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

该项目将调查和分析社会服务中的创伤知情方法如何改变对城市贫困的理解和应对。在过去的十年里，在美国的非营利组织和政府机构中，创伤知情的方法越来越普遍。在城市地区最大力地实施了了解创伤情况的办法，以应对与城市贫穷有关的消极方面，包括缺乏身心健康资源、社区暴力和住房不稳定。创伤知情方法试图通过治疗干预和使现有机构和组织更适应创伤来纠正这些问题。通过关键的地理方法，本研究将调查创伤知情干预措施如何在不同的地理尺度（即个人，家庭，社区，机构或州）实施，以及它们在城市地区的影响。该项目将有助于在城市地理学和更广泛的城市政策方面正在进行的关于贫困的原因和补救措施的辩论。由于创伤知情方法对精神和神经生物学健康的关注，该项目还将有助于地理学中关于健康和生物学与社会和空间现象之间关系的文献的增长。特别地，它将研究人们与城市空间和城市进程的日常相互作用如何影响个人和社区健康，以及创伤知情方法影响整个城市变化的能力。目前对创伤知情方法的研究集中在具体项目的评估或实施上，并侧重于社会工作和政策领域的最佳实践。关于创伤知情方法作为一种城市政策干预是如何运作的，以及它们如何适应过去几十年来城市地区发生的更广泛的政治、制度和地理变化，人们知之甚少。本研究试图通过记录当前的、话语、实践和创伤知情方法的经验来填补这一空白，并将实证工作与批判性和城市地理视角进行富有成效的对话。为了实现这一目标，本研究将通过民族志研究进行，包括对关键信息提供者的访谈，对创伤信息专业培训的参与者观察，以及对创伤文献的话语分析。这项研究将在宾夕法尼亚州的费城和洛杉矶的新奥尔良进行。这些城市将为这项研究提供独特的背景，因为费城正试图成为第一个“创伤信息城市”，而新奥尔良正在根据卡特里娜飓风的创伤事件和后果实施创伤方法。然而，它们也像美国的许多城市中心一样，贫困率高，公共服务私有化程度高，社区暴力不成比例。通过开展多地点人种学研究，该研究将把创伤知情的方法置于理论和公共政策对城市贫困和健康人口的关注的交叉点。此外，关于不同组织、不同治理规模和不同城市如何部署创伤知情方法的研究结果将用于改进非营利组织、政府机构和城市地区其他利益相关者的实践。

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.