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MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
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Unterberger, Alayne G. 1993. - Participatory Approaches to Local Community Development in the 1990s: A Case Study.
Abstract: This thesis is a result of an internship conducted with the Juvenile Welfare Board (JWB) of Pinellas County, a social services funding and development agency. The JWB has embarked upon a series of initiatives aimed at responding differently to identified community problems such as juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy and poor maternal/child health. My internship was concurrent with the JWB's implementation of the five year plan of establishing at least three neighborhood family centers located in the northern, middle and southern areas of Pinellas County. The idea is that these centers will empower the communities in which they are located and at the same time improve residents' quality of life. My primary role was to explore ways to design and implement an evaluation for the proposed neighborhood centers and to furnish the JWB with an agency report containing my findings from ethnographic interviews with local social service professionals regarding current and recommended evaluation practices. These findings and an analysis of the initiative are presented in this thesis using a case study format to illustrate the "anthropological difference" (Wulff and Fiske 1987). This thesis addresses community-building at the neighborhood level. The internship and thesis focus on applying anthropological knowledge in a comrnunity planning setting that is in transition from traditional social service (doingfor the "under-privileged") to an empowerment approach (creating the necessary conditions to enable people to do for themselves). A total of nineteen ethnographic interviews were conducted with JWB funded agencies, JWB staff and other large service providers in Pinellas County. Key points included a recognition for the importance of evaluation and a need "partnership" between agencies and the JWB. Recommendations are made for the improvement of relations between JWB and funded agencies as well as for including recipients of services into evaluation plans for the neighborhood family centers. Anthropology provided the overall framework for the internship -- the choice of topic areas, the selection of methods and perspectives such as holistic and comparative principles. It is concluded that the major anthropological difference was the usefulness of the data to the ~WB and the initiatives, a result of the process described in this thesis.
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