Book review of Michael T. Maly, Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2005. $68.50 hardcover, $22.95 papercover

Larrison, Christopher R.

English

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The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare Volume 33 Issue 4 December Article 14 2006 Review of Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States. Michael T. Maly. Reviewed by Christopher R. Larrison. Christopher R. Larrison University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw  Part of the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Larrison, Christopher R. (2006) "Review of Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States. Michael T. Maly. Reviewed by Christopher R. Larrison.," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 33 : Iss. 4 , Article 14. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol33/iss4/14 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Social Work at ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu. Book Reviews 195In references of this kind, some key topics may not be givenrelevant space. For instance, apart from a scattering of briefdiscussions in a few chapters, the subjects of substance abusersand substance abusing mentally ill (MISA) clients are not dealtwith directly in the form of at least one unified chapter. Thechapter on the harm-reduction approach does use the treat-ment of substance abuse as an illustration for that model. Yetin most inner city mental health agencies of which I am aware,MISA clients can constitute up to 70 to 90 percent of the case-load. Perhaps this is due to the paucity of literature on the topicin traditional social work journals. Yet in the timeframe thereare many articles related to this topic in clinical psychology,psychiatry, and specialty substance abuse journals.Considering the volume and diversity of material, shiftsin writing styles, and the rather small print, this might not beconsidered as casual professional reading. The subject indexis thorough. The sources for the chapters are identified in a"Credits" section at the end of the volume. One possible draw-back is the lack of information on the authors themselves suchplace, position, and background. The discerning reader mightview this as useful. Apart from these concerns, the referencewould be a significant additional to any social worker's pro-fessional library.William A. MaesenCommunity Services Council of Will County IllinoisMichael T. Maly, Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and MultiethnicNeighborhoods in the United States. Philadelphia, PA:Temple University Press, 2005. $68.50 hardcover, $22.95papercover.A number of the plays in August Wilson's cycle on AfricanAmerican life in the 2 0th century carry memorable images ofurban decay, geographic isolation of the African Americancommunity, and the impending negative impacts of gentrifica-tion. These images appear normal--congruent with what we196 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfareknow about race, culture, ethnicity and neighborhood life. Theneighborhood case studies of Uptown Chicago, Jackson HeightsNew York, and San Antonio-Fruitvale Oakland in MichaelMaly's well written book Beyond Segregation: Multiracial andMultiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States counter these des-olate scenes with surprising examples of successful unplannedneighborhood integration.Maly suggests that instances of successful unplannedneighborhood integration go almost unnoticed in the researchliterature. The resulting central message of the book is thatexploring these atypical cases offers valuable insight into avariety of grassroots methods that can help to generate stableneighborhood integration. In this light, Uptown, JacksonHeights, and Fruitvale should give pause to those who believethat people of different cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds,and countries of origin cannot successfully live together vianaturally occurring integration. As one of the key informantssays about the development of stable integration in Uptown:"I think there is less us versus them. Some people are tryingreally hard to maintain the us versus them ... but I think lessand less, in reality people are permitting themselves to bepitted against the other." (p. 94).The book consists of five chapters. The first two chaptersgive a concise history of racial and ethnic segregation and in-tegration in urban United States and examine how changingdemographics can impact neighborhoods in various ways.The chapters contrast the powerful external mechanisms thatcreated segregation with the internal grassroots actions of in-dividuals and citizen groups that prevented it and provide asufficient theoretical underpinning for the three cases studiesthat constitute the last three chapters. Separate from the fivemain chapters are a conclusion, which revisits many of Maly'smain points, footnotes, and references.The case study chapters begin with a story told by one resi-dent who in some ways symbolizes the neighborhood expe-rience of integration, which Maly details by using secondarydata and interviews with key informants. He does an adept jobof leaving the reader to interpret the meaning and interplay ofthe individual interviews with the larger trend data. Each ofthe neighborhood cases demonstrates how the organic processBook Reviews 197of integration varies in terms of what factors are essential andto what extent those factors interact with the contexts of timeand place. An eloquent example is how active conflict betweengroups in the Chicago neighborhood of Uptown played animportant role in creating and maintaining stable integrationwhere as in Fruitvale and Jackson Heights, the conflict betweenneighborhood groups was on a much smaller scale, had differ-ent dynamics and was significantly less important.Several salient themes emerge from the five chapters.These include firstly that racial and ethnic diversity need to beunderstood in more complex ways; and secondly, that racialand ethnic integration should be combined with socioeconom-ic integration and that one does not readily exist without theother. Another theme is that immigration is often the life bloodof integrated neighborhoods. The final and principal theme isbest expressed by another of Maly's key informants: "I mean,it [neighborhood integration] happened because nobody ob-structed it, not necessarily because somebody nurtured it." (p.66).The one complaint is that the key informant interviews arefrom 1995-1996, a decade ago, before the current boom in urbanhousing ownership. The changes in housing prices may haveconsiderably altered the level of integration in all three neigh-borhoods and therefore current perceptions of residents maybe dissimilar to those held in 1995. For example, Maly notesthat the median price of a one or two family house increasedfrom $183,000 to $240,000 between 1995 and 1999 in JacksonHeights. The December 9, 2005 Weekly Thikana, a JacksonHeights neighborhood newspaper, states that the average costof a two bedroom apartment is $380,000 and a New York Timesonline profile of the neighborhood pegs the beginning pricesof single family homes at $400,000 and two family homes at$600,000. Even a cursory nod to the possible impact of thesesizeable increases in housing prices would have sufficed. Aseparate prologue would have been even better.Michael Maly articulates a number of important insightsinto neighborhood functioning, stable unplanned integration,and the roles of grassroots movements that should interest awide variety of scholars. Beyond the book's value as a piece198 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfareof research, it is a joy to read and it is highly recommended.Christopher R. LarrisonUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignElizabeth Ann Danto, Freud's Free Clinics; Psychoanalysis andSocial Justice, 1918-1938. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2005. $ 29.50 hardcover.This is an unusual book, in part a series of biographicalsketches of Sigmund Freud and a host of other pioneers inthe development of psychoanalysis in Europe, and in part thestory of the invention of free mental health treatment centersby psychoanalysts in Berlin, Vienna, and other European capi-tals. The story is set in the tumultuous, and at the end, hor-rific times between the end of World I and the ascendancy ofHitler's Third Reich.Elizabeth Danto bases her work on extensive examinationof over twenty archival sources in the United States and Europe,ranging from the Archives of the New York PsychoanalyticSociety to the Otto Rank papers at Columbia University to theArchives of the Sigmund Freud Foundation in Vienna. She alsointerviewed fifteen individuals who had some connection withthe development of psychoanalysis and the free clinic move-ment, although she only identifies the background of three ofthese interviewees, making their information less useful.This far-ranging history discusses the development andoperation of free out-patient mental health clinics for workingclass people in European cities from 1920 until the rise of theThird Reich. In 1918, at an international conference of psycho-analysts, Sigmund Freud encouraged his peers to set up thesefree institutions because, he believed, "The poor man shouldhave just as much right to assistance for his mind as he nowhas to the life-saving help offered by surgery (pp, 1-2)." Freudreached a receptive audience, and at least twelve of these clinicswere established in European cities in the years between thetwo world wars. The first clinic, the Poliklinik, was establishedin Berlin, quickly followed by the Ambulatorium in Vienna.These pioneer clinics, and those that followed, were staffed bypsychoanalysts and their students. They treated the troubles of

Review of \u3cem\u3eBeyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States.\u3c/em\u3e Michael T. Maly. Reviewed by Christopher R. Larrison.

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Review of \u3cem\u3eBeyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States.\u3c/em\u3e Michael T. Maly. Reviewed by Christopher R. Larrison.

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