publications

2011.  "Farming," in Frequencies: A Collaborative Genealogy of Spirituality.  Edited by Kathryn Lofton and John Lardas Modern.  A project of The Immanent Frame and the Social Science Research Council.  http://freq.uenci.es/2011/12/14/farming/

2011.  "Change and Routine," "On Fertility and Turning Forty," and "Seeking Sophia," in Wisdom Found: Stories of Women Transfigured by Faith. Edited by Lindsay Hardin Freeman.  Forward Movement Publications, Cincinnati, OH.

2009.  Savor:  Natural, Simple, Healthy.  Self-published cookbook.  Available at:  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1077900

2007.  “Disciplinary Ways of Knowing: The Value of Anthropological Thinking in General Education,” in Reclaiming the Public University: Conversations on General and Liberal Education, J. Summerfield and C. Benedicks, eds. NY: Peter Lang.

2006.   "Too Much Tolerance": Hang-around Youth, Public Space, and the Problem of Freedom in the Netherlands.  Doctoral dissertation, Anthropology Department, CUNY Graduate Center.

The dissertation is about 400 pages in length, and can be downloaded as a PDF file by clicking on the title above.

Abstract:
This study examines public concerns about hangjongeren, or hang-around youth, in Amsterdam, and demonstrates that such concerns are inflected by other anxieties about ethnic difference, authority, and social cohesion.  Ethnographic research among policy makers, social workers, citizen activists, and police officers was conducted to examine their attempts to address complaints about noise, litter, and "feelings of being unsafe."  This dissertation demonstrates how the hangjongeren problematic becomes intertwined with wider issues: an emphasis on “prevention” in youth policy and policing, a recent discourse about integration and Dutch “norms and values,” and local projects to regulate public behavior through conduct rules.

Adults’ interpretations of “the hangjongeren problem” are varied, complex, and contradictory.  While intending very different meanings, parents, authorities, and complaining adults all participate in a discourse that blames today's social problems on "too much tolerance":  parents condemn the over-individualization of adults; authorities voice frustration with their limited ability to regulate an unruly populace; and adult residents who complain about youth express a desire to have others set limits on neighborhood youth, and restore their freedom to live without disturbance.

The noticeable anger- and fear-based reactions to the presence of youth in public space, this study argues, arise out of three ideological developments since 1960: a highly individualized notion of personal freedom, an insistent belief that the social welfare state is responsible for solving even everyday social problems, and the spread of an idealized suburban aesthetic of peace and order into other residential environments.  Today's frustration with freedom and tolerance is an outcome of, rather than a backlash against, the social changes of the 1960s.

research interests

the design of learning environments, public spaces and social policy, individualization and community formation