Doctoral Dissertation Research: Geographies of Urban Trauma: Examining a social service paradigm shift in two US cities

Temple University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will investigate and analyze how trauma-informed approaches in social services are shifting understandings of and responses to urban poverty. Over the past decade, a trauma-informed approach has become increasingly ubiquitous among non-profits and government agencies in the United States. Trauma-informed approaches are being implemented most vigorously in urban areas as a response to the negative aspects associated with urban poverty, including lack of physical and mental health resources, community violence, and housing instability. Trauma-informed approaches attempt to remedy these problems through therapeutic interventions and by making existing institutions and organizations more attuned to trauma. Via a critical geographic approach, this research will investigate how trauma-informed interventions are implemented at different geographic scales, i.e., individual, family, community, institution, or state, and what their effects are in urban areas. The project will contribute to ongoing debates in urban geography, and urban policy more broadly, about where the causes of and remedies for poverty are located. Because of trauma-informed approaches' concern for mental and neurobiological health, the project will also contribute to a growing literature in geography about the relationship between health and biology to social and spatial phenomena. In particular, it will look at how people's daily interactions with urban space and urban processes impact individual and community health, and the ability of trauma-informed approaches to effect city-wide change. Current research into trauma-informed approaches centers on the evaluation or implementation of specific programs and focuses on best practices in the field of social work and policy. Little is known about how trauma-informed approaches operate as an urban policy intervention and how they fit into broader political, institutional, and geographic shifts that have occurred in urban areas over the past several decades. This research seeks to fill that gap by documenting current, discourses, practices, and experiences of trauma informed approaches and bringing the empirical work in productive conversation with critical and urban geographic perspectives. To accomplish this, the study will proceed through ethnographic research, including key informant interviews, participant observations of trauma-informed professional trainings, and discourse analysis of trauma literature. The research will be carried out in the cities of Philadelphia, PA and New Orleans, LA. These cities will provide unique contexts for this research because Philadelphia is attempting to become the first "trauma-informed city", and New Orleans is implementing trauma approaches in light of the traumatic event and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. However, they are also like many urban centers in the US, having high rates of poverty, increased privatization of public services, and disproportionate neighborhood violence. By conducting a multi-sited ethnography, the research will situate trauma-informed approaches at the intersection of both theoretical and public policy concerns about urban poverty and healthy populations. Furthermore, findings about how trauma-informed approaches are being deployed by different organizations, at different scales of governance, and in different cities will be used to improve the practices of non-profits, governmental agencies, and other stakeholders in urban areas.