ments were exchanged along with recipes. Eventually the gardeners packed up the little buffet and returned to their vegetables. But the meeting and eating had energized the group: advice, jokes, and planting techniques bounced from plot to plot and the garden was abuzz with shared purpose.
PLANTING CROPS, GROWING COMMUNITY Researchers have a technical term for the energy and interconnection I saw in the garden that day. They call it “collective efficacy”—the social cohesion among neighbors that makes them more willing to act on behalf of the com- mon good. The term was first coined by Robert Sampson, a so- ciologist who studied crime patterns in Chicago in the late 1990s. Sampson and colleagues were perplexed by the dramatic variance in crime rates they observed from neighborhood to neighborhood, even within the same socioeconomic groups. Some low-income communities experienced virtually no violent crime, while others were plagued by it. Similarly, although crimes occurred less often
in wealthier areas, some affluent neighborhoods consis- tently saw more assaults and burglaries than others. The researchers surveyed thousands of Chicago resi-
dents to better understand this variability. They concluded that what makes the biggest difference in crime rates is not a community’s economic status but its collective efficacy—a social cohesion that fosters a community-held belief that residents can make a difference by working together. A neighborhood with a high degree of collective efficacy is more likely to have a volunteer community crime watch, to report suspicious activities to the police, or to alert a par- ent if a child is skipping school. University of Colorado researcher Jill Litt believes the public health benefits associated with community garden- ing—increased vegetable consumption, but also a range of other health outcomes, including lower rates of alcoholism, work absenteeism, and dementia—all stem from a garden’s power to foster this sense of cohesion. Even more intrigu- ing, Litt’s research suggests that collective efficacy can be viral, spreading to community members who never even step through the garden gates.
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