Just Leave Me Alone: Poverty, Social Isolation, and Civic Disengagement amidst Small- City Sprawl

• In Event: 189 - Regular Session. Poverty

Abstract

This paper looks at the social repercussions of poverty in a small, sprawling, postagrarian city. Despite living in mixed-income neighborhoods, participants reported exclusion and isolation from both formal and informal social networks, shame around low income and financial need, low levels of interest in social ties, and lack of interest in civic participation. The paper explores the causes and consequences of social isolation in this context, finding that a combination of spatial, social, and cultural factors serve to isolate the poor from the better off, and undermine the development of social networks and the accumulation of social capital in this community.

Author

• Jennifer Sherman, Washington State University