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Social Science

 

Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences

 

Community Development

Practical Greening: The Bottom Line On Sustainable Property Development, Investment and Financing by LEED AP Molly McCabe (Peppertree Press)

We are living in a unique time, facing unimagined challenges: global economic crisis, peak oil, climate change, social and geopolitical shifts. And these are the high level concerns. At the ground level we are dealing with aging infrastructure, an inadequate energy grid, primary fuel sources in foreign hands, diminishing croplands, a newly regulated playing field and unemployment reaching double digits in some cities. Like a perfect storm, few could have imagined these events arising in concert. But, they have complexity is increasing, changing the world as we've known it.

We need the capacity to evolve, to innovate, be agile and flexible and ultimately, resilient. We need to engage and lead. The imperatives of climate change and resource scarcity will change the way we do business. from the book

Molly McCabe, founder and president of Bridger Commercial Funding, is a research fellow for the Responsible Property Investing Center housed at Harvard University. In Practical Greening asks readers to imagine 30,000 acres of pristine land handsome rolling hills full of wildlife, including eagles, great blue heron, bobcats and threatened kit foxes. 30,000 acres is just shy of 47 square miles. The 30,000 acres is located adjacent to a community where the population has almost doubled in 20 years.

McCabe was part of a team that financed the development of an identical piece of land in the mid 1980s. The area was right on the edge of town; perfect for first-time homebuyers and industrial development. Her team helped facilitate a new metropolis in the foothills of California. Over the next few years, they financed office buildings, hotels, industrial properties, warehouses and residential subdivisions. A small town became a city, and the state itself grew twice as fast as the rest of the nation. Yet not once did the question of sustainability come up.

In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

It's hard to argue with the U.N.'s basic premise. Sustainability helps balance present and future needs, making it an obvious best practice. Sustainability connotes best practice, a strategic imperative how do we sort through the hype, rhetoric and misinformation that plague the subject? How do we find the nexus between profit and green building?

According to Practical Greening, sustainability isn't a property type. If one has an office building that has sustainable features, it's still an office building. One still needs to operate it efficiently and keep tenants happy. Ninety percent of the risks associated with sustainable properties are the same fundamental real estate risks we deal with every day:

  • Location
  • Design
  • Access
  • Market Conditions
  • Regulatory environment

When one looks at these factors from a traditional real estate perspective, sustainability becomes the next obvious step; its an evolution in the analysis.

Practical Greening asks, does a sustainable property cost more than a conventional property? Not necessarily. Overall costs depend on the design features and on the skill and experience of the construction team, as well as the time frame under study. One also has to take into account government incentives, tax and utility rebates & credits, tax abatements, expedited permitting and density bonuses.

Do sustainable design features automatically lead to higher rents, faster absorption and lower turnover? While it's still too early to say for sure, a growing body of anecdotal evidence suggests that sustainability has a positive impact on absorption, retention and turnover. And increasingly tenants are asking for sustainable features.

How do sustainable property values hold up over the long term? Once again, there is not enough data to formulate a conclusive answer, but logic suggests that higher net operating incomes (due to lower operating expenses) should produce higher long-term values. And, in any case, risk mitigation against potential regulation and changing consumer demand is worth the effort whether sustainable buildings appreciate at the same rate or, as anticipated, better than traditional buildings.

Readers of Practical Greening should also keep in mind that energy costs will continue to exert pressure on overall pricing and availability. If one lowers their exposure to energy price volatility and resource issues, they can reduce their risks which, in turn, should translate to lower cap and discount rates. It is commonly believed that a green-rated or certified building will be more energy efficient. And the higher the rating, the greater the efficiency. But depending on the overall certification parameters, a project with a stamp of approval might be no more efficient than a conventional property. Conversely, a project can meet all its sustainability objectives without receiving official certification. Still, green certification especially Energy Star and LEED has become a major selling point.

While environmental and social factors are part of the equation, economics drives the focus on sustainability. There is an emerging mass of data that demonstrates a direct link between sustainability and financial performance. Lower operating costs, the potential for increased productivity, a healthier work environment (resulting in easier recruitment and retention of employees and possibly bringing down our health costs) and sustainability's intrinsic marketing advantages are all part of the equation.

On the construction side of the ledger, fundamental changes in the cost structure reflected in significant price increases for electricity, steel, copper, cement and fuel have caused property owners and developers to rethink standard building practices. And even with the potential for deflation, there are concerns that global warming legislation and raw material scarcity may fundamentally change profitability equations in the near term.

As readers of Practical Greening might imagine, demand for sustainable buildings has risen dramatically in the United States over the past two years. This presents a perfect opportunity to capitalize on market realities at the same time we re-brand ourselves as sustainable and green. In many major U.S. cities, it's rare to find a new office building that isn't being built to LEED Silver certification. As one large national developer put it: "LEED Silver is the price of entry for Class A office. If you haven't reached that mark, your building is obsolete. Gold or Platinum gets you bonus points.

Molly McCabe's Practical Greening offers a solid overview of the tools with which investors can incorporate sustainability analysis into their daily practice, and a survey of the vital reasons new regulatory environments, changing consumer demands, more efficient uses of resources why they should. Case studies illustrate tactics and strategies, and clear and pointed toolkits will help investors know the right questions to ask on topics ranging from building certification, to retrofitting, to alternative income streams. On every topic, the focus is on how to make investment decisions sharper and more forward-looking. This is a very useful book. David Wood, Director Initiative for Responsible Investment Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organization Harvard University

If you are looking to introduce yourself to sustainability and commercial real estate, this is the ideal book you need. If you are already on track with what is changing the real estate industry, this book will help your colleagues catch up to you. Written by someone who understands sustainability from a commercial lender's and investor's view point, Molly's real estate finance experience and LEED AP rating allows her to provide a framework to put this trend into a usable context for business use. The examples are clear, current and easy to understand, demonstrating how value is created. Not all components of the industry have embraced the change to looking at commercial real estate via sustainable measures, but this is a very helpful roadmap for those on the journey and those planning the trip. William G. Lashbrook III, Senior Vice President, PNC Real Estate Vice Chair, New Jersey Chapter US Green Building Council

A solid overview of sustainability, Practical Greening offers a framework or map for understanding the issues very useful.

The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin (Harvard Business Press) Think of the toughest problems in your organization or community. What if they'd already been solved and you didn't even know it?

In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving. Their advice? Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change.

With vivid, firsthand stories of how positive deviance has alleviated some of the world's toughest problems (malnutrition in Vietnam, staph infections in hospitals), the authors illuminate its core practices, including:

  • Mobilizing communities to discover "invisible" solutions in their midst
  • Using innovative designs to "act" your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking your way into a new way of acting
  • Confounding the organizational "immune response" seeking to sustain the status quo
  • Inspiring and insightful, The Power of Positive Deviance unveils a potent new way to tackle the thorniest challenges in your own company and community.
     

Excerpt: Useful Definitions for Practitioners

The Positive Deviance concept is based on the observation that in every community or organization, there are a few individuals or groups who have found uncommon practices and behaviors that enable them to achieve better solutions to problems than their neighbors who face the same challenges and barriers.

The Positive Deviance approach is grounded in the assumption that communities have assets or resources they haven't tapped. The Positive Deviance process enables a community or organization to identify and amplify those practices and behaviors, measure outcomes, and share their successful strategies with others. The Positive Deviance approach is used to bring about sustainable behavioral and social change by identifying solutions already existing in the system.

A Positive Deviance individual or group demonstrates special or uncommon behaviors and strategies that enable the person or group to overcome a problem without special resources. However, a person is defined as a Positive Deviant only in the context of a specific problem.

Positive Deviance design or methodology consists of four basic steps (the four D's: define, determine, discover, and design). These comprise an iterative road map for the process.

Positive Deviance inquiry refers to the stage in the process whereby the community seeks to discover demonstrably successful behaviors and strategies among its members.

Positive Deviance process refers to the entire journey encompassing the skillful use of experiential learning methods and skilled facilitation applied to the four steps of the Positive Deviance design. It results in community mobilization and ownership, discovery of existing solutions, and emergence of new solutions as a result of community initiatives.

Chapters have highlighted a number of steps critical to the success of the positive deviance approach. These include:

  • Introducing Positive Deviance as a proven approach for addressing adaptive challenges.
  • Focusing on what's working against all odds (the positive deviant) rather than on what's wrong/what's missing.
  • Commencing the process with an authentic invitation in which community members can opt in or opt out.
  • Encouraging the community to reframe the problem to ensure relevance, concreteness, and measurability.
  • Engaging the broader community (beyond the usual suspects) to host group conversations during which common practices are established and, subsequently, Positive Deviances identified.
  • Ensuring that the community takes ownership of a design to disseminate new discoveries through action learning. Practice trumps "knowing about" the many permutations on information transfer.
  • Remaining ever vigilant to the propensity of sponsors, outside experts, and facilitators to hijack the process. Their only role is as co-conveners (with community leaders) and catalysts of the group conversation. Their contribution should be as a musician in a jazz combo, not as the conductor of an orchestra.

Basic Field Guide to the Positive Deviance (PD) Approach

Purpose of the Field Guide

This basic guide is intended to orient newcomers to the Positive Deviance approach and provide the essential tools to get started. It includes a brief description of the guiding principles, methodology, and process that have made Positive Deviance projects successful. It is recommended as a resource to enable facilitators and apprentices to quickly initiate the Positive Deviance process using the four basic steps (the four D's: define, determine, discover, and design). These comprise an iterative road map for the process.

Its brevity and simplicity are meant to invite curious and intrepid implementers who face complex problems requiring behavioral and social change. It is suitable for those who seek solutions that exist today in their community and enables the practitioner to leverage those solutions for the benefit of all members of the community.

Positive Deviance is best understood through action and is most effective through practice.

When to Use Positive Deviance

Positive deviance should be considered as a possible approach when a concrete problem meets the following criteria:

  • The problem is not exclusively technical and requires behavioral or/and social change.
  • The problem is "intractable"—other solutions haven't worked. Positive deviants are thought to exist.
  • There is sponsorship and local leadership commitment to address the issue.

Guiding Principles of the Positive Deviance Approach

  • Remember these basic principles when initiating the Positive Deviance process in a community:
  • The community must own the entire process.
  • The community discovers existing uncommon, successful behaviors and strategies (Positive Deviance inquiry).
  • The community reflects on these existing solutions and adapts them to their circumstances.
  • The community designs ways to practice and amplify successful behaviors and strategies.
  • Community members witness that "someone just like me is succeeding against all odds with the same resources that are available to me" (social proof).

Positive Deviance emphasizes practice instead of knowledge—the "how" instead of the "what" or "why." The Positive Deviance mantra is: "You are more likely to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting."

  • Involve everyone; go to improbable places and to unlikely people to find solutions.
  • "Don't do anything about me without me."
  • The community creates its own criteria for success and monitors progress.

Characteristics of the Positive Deviance Process

The Positive Deviance process promotes behavioral and social change because:

  •  It is generative (i.e., it is self-organizing and emergent).
  • It is based on strengths and assets.
  • It is not "expert" driven. Community members provide culturally appropriate expertise.
  • It is embedded in the social context of the community. The Positive Deviance process:
  • Combines relational and technical considerations. Leverages existing formal and informal networks.
  • Generates new networks and bridges barriers created by gender, status, expertise, and so forth.
  • Promotes further change by inviting the community to monitor its own progress.
  • Makes the invisible visible (i.e., calls attention to the Positive Deviances and the community's own hidden wisdom).
  • Enables the community to translate its discoveries into immediate actions.

Tips for Positive Deviance Facilitators

  • Tap the expertise in the group (remember: the people in the community are the experts).
  • Ensure the participants talk more than you do. Encourage them to exchange stories and information among themselves.
  • Refrain from making suggestions or giving advice (unless repeatedly asked).
  • Ask open-ended questions (e.g. what, how, what if?). (Avoid questions that elicit yes or no answers.)
  • Don't try to exercise control; let the group guide the conversation.
  • Invite participants to tell their stories or share their experiences about the issue at hand. Tap into emotions.
  • Make the process personal and fun.
  • Share relevant personal experience with participants to make them feel comfortable. Develop trust by admitting your own vulnerability.
  • Let silence speak! (Pause for twenty seconds after asking a question. That's long enough to sing Happy Birthday!)
  • Stay with the questions. Don't press for quick fixes. Insights often come when one is least expecting them.
  • Support a climate where speaking the truth is OK, even when doing so may make the facilitator or a participant look foolish, confused, or unprepared.
  • Believe that there will be enough time. "Go fast by going slow."
  • Commit to learn, to be influenced, to be personally changed by the experience.

The Art of Asking Questions

For the most thoughtful and revealing responses, use open-ended questions that ask what, how, why, why now? Here are some examples of what you might ask or say in specific situations to facilitate or refocus discussions.

  • To spur continued reflection and thinking within the group, you might ask:
  • To answer your question, let me ask a question. Can I ask you a question about your question?
  • I have a question for you . . .
  • To generate more interactive discussion among the group: Who can answer this question?
  • Who wants to answer this question?
  • Who has any idea about this?
  • How would anyone here answer this question? To involve more stakeholders, ask:
  • Whose problem is it?
  • Who else should be involved?
  • How might we involve them?
  • To uncover or identify Positive Deviance individuals or groups:
  • Are there any groups of individuals who have overcome (or prevented) the problem?

You can also use the somersault question:

  • So if I understand correctly, nobody here is (or has achieved) X?
  • So, there are no people in your community who have overcome this problem?

Once the group realizes that Positive Deviances actually exist in their own community, then follow up with some direct questions, such as:

  • How can we learn from them?
  • When is a good time to meet with them?

To discover Positive Deviance behaviors and strategies, ask probing questions: You said that you did X; how were you able to do that?

  • Most other people have had problems with X and Y; how have you been able to overcome them?
  • Many people have explained to us how difficult it is to do X because of busy schedules, high costs, conflict with community customs or traditions, etc. I was wondering what you do to overcome these barriers or challenges encountered by others in your community?
  • How are you able to overcome these common challenges and barriers?
  • Can you show us how?
  • What do you do when X problem happens or you are faced by the challenge of Y?
  • Encourage participants to repeat what they've heard or understood to get more specificity: "So, if I understand correctly, you do X only during the day and you do not do Y at all during the day or night?
  • Do you know other individuals like you?
  • To help define or target actions to be taken, ask:
  • What are our next steps? Who is going to do what? What will it take to accomplish this?
  • To ask permission to make a suggestion:
  • Can I make a suggestion? Would it be possible for . .. ?
  • You are the experts, but would it make sense if . . . ?

Commitment of Leaders and Sponsors

  • Before the Positive Deviance process can begin, the first step is to identify a sponsor as noted below. This leads to assembling those who might potentially be interested in tackling an intractable problem. To do this:
  • Introduce the Positive Deviance concept and approach to potential sponsors. Extend invitations for involvement beyond the "usual suspects."
  • Once potential participants are assembled and the Positive Deviance concept is described through examples, ask: "Does this make sense? If so, is there anyone here who would like to become involved?"
  • It is essential that this initial orientation to Positive Deviance authentically allows potential participants to opt in or opt out.
  • Enroll a resource team of volunteers that is diverse and includes members of the community as well as local leaders.
  • Allow the group to invent the forms of organization and work processes that best suit it.
  • Invite others who are willing, and at times eager, to become involved. Each person is valuable to the process.

Basic steps:

  • Step 1. Define the problem and desired outcome.
  • Step 2. Determine common practices.
  • Step 3. Discover uncommon but successful behaviors and strategies through inquiry and observation.
  • Step 4. Design an action learning initiative based on the findings.

STEP 1: THE COMMUNITY DEFINES OR REFRAMES THE PROBLEM BY:

  • Involving members of the community in generating or reviewing data that measures the magnitude of the problem
  • Articulating a preferred future that is different from the past
  • Exploring the issues impacting the problem and current behavioral norms
  • Listing common barriers and challenges related to the problem
  • Identifying all stakeholders who should be involved Sharing the group's findings in a community-wide meeting

TOOLS OR ACTIVITIES FOR DEFINING THE PROBLEM:

  • Creating or using baseline data (mapping, creating visual scoreboards)
  • Establishing a time-framed goal known and agreed on by all (e.g., eradicate childhood malnutrition in our community within two years)

STEP 2: THE COMMUNITY DETERMINES COMMON PRACTICES BY:

  • Conducting discussions with various groups in the community to learn about common practices and normative behaviors
  • Using participatory learning and action (PLA) activities such as mapping, improvisation, Venn diagrams, and prioritizing
  • Continuing "focus groups." Even if what you're learning is repetitive, involve as many members of the community as possible in the conversation

STEP 3: THE COMMUNITY DISCOVERS THE PRESENCE OF POSITIVE DEVIANTS BY:

  • Identifying individuals, families, or entities in the community who exhibit desired outcomes
  • Establishing exclusion criteria. Select only those individuals or entities who face the same or worse challenges and barriers as others
  • Conducting in-depth interviews and observations by the community and Positive Deviance facilitator(s)
  • Identifying uncommon practices that correlate with better outcomes (having established common practices in step 2)
  • Vetting the results with the whole community

TOOLS OR ACTIVITIES TO IDENTIFY AND LEARN ABOUT COMMON BEHAVIORS (STEP 2) AND IDENTIFY BEHAVIORS AND STRATEGIES FROM POSITIVE DEVIANTS (STEP 3):

  • In-depth interviews
  • On-site visits for structured observations
  • Discovery and action dialogues; as described in chapter 4, these brainstorming sessions serve to surface new, untried ideas once a community has been mobilized to address intractable problems
  • Community feedback sessions on Positive Deviance findings (see www.positivedeviance.org for examples of Positive Deviance inquiry tools)

STEP 4: THE COMMUNITY DESIGNS AND DEVELOPS ACTIVITIES TO EXPAND THE Positive Deviance SOLUTIONS BY:

  • Expanding the solution space by engaging multiple stakeholders in applying the discovered existing Positive Deviance behaviors and strategies
  • Starting small to demonstrate success
  • Connecting people who haven't connected before
  • Targeting the widest range of appropriate community members
  • Creating opportunities to practice and "learn through doing" in a safe environment with peer support
  • Using imaginative approaches to involve the community in the work (e.g., feeding workshops in Vietnam, Healthy Baby Fairs in Pakistan)

TOOLS OR ACTIVITIES FOR DESIGNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS TO PRACTICE THE DISCOVERED BEHAVIORS AND STRATEGIES:

  • Community meeting to share Positive Deviance inquiry findings
  • Creation of an action team involving the resource team and self-selected volunteers who have participated in the process
  • Develop an action plan; pin down roles and responsibilities
  • The community measures, monitors, and evaluates the effectiveness of its initiatives based on the Positive Deviance findings by:
  • Developing a way to monitor progress of initiative (assess, analyze, and act on information)
  • Making progress real by engaging the community in developing its own indicators to monitor progress (quantitative and qualitative indicators of behavioral and social change)
  • Creating culturally appropriate ways to communicate the data to the community as a whole
  • Evaluating initiatives at regular, frequent intervals
  • As the process evolves and has a successful impact on the problem, other communities and groups will hear about the process and may want to learn more. Suggestions for dissemination might include:
  • Documenting, evaluating, and sharing results
  • Honoring and amplifying the success stories by storytelling
  • Creating a living university for other communities to discover how the Positive Deviance process could help them solve the same problem

A Guide to Careers in Community Development by Paul C. Brophy and Alice Shabecoff (Island Press) offers a wide range of exciting and rewarding employment options. But until now, there has been no "road map" for professionals, volunteers, students, or anyone wishing to become involved in the field.

A Guide to Careers in Community Development describes the many different kinds of community development jobs available, ranging from community organizing, to financing housing and new businesses, to redeveloping brownfields. It offers advice on how to break into the field along with guidance for career advancement and lateral movement.

Hope Meadows: Real-Life Stories of Healing and Caring from an Inspired Community by Wes Smith (Berkley Publishing Group) At first, Hope Meadows, Illinois looks like any other rural small town neighborhood. But this little village of big miracles is unique. The brainchild of a determined sociologist, Academic activist Brenda Eheart,  it is built on an abandoned Air Force base for a single purpose: to create a solution to the problem of revolving-door foster care by developing a multigenerational alternative to the traditional foster care system. Here are children given up by impoverished mothers; children of drug addicts, prisoners, and prostitutes; children who had never been taught the importance of responsibility, school, or the basics of human interaction. Here "unadoptable" children are given the chance to thrive in permanent homes. At Hope Meadows, seniors find a renewed sense of purpose as foster grandparents. In return for adopting up to four special-needs children, parents receive free housing and a salary of $19,000 a year. Senior citizens obtain low rent in exchange for volunteer and mentorship work, and a therapist lives on-site. Seniors spirits are lifted, renewed and enriched as they give unconditional love and commitment to the children they have come to care for deeply.

A collection of profiles of the various and sundry families, this book grew out of the veteran journalist We Smith’s story for the Chicago Tribune in 1996. Chapters brim with testimonials and poignant case studies; selection criteria and placement failures are de-emphasized. A longer-term study of the outcomes of this project would have been useful, but media and political leaders already support this social experiment as a cost-effective approach to profound social problems. Hope Meadows offers an important alternative to the difficult issues of unwanted children and seniors citizens in need of connection

 A Dream Unfinished: Theological Reflections on America from the Margins edited by Eleazar S. Fernandez, Fernando F. Segovia  From Preface: The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the explosion of non-­Western theological studies‑broadly conceived as Christian Studies‑both outside the West, among the children of the colonized in the Two‑Thirds World, and inside the West, among ethnic and racial minorities in the United States. Outside the West, such studies first developed in Latin America, in the form of liberation theology, and it was not long before the movement had spread in a variety of shapes and forms to Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Inside the West, such studies first came to the fore among African Americans, by way of black theology, and later spread to Hispanic Americans as well as Asian Americans.

Yet, collaboration among the different regions and groups has differed con­siderably. Outside the West, theologians from the various geographical areas of the Two‑Thirds World have, for a long time now, participated in a variety of common projects and endeavors, while continuing to address the particular con­cerns of each major region. Inside the West, theologians from the various minority groups have kept, for the most part, to their own respective circles and discus­sions and, as a result, have failed not only to engage one another but also to develop any sense of common agenda or discourse. Thus, while dialogue and collaboration have been quite common in the Two‑Thirds World, atomization and dispersion have prevailed instead among ethnic and racial minorities in the West.

Given the ever‑growing numbers and strength of minorities in theological studies within the United States, however, we believe that the time has come for a fundamental change in this regard. Indeed, we are of the opinion that a sus­tained and systematic conversation among the various groups has become imperative. Our present fragmentation not only works against our cause, both as a whole and as individual groups, ultimately reinforcing our marginalization in the country, but also makes it easier for the forces of closure‑the forces of racism and discrimination, injustice and oppression, always at work in the land ­to have their way. The present volume, therefore, is meant as a first attempt at such a conversation. As such, we wanted both project and volume to be broadly inclusive, bringing together a proper balance of theologians from the major groups in question (African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans), a proper balance of women and men theologians, and a proper balance of theo­logians from the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Such is the diversity of our groups, and such must be the diversity of any conversation among us. Our only regret in this regard is that the volume did not turn out to be as diversified as originally intended, due to a number of factors endemic in any project of publi­cation and simply beyond our control.

For a conversation as multicentered and multilingual as the one envisioned, a central issue of interest to all as point of departure proves essential. We opted for the concept of the "American Dream." We thus asked the various contribu­tors to offer theological reflections on the country in general and the American Dream in particular from their respective positions in the margins as members and voices of minority groups.

Such a choice we deemed most appropriate, given both the centrality of this concept in the life of the country and the highly conflicted experience of mi­norities in this regard. On the one hand, the vision of the Dream is beyond question: a long‑standing and much‑cherished view of the country as an open land of freedom, justice, and opportunity, not only for all of its born citizens but also for all those who enter the country as immigrants. On the other hand, the underside of the Dream is also beyond question. Although some Americans of non‑European descent have "made it" in the country‑have attained a measure of the American Dream‑ethnic and racial minorities have, by and large, re­mained marginal participants in this dream. Indeed, for many such a dream has become, at best, a deferred vision, and, at worst, a terrible nightmare. Yet, America remains dear to ethnic and racial minorities insofar as they refuse to relinquish the America of their hearts. It was this conflict of promise and expe­rience, therefore‑this sense of "a dream unfinished"‑that we wanted to address in unison, as a theological exercise in common, and so we asked all participants to do so, in whatever way they saw fit, from within the context of their own respective communities in the country. The result proved a success beyond all expectations‑a veritable cornucopia of theological reflections on dream and country alike.

We conclude with a threefold hope. First, that this project prove but a begin­ning for protracted conversation among minorities in the United States. Second, that such dialogue lead us beyond the fragmentation we have experienced thus far, much to our detriment and that of the country as well as that of theological studies in general. Finally, that this dialogue in and from the margins ultimately lead us beyond marginalization itself, toward a very different conception and practice of theological studies and, most important, toward the eventual fulfill­ment of our unfinished dream in the country.

 

 

 

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