The construction of the local and the limits of contemporary community-building in the United States

With new relationships between state and civil society, community building has arisen as a pre-ferred mechanism to ameliorate urban poverty. Community building is a much-supported but undercriticized paradigm, especially with respect to questions about the benefits that impover-ished neighborhood residents actually acquire from these initiatives. The authors examine com-munity building as a process that is related to larger agendas meant to enact certain productions of urban space and challenge many taken-for-granted notions about the realized benefits of this form of antipoverty work. Moreover, they argue that community-building initiatives occur in an increasingly globalized context, providing opportunities for stakeholders other than residents to promote certain productions of space and place. A case study is presented of an initiative occur-ring in a southern city in the United States to highlight the theoretical framework presented. Neighborhood initiatives have had a long history in the United States as a response to social problems. Community building, in particular, often has been proposed as a mechanism to ameliorate urban poverty (Alinsky 1971