COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

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