At Risk

Christopher D. Berk. At Risk. Under contract with the University of California Press. Expected completion 2027.

Overview

At Risk is an ethnographic study of a community boarding school designed to interrupt cycles of poverty and violence by reshaping children’s everyday environments. Blending political theory, sociolegal analysis, and a decade-long follow-up with former students, the book examines how ambitious projects of social repair operate in practice.

At the center of the study is a persistent tension: while the school aims to cultivate democratic agency, it relies on highly structured and often authoritarian forms of governance. By tracing conflicts in classrooms, cottages, and families, the book asks what happens when institutional design becomes the primary instrument of reform.

Central Question

How do institutions designed to help “at-risk” youth balance empowerment with control, and what forms of political inequality persist within those efforts?

Contribution

This project contributes to debates in:

political theory of institutions
childhood, dependency, and responsibility
race and inequality
social reproduction and mobility
the governance of vulnerable populations

Who might find this useful?

Scholars working on:

youth governance and child welfare
educational and residential institutions
inequality and opportunity
participatory reform and its limits