge use, knowledge quality, and perceived benefits.

News and Notes

News and Notes

Gentrification, Social Character, and Personal Identity

Gentrification, Social Character, and Personal Identity

The Guerrilla Movement in Northwest China: The Origins of the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region (Part I)

The loess hills of northern Shensi below the great wall, unsurpassed in their poverty and primitiveness in all China proper, are a traditional haven for rebels. Remote from major provincial power centres, this rugged terrain provides ideal sanctuary for roving armed bands. Here Li Tzu-ch'eng launched his campaign to overthrow the Ming, only to be thwarted by the Manchus after taking Peking in 1644. Much of the region was devastated by Moslem rebels in the mid-nineteenth Century, and in the chaotic final years of the Ch'ing, t'u-fei, (bandits) formed from the ranks of the military, secret societies and a population frequently on the brink of starvation, roamed unchecked. One early twentieth-century British observer described the area's reputation this way: “In the mind of the average Chinese of the Eastern provinces…north Shensi is a nest of plunderers lost in a wilderness.”