Recasting research on 'neighbourhood effects' : a collaborative, participatory, trans-national approach

This chapter discusses an alternative approach to examining links between individual disadvantage and the neighbourhood context. Although 'neighbourhood effects' have long been of interest to policy makers and academics, research into the issue has tended to draw on conventional empirical and case study methods to elicit insights and understandings. Most empirical studies purport to be spatial investigations, yet this often means modelling the effects of neighbourhood level measures of poverty on individual outcomes, rather than investigating the effects of genuine spatial factors, We argue that such studies are vulnerable to three types of flaws - omitted variable bias, implied causality and ecological fallacy - and require the incorporation of situated local knowledge to understand the dynamics between spatial factors such as comparative location and spatial scales, social and physical infrastructure, development history and contemporary culture, local economy and governance, levels of public and private investment, and the implications of government policy on the place. Some more qualitatively oriented studies - in their quest to present different perspectives in the production of place-based knowledge- have attempted to incorporate residents' experiences and insights. This approach, however, remains premised on an academic convention of knowledge production which inherently partitions community and academic knowledge bases. Moreover. insofar as they are required to respond to questions and propositions framed and formulated in the language and context of academic research or policy making, the approach has the tendency to represent research participants as an (often invisible) 'other' (Subedi and Rhee 2008). The lived experience of residents is thus objectified, examined, interpreted and reported through the lens of what middle class intellectuals consider to be 'disadvantage'.