Middle-Class Poverty Politics: Making Place, Making People.

In a context of rising inequality and economic vulnerability in the United States, we explore links between class identities, urban place-making, and poverty politics. We ask how class difference and poverty politics are made and remade in neighborhood-level place-making and with what implications f...

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Published in:Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 105; no. 1; pp. 123 - 144
Main Authors: Elwood, Sarah, Lawson, Victoria, Nowak, Samuel
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Jan2015
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Jan2015
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        10.1080/00045608.2014.968945
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        atl: Middle-Class Poverty Politics: Making Place, Making People.
      aug:
        au:
          Elwood, Sarah
          Lawson, Victoria
          Nowak, Samuel
        affil:
          Department of Geography, University of Washington
          Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles
      su:
        Seattle (Wash.)
        United States
        Middle class
        Class politics
        Poverty
        Racial identity of white people
      sug:
        subj:
          Middle class
          Class politics
          Poverty
          Racial identity of white people
          Seattle (Wash.)
          United States
      keyword:
        cross-class alliance
        middle class
        poverty politics
        relational poverty
        whiteness
        alianza de clase
        blancura
        clase media
        pobreza relacional
        políticas de pobreza
        políticas de pobreza
        cross-class alliance
        middle class
        poverty politics
        relational poverty
        whiteness
        alianza de clase
        blancura
        clase media
        pobreza relacional
        políticas de pobreza
        políticas de pobreza
      ab: In a context of rising inequality and economic vulnerability in the United States, we explore links between class identities, urban place-making, and poverty politics. We ask how class difference and poverty politics are made and remade in neighborhood-level place-making and with what implications for boundaries and alliances between middle-class and poorer residents. Place-making refers to activities through which residents work to produce the neighborhood they want, such as participating in community organization or initiatives, interacting with their neighbors, and supporting or opposing particular changes in the neighborhood. We use a relational poverty framework to show that middle-class place-making reproduces normatively white middle-class place imaginaries but always also produces poverty and class politics. We extend prior research on middle-class poverty politics, which focuses primarily on class boundary making, to investigate whether progressive, alliance-building moments ever emerge. Drawing on case study research with two Seattle neighborhoods, we trace the ways in which place-making practices situate middle-class and poorer actors in relation to one another. We show that these interactions might continue to govern poverty and poorer people but might also challenge normative understandings of poverty and sow the seeds for cross-class alliances. Through comparative analysis of the neighborhoods as dense sites of class formation, we show how particular histories, place imaginaries, and built or institutional infrastructures allow (or foreclose) questioning and reworking of normative class and race formations and poverty politics to pave the way for cross-class alliance.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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