ABSTRACT
This chapter describes several methodological innovations that enhance researchers' ability to test key propositions and to refine causal models relevant to social disorganization theory. Social ties and informal control are theorized as mediating the effects of exogenous sources of social disorganization on neighborhood crime. Social disorganization theory has been deficient in its consideration of both formal control and the formal-informal control nexus. The theory would be greatly enhanced by studies of the ways in which formal control may directly shape community crime and disorder, and how it may affect a neighborhood's informal control capacities. Most social disorganization studies focus exclusively on intraneighborhood influences on crime, without considering the larger urban political and economic context. An important related issue involves the analysis of reciprocal effects of crime on community organization. A more complex relationship between crime and neighborhood organization is described in Paul E. Bellair.
