"Locating Decline and Growth of Civic Associations in Communities: The Case of the YMCA, 1950-2000."

David Joseph-Goteiner, PhD student in sociology at UC Berkeley, will describe his study of the YMCA and its nationwide decline in membership and relate those findings to Rotary.  He  studies the dynamics of contemporary communities from the micro (apartment building, neighborhood) to the meso (community organizations across the US) to the macro (global social movements) scales. He is preparing his dissertation prospectus at the intersection of organizations, culture, and technology. His master's paper is titled "Locating Decline and Growth of Civic Associations in Communities: The Case of the YMCA, 1950-2000." It attempts to better isolate the causes of decline and growth in civic associations by focusing on one national organization with many local chapters, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The discovery of great internal heterogeneity across YMCA chapters implies that the national fates of many organizations are not the result of a common, global force (e.g., television or state intervention), but are the net outcome of many discrete factors. Before coming to UC Berkeley, David completed a master's in sociology at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (in 2018) and received his bachelor's from Yale University (in 2014).