Organization of Hope

Howell S. Baum is Professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Organizational Membership: Personal Development in the Workplace, also published by SUNY Press.

"In this book, Baum is our own American de Tocqueville who sees nuance, conflict, ambivalence, and value clashes at every community level. If things are not what they seem—or what we would ideologically like them to be—they are in Baum's hands sadly, even tragically, real. Though we still do not know exactly what 'community' is, the fact that people yearn for it suffices to make the subject compelling and the last words of the book emotionally as well as intellectually lasting. The book is in a class by itself." — Howard F. Stein, University of Oklahoma "Baum's work describes how one of the central cultural ambiguities and tensions in our society—community attachment and individual autonomy—plays itself out in the effort to purposely organize and plan community activity. He takes the reader beyond the dualistic concept of community that often accompanies our current ambivalence and uses details of the cases to show how individuals collaborate in different ways to make the boundaries, define the membership, and manage the resources of the community.Baum offers a provocative and refreshing approach to the topic of community. He combines the study of a place community and a cultural community, identifying unexpected commonalities, while recasting familiar and often stereotypical differences in a more complex fashion. His narrative redescribes familiar relationships in ways that introduce new questions and new opportunities for purposeful planned action." — Charles Hoch, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago.

• Preface PART 1. The Question of Community 1. Introduction 2. The Baltimore Jewish Community, The Associated, and Strategic Planning 3. Southeast Baltimore, the South East Community Organization, and Southeast Community Planning 4 Community, Identity, and Planning PART 2. Setting Community Boundaries 5. Setting Jewish Community Boundaries: The Affiliated and the Unaffiliated 6. Permeable Southeast Boundaries: Dumping, Loss, and the Decline of Ethnicity 7. Establishing the Boundaries: Investing and Regenerating PART 3. Defining Good Community Membership 8. Defining the Jewish Community and Good Membership: The Orthodox and the Non-Orthodox 9. The Orthodox, the Non-Orthodox, and Strategic Planning: The Case of Jewish Education 10. Consensus Decision Making 11. Defining Good Membership in Southeast Baltimore: Good-Heartedness, Homeownership, and the Problem of Race 12. Homeownership and Community Preservation PART 4. Managing Resources 13. Resources in the Jewish Community: The Wealthy and the Nonwealthy 14. Setting Community Priorities 15. Other People's Money: The Challenges of Implementation in Southeast PART 5 Continuing the Community 16. Continuing the Jewish Community: Older Generations and Younger Generations 17. Continuing the Southeast Community: Old-Timers, Newcomers, and Schools PART 6 Community, Organizations, Planning, and the City 18. Community Identities 19. Community Organizations Planning for Community 20. Communities and the City Notes References Index