COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
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contested racialized images of their housing complex and its residents held by Caucasian<br />
activists in the surrounding area, thus showing how racial ideologies are constructed,<br />
enacted, and rearticulated by those in power.<br />
“Urban anthropology is the anthropological subspecialty which focuses on the<br />
development and context of social relations in industrial society” (Susser 1982b:8).<br />
Much research has been conducted in the United States or “at home” by American social<br />
scientists. Anthropologists had worked at home in the past, and by 1980 a growing<br />
amount of these studies have accumulated, and is quickly increasing (Moffat 1992:205).<br />
Smart and Smart (2003:263-285) emphasize that the “urbanization of peoples<br />
traditionally studied by anthropology, combined with growing legitimacy for<br />
‘anthropology at home,’ resulted in rapid growth of urban anthropology from the<br />
1970’s.” A key question within contemporary urban theory, culminating from urban<br />
research, has been what the relationship is between two aspects of the city in 1) the built<br />
environment and 2) the social life that characterizes urban life (Nylund 2001:221).<br />
Performing research in urban localities “at home” can help to better understand the<br />
relationship between the urban environment and social life.<br />
Emerging from urban studies, the phenomenon of gentrification has received a<br />
great deal of scholarly attention over the last few decades. Revitalization of central-city<br />
neighborhoods has been one of the most publicized and debated urban developments in<br />
the last decade and has become the focus of bitter debate (Hodge 1981:188). And<br />
although “there are many benefits to revitalization, the process creates losers and<br />
winners” (Hodge 1981:188) . 3 A number of anthropologists performing research in urban<br />
7