ABSTRACT
The recent trend toward the neoliberal restructuring of urban governance, including the devolution and outsourcing of public services to private enterprises, has made reliance on the local integral to social service provisions. This is especially true in cities where the relative shift in responsibilities for providing social services occurs via civil society in which citizens play a large part in the care and management of the city (Clarke and Gaile 1998). In this reworking of the relationship between the state and civil society, community building has arisen as the preferred strategy to fill the void left by the reduction of state services (Duffy and Hutchinson 1997; McKnight 1995; Sampson 1999). Community building is a muchsupported but undercriticized paradigm, especially with respect to questions about the benefits that impoverished neighborhood residents actually acquire from these initiatives. We examine community building as a process that is related to other agendas, identifying how community building is larger than the community that it portends to build (even while localizing its own activities for the resident participants), and we challenge many taken-for-granted notions about the benefits of this form of anti-poverty work.
