ABSTRACTS FOR FEATURED PRESENTATIONS
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Fountains, Candy Stores, and Sand: Thoughts on Placemaking
by Mindy Thompson Fullilove People make their homes in cities by linking with others to create functional neighborhoods within which to live and work. In the early years of a city, citizens use their personal resources and social networks to create fire brigades, ambulances, and hospitals. As cities prosper, citizens are able to use their resources to hire people to do some of this work for them. At this point—and Seattle is at such a point—the role of citizen participation in placemaking can be obscured by the work of paid employees. Yet a healthy city requires the constant engagement of its inhabitants in keeping social networks strong, fighting injustice and tending the public spaces. Using examples from cities in the US and abroad, this talk examines the ways in which public, private and ephemeral spaces create vibrant and health-promoting urban life. Putting Knowledge in Its Place: An Epistemology of Placemaking in a Time of Globalization
by Devon G. Peña The study of place, and especially sense of place, has long been limited by the vagaries and niceties of anecdotal evidence and autobiographical narratives. Anthropologists and other social scientists have only recently developed a set of rigorous methods for the interdisciplinary scientific study of place. This paper examines a variety of anthropological approaches to the study of place and placemaking that involve the perspectives of local cultures and local knowledge. Of particular significance to such a project are contributions from the fields of environmental anthropology and ethno-ecology. This paper examines recent approaches to the ethno-ecological study of place-based knowledge and draws from the author’s own experiences in the historic acequia communities of the Upper Rio Grande bio-region and among Mesoamerican farmers in urban Los Angeles. The author argues that the study and protection of place and place-making are particularly urgent given the challenges of globalization and de-territorialization. The advocates of de-territorialization argue for the “end of the local” and the rise of globalized spaces and places. The author critiques these approaches and presents an alternative view based on his own collaborative and participative studies of “trasnsnational place-making” and the persistence of place-based local cultures. The paper concludes with some reflections on the future of place in the context of globalization and some modest recommendations for a subversive epistemology of place that values multigenerational communities that are epistemologically privileged holders and transmitters of the knowledge required for a just and sustainable society.
Keywords: traditional environmental knowledge, ethno-ecology, anthropology of place, local knowledge, place-based cultures, sustainable inhabitation, globalization, re-inhabitation From Dis-Placement to Dis-Ease: Embodiment of Historical Trauma among Indigenous Populations
by Karina L. Walters
American Indians and Alaska Natives have endured a succession of historically traumatic assaults and discriminatory events over time on their land, communities, families, and persons. Historical trauma combined with contemporary micro-aggressions and other discriminatory events can lead to a soul wound in relation to space, place, and identity. This presentation describes how historical trauma in relation to place and micro-aggressions in relation to space and representation impact indigenous embodiment of health and identity processes. The presentation also highlight how intergenerational historical trauma, micro-aggressions, and colonial trauma response were conceptualized in a community-driven and led HIV prevention study of urban American Indians living in the Northeastern part of the United States. Preliminary results indicate that these traumatic stressors related to space and place are associated with health-risk outcomes among American Indian individuals, families, and communities.
Keywords: historical trauma, mental health, micro-aggressions, American Indian, indigenous
ABSTRACTS FOR THEME SESSION PRESENTATIONS
Placemaking Theme Session
Interrogating HOPE VI: Explorations of Place and Social Justice in Public Housing
by JoDee G. Keller The stated objectives of the HOPE VI include lessening concentrations of poverty by promoting mixed-income communities; promoting “self-sufficiency,” which translates as the capacity to live outside of public housing; developing partnerships with other agencies to provide social and community services; and building sustainable communities. Contained within these objectives are assumptions about “success” as well as “pathology” and a distorted view of the nature of community found in public housing. Not taken into account are the assets of these communities, the attachment residents have to elements of the natural and built environment, the sense of belonging that comes with living in the same community for many years, and the experiences that many residents (particularly immigrant and refugee populations) have had prior to finding themselves in public housing. Based upon preliminary findings at one HOPE VI site, this paper explores differences between residents’ ideas of success and the official rhetoric of HOPE VI, the range of positive outcomes from the residents’ perspectives, and the relation between social support networks and the residents’ relocation experience.
Keywords: community, HOPE VI, public housing, social support networks Family, Household, and Domestic Function: Deconstructing and Demolishing Community in Salishan
by Elizabeth Brusco Anthropologists confronted with bewildering variation in the meaning of family and in the composition of households cross-culturally have struggled to generate models and definitions to work comparatively with this diversity and grapple theoretically with the notion of the “domestic.” Long before Carol Stack discovered extended kin networks, fosterage, and other strategies for survival in “The Flats,” anthropologists have recognized that domestic functions (such as economic cooperation, consumption, the socialization of children, and sexuality and reproduction) are not necessarily household-based, and may be spread out among many households or external to the household altogether. This paper examines some of the implications of these understandings to the process of relocation and reconstruction of Salishan, a HOPE VI site in Tacoma, Washington. What consequences will the goals of self-reliance, focus on individualism versus the collectivity, and materialism versus relationships implicit in HOPE VI policies have on a community where webs of interconnection often emerge from shared domestic functions between, among, or outside of households?
Keywords: domestic functions, public housing, anthropological approaches
Slippery Slopes and Shaky Ground: Being a Hope VI Evaluator
by Cathy J. Tashiro This paper addresses some problematic issues that can arise in the process of conducting a Hope VI evaluation. It focuses on the Salishan Hope VI project of Tacoma, Washington. Residents of Salishan are very low income, and include high numbers of racialized minorities, immigrants, elderly, and disabled. Many residents are not fluent in English. The paper pertains directly to the Place Matters conference focus on place and equity for diverse populations. In it, I reflect on field experiences in relationship to theoretical perspectives on ethics and evaluation. Issues include the relative power (or lack thereof) of various stakeholders and the nesting of the specifics of Hope VI projects within larger frameworks of insufficient funding for public housing and increased reliance on privatization. As a researcher with a philosophical commitment to community-based participatory research, I examine the tension between advocacy and evaluation.
Keywords: Hope VI, evaluation, ethics, advocacy “Moving three times is like having your house on fire once:” The Experience of Place and Displacement Among Public Housing Residents.*
by Lynne C. Manzo HOPE VI is a competitive grant program created by HUD to eradicate “severely distressed” public housing and to disperse pockets of poverty by creating new mixed-income developments. This means that existing public housing is demolished and residents must relocate. To date, HOPE VI has displaced tens of thousands of how-income households nationwide. While most research on HOPE VI focuses on relocation concerns and outcomes, the lived experience of place and the nature of the community being dismantled are less understood. However, a complete evaluation of this program’s impacts on residents must examine the meanings and functions of these communities before they are dismantled. This paper summarizes residents’ experiences of place in one site in the Pacific Northwest before redevelopment. Findings suggest that this community was one where residents laid down roots, formed place attachments and created bonds of mutual support with neighbors, contrary to typical depictions of severely distressed housing. Implications for housing policy are discussed.
Keywords: public housing, place meaning, displacement * This paper is co-authored with Rachel Garshick Kleit, Associate Professor in the UW Daniel Evans School of Public Affairs, and Dawn Couch, doctoral student in the UW Department of Geography.
Place and Power Theme Session
Ethnographies of Urban Homeless: Bare Life in Green Spaces
by Sarah Dooling
Using Agamben’s (1998) notion of bare life as my theoretical frame, I explore two issues: (1) the disconnection between notions of home articulated by people living in green spaces and the codified notions of homeless espoused by government and planning agencies; and (2) the tensions in green spaces between squatters who have choose to live there because all other options are not viable and the codified notions of green spaces espoused by the city parks department, who manage these spaces, and by the local, housed citizenry who participate in planning for future green spaces in the city. I present the notion of ecological gentrification, which I define as the process of organizing space that purposefully neglects the lives of the most vulnerable while espousing an environmental ethic. I conclude by asking: how can the practice of urban planning resist the production of bare life for homeless people, and present four recommendations?
Keywords: homeless, home, bare life, ecological gentrification
Expulsion from Skateopia: Urban Skateboarding and the Role of Law in Determining Children’s Place in the City
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by John Carr
Young peoples’ claims upon public space have long posed a paradoxical challenge to the ordering of such “adult” places as the city. On one hand, public groups of young people have long been associated with disorder, crime, and delinquency. On the other hand, children are revered as a population deserving of unique societal protections and prerogatives. This paradoxical challenge to social order finds a particularly disruptive embodiment in the urban skateboarder. The youth, mobility, and visibility of urban skateboarders pose a host of challenges to efforts to regulate and control public places. This paper proposes to explore the evolution of this challenge as a product of legally articulated logics of private property. In short, this paper argues that, in seeking a place for themselves in the city, young urban skaters have transformed skating and the city itself, in response to developments in the legal assertion and regulation of property rights.
Keywords: Children, law, public space, regulation, order, skateboarding Is There a Place for Politics in Cyberspace? Cyberlibertarianism and the Disembodied Public Sphere
by Kris Erickson Computer-enabled spaces labeled “new media” seem to offer unprecedented opportunities for organized political dissent; they are spatially decentralized, relatively inexpensive to access, relatively ubiquitous, and offer a comfortable amount of anonymity to publishers and users. Many activists have argued that these features make computer-enabled spaces ideal for grassroots political activity, and that they should be protected and expanded to ensure a healthy democracy. This paper seeks to unpack these assumptions about cyberspace as democratically-enabling, by exploring how this vision compares to other places where people act politically. Does new media provide a suitable analogue to traditional “public space?” In what ways might issues of power and identity such as patriarchy and racism carry over into virtual spaces? Finally, why might a particular attention to “place” help to problematize hegemonic understandings about the inclusiveness of political forums in cyberspace?
Keywords: cyberspace, democracy, communication Sense of Place Theme Session
Workplace Considerations in Access to Employment Opportunity for the Racially and Economically Marginalized Workforce
by Anna Haley-Lock This paper reviews the influence of the contemporary US workplace upon individuals’ experience with low-wage work. Drawing on research on firm-level labor markets and work-life conflict, I assert that inequalities in employment opportunity linked to race and class can be fruitfully understood with a structural, specifically organizational, lens. This approach conceptualizes individuals’ work outcomes—obtaining, staying, and prospering at work—as substantially governed by workplace benefits and conditions; availability of public employment supports; and resources and obligations reflected in workers’ families and communities. Recent scholarly attention to such structural factors helps us understand how the benefits of work can become “racialized” apart from overtly prejudicial, interpersonal acts (Glass, 1999). Such knowledge is critical for informing efforts to enhance labor market opportunities for workers of diverse identities and means. I discuss examples of governmental policy and private firms’ human resource strategies to illustrate the potential effects of workplace on the racially and economically marginalized workforce.
Keywords: job design and compensation; firm-level labor markets; workforce diversity Racializing Place and Spatializing Race: Narrating Neighborhoods in Tacoma, WA
by Serin D. Houston This paper takes inspiration from interviews I conducted with mixed-race households in Tacoma, Washington, a city where the percentage of mixed-race marriages exceeds twice the national average. Specifically, I explore the characterizations provided by mixed-race households of three highly racialized Tacoma neighborhoods, namely the Hilltop, the North End, and the Eastside. I foreground the slippage between the diversity and integration described within mixed-race households and the mono-racial segregated landscape depicted outside the household in an effort to demonstrate (1) the multiplicity of racial performances for mixed-race households, (2) the ways that race is always both absent and present, and (3) the places where race gains legibility within the city of Tacoma. In highlighting these discursive formations of neighborhoods, I aim to engage with the simultaneous processes of racializing place and spatializing race.
Keywords: mixed-race households, discursive formations, absence and presence, Tacoma, WA Rural Leaders, Rural Places: Problem, Privilege, and Possibility
by Kathleen Budge This paper examines the relationship between rural schools and communities through the complementary lenses of "place" and "rurality." The author describes a case study of the influence of rurality and a sense of place on leaders' beliefs about the purposes of local schooling and their concomitant theories of action in one rural school district. Interview data presented show that despite their portrayal of life in the valley as a privilege, most leaders viewed their place as presenting more problems than possibilities in the lives, and for the futures, of most students. The paper concludes with the suggestion that a critical leadership of place may best address the strengths and challenges found in much of rural America.
Keywords: rural education, rurality, leadership, sense of place Malama I Ka ‘Aina (The Love for the Land): Nurturing Leadership & Empowerment among Young Adults
by Alma M.O. Trinidad
Underprivileged young adults, such as Native Hawaiians, deal with an array of issues such as discrimination and limited exposures to opportunities in their communities. Place-based disparities such as lack of high quality youth programs, education, and job opportunities are immense, yet cultural and community factors (e.g. social and cultural capital, sense of cultural community, and community attachment) may not only promote positive youth development but also serve as venues of empowerment and transformation. Utilizing a case study approach, this study attempts to establish a theoretical framework that consists of three dimensions (values, process, and products) for youth programs. This provides a paradigm shift in youth programs and interventions. It promotes placemaking activities such as providing a “space” for a critical dialogue about one’s community, especially if it is one that has been severely underserved. It further provides a framework in building social capital and community capacity among young people.
Keywords: Native Hawaiians, leadership development, empowerment, young adults
Methods of Inquiry Theme Session
The Role of the Press in Placemaking: Seattle’s International Examiner and the Construction of the International District in the 1970s
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by Gerald J. Baldasty and Kristin L. Gustafson
This research focuses on the role of communication, and specifically the ethnic press, with placemaking. It asks the questions: Do ethnic media play an important role in placemaking? If so, what role? How do they fulfill this role? This project focuses on the International Examiner, a Seattle Asian American newspaper established in the mid-1970s, in the city’s International District. The research draws on general contextual histories and the first five years of International Examiner publications. Previous research demonstrated the newspaper’s content and its personnel were part of an alliance of people and groups who articulated why the district mattered and deserved to be defended, protected, preserved, and enhanced. The Examiner was a “place” where the entire movement came together. This project uses contextual histories and newspaper content to demonstrate how this ethnic newspaper constructed a place—the International District—that was (1) physical, (2) historical, and (3) cultural.
Keywords: Ethnic media, alternative media, social movement, Asian American, identity, place Contestation, Negotiation, and Historicity: Discursive Construction of Seattle’s International District
by Hye-Kyung Kang
This paper explores immigrant community identity development by examining discursive constructions of the International District (ID) of Seattle, WA. Applying post-structural and post-colonial theoretical frameworks, it traces the intertextual chains through which the subject position of the ID was and is produced, deployed, and changed via a critical discourse analysis of mainstream and community newspapers, in-person interviews with community members, community history archives, and government documents. The analysis of data suggests that the ID as a subject is produced and sustained through multiple, contested, and contingent articulations of history, contribution, and change. Similarly, the ID is constructed through constant processes of engagement, contestation, and negotiation between the community and the various larger social and political structures, as well as among community members themselves. The discursive changes produced by such processes illuminate the possibility that immigrant communities may be able to change the discourses that produce them.
Keywords: community identity, immigrant communities, community mobilization, critical discourse analysis
Involving Marginalized Social Groups in the Making of Place
by Jeffrey Hou
This paper examines the challenges and opportunities of involving marginalized social groups in the design of urban environments, focusing on three selected cases—a park design in Oakland, California, a design workshop with Tent City residents in Seattle, and an intergenerational design workshop involving Asian youths and elders in Seattle’s International District. Specifically, the paper discusses the constraint of time, cross-cultural communication, appropriate tools, building of trust, and methods of outreach as the common challenges facing participatory design involving marginalized social groups. It also highlights empowering, enabling, co-learning, and inclusive design as the main benefits of engaging diverse social groups in a participatory design process. The paper suggests that through improved methods and repertoire of engagement, participatory design involving marginalized social groups can serve as a tool toward creating a diverse and inclusive urban environment.
Keywords: participation, community design, diversity, placemaking Life in Public Housing Neighborhoods: Views of Young People
by Nicole Nicotera
This paper explores children’s perceptions of the supports and challenges within three public housing neighborhoods (N = 45; male = 55.6%; mean age = 10.44; Latino = 55.5%; Asian = 17.8%; African American = 13.3%; White = 13.3%). Study participants responded to structured, open-ended sentence stems to create written accounts of their experiences of their neighborhoods. Additionally, a smaller sample of participants (n = 12) photographed their neighborhoods and provided narratives about those photos. Data from the full sample of young people were analyzed via constant comparative analysis. The photographs and related narratives are presented in unanalyzed form as anecdotes to the results from the larger sample. Results demonstrate strengths in the social networks defined by the children, as well as the existence of daily neighborhood challenges. The two methodologies, written accounts and visual accounts, are examined in light of methodologies for documenting children’s perspectives in an authentic manner. Keywords: neighborhoods, children, visual methods, urban
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