ABSTRACT
This chapter is a response to Dr. Spencer’s excellent and thought-provoking chapter on African American urban male youth and her model for examining the role of individuals in context. I draw on some of our neighborhood research in Cleveland, Ohio, with respect to three points in Dr. Spencer’s chapter. First, her emphasis on individual resilience points toward the importance of better understanding the interrelationships among individual, family, and contextual neighborhood factors. This is more than identifying the strengths and weaknesses inherent in individuals and in neighborhoods; it is understanding the transactions among these factors. Second, Dr. Spencer’s discussion of individual resilience also indicates the importance of the heterogeneity of both individuals and neighborhoods. Third, her chapter also points to the importance of individual perceptions in understanding the relationship between person and context. Dr. Spencer demonstrates the important consideration of both meaning and context in understanding neighborhood effects on children and families.
