Relational Society Project

Jody Hoffer Gittell, PI
Shyamal Sharma, Co-PI
Relational Coordination Research Collaborative
The Heller School, Brandeis University

"My hometown was, in the 1950s, a passable embodiment of the American Dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for all the kids in town, whatever their background. A half-century later, however, life in Port Clinton, Ohio, is a split-screen American nightmare, a community in which kids from the wrong side of the tracks that bisect the town can barely imagine the future that awaits the kids from the right side of the tracks. And the story of Port Clinton turns out to be sadly typical of America... No single town or city could possibly represent all of America, and Port Clinton in the 1950s was hardly paradise... But social class was not a major constraint on opportunities.”