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The article cites a study which focuses on masculinities and coaching styles in boys' baseball in Fairmount, a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fairmount is close to the neighborhood of Spring Garden, which was first large settlement of Puerto Ricans in the city. Beginning in the 1970s, both neighborhoods were transformed as a result of the arrival of residents which were more affluent and professional. The growing social and economic differences between the two neighborhoods resulted in tensions which were carried over to the local baseball field.

The paper explores an encounter between parents of different class backgrounds who meet in the context of children?s neighborhood baseball following a process of neighborhood gentrification in Philadelphia. Their encounter permits not just a look at how sport, in this case baseball, structured and processed neighborhood tensions but also how the competing class cultures of the two groups created conflicting expectations about rights in and responsibilities toward public space and voluntary organizations. Evidence supporting this paper included: a) participant observation with a baseball organization over a decade; b) two years of systematic ethnographic fieldwork involving observations of more than 100 games in two boys? age divisions and; c) 40 in-depth interviews with coaches and parents of the league. Differences in the way old-timers and newcomers related both to the neighborhood and to the league reflected a competing set of cultural values related to individual responsibility, group solidarity, and how best to promote children?s interests, a contrast between ?hierarchical communalism? and ?child-centered individualism.? The local space of boys? baseball provides an opportunity to understand how these tensions unfolded over a thirty year period, leaving a space where class tension ?trumped? race tensions as cross-class sympathies slowly evolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors that account for what is essentially a story of racial accommodation in an unlikely space, one formerly renowned for racial violence and exclusion. The local space of boys’ baseball provides an opportunity to understand how class and racial changes in a formerly white, working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia unfolded over a thirty year period. With gentrification, came new class and racial encounters on the local baseball field that often took the form of differences in community values, childrearing, and desired masculinity as played out among the kids, parents, and coaches. The research supporting this paper included: a) participant observation as a "bench Mom" of a baseball organization over a decade; b) two years of systematic ethnographic fieldwork involving observations of more than 100 games in two boys’ age divisions and; c) 40 in-depth interviews with coaches and parents of the league with working-class "old-timers" and more recently arrived middle-class professionals equally represented. Among the factors identified as central to the smooth racial integration of the neighborhood sports space are: a demographic shortage of white neighborhood children, the "racial sponsorship" of the first black middle-class children by the white children of new professionals, a growing external accountability toward new black politicians, and the unique features of baseball itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social climate of American institutions of higher education has been dramatically impacted by two distinct phenomena that are rarely discussed together: the increased diversity of students on college campuses related to the arrival of native minorities and new immigrants and a cultural shift from a dating culture to the much discussed "hook-up" culture. Here we explore the nature of campus romantic culture from the perspectives of immigrant and minorities and the role of parental expectations in student romantic partner choices. The research involved focus groups and in-depth interviews with students from four minority groups, three of whom are second-generation immigrants, in a racially-diverse university. We found that immigrant and minority students' attitudes and practices reflect a selective adoption of dominant campus sexual scripts; they are "erotic traditionalists," conforming to familial values in opposition to dominant peer culture in some areas, but also adopting orientations closer to their peers in others. The importance of more nuanced explorations of the cultural impact of growing diversity in social institutions is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]