Andrew Deener

Commerce as the Structure and Symbol of Neighborhood Life: Reshaping the Meaning of Community in Venice, California

Abbot Kinney Boulevard is a central commercial artery that serves as the structure and symbol of neighborhood life in Venice, a coastal community in Los Angeles. In recent years, the street has become an upscale commercial scene made up of independently owned, small–scale shops and restaurants. New residents and merchants work to preserve this new “anticorporate” commercial culture as an authentic version of community life, labeling its distinct identity as “Brand Venice.” Commerce generates community vitality, but this article raises the question, whose definition of community? The construction of a neighborhood brand has consequences. Building on over 3 years of ethnographic and historical research, this article shows how local actors set Abbot Kinney Boulevard on a course of economic transformation by reshaping the meaning of community in such a way that now excludes long–time, lower–income residents who define the new neighborhood identity as an inauthentic version of Venice community life.

The 'black section' of the neighborhood Collective visibility and collective invisibility as sources of place identity

■ The public identity of a neighborhood does not always reflect its demographic composition. Some groups sustain their collective visibility as they experience demographic decline. Oakwood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles where African Americans once made up the largest segment of the population, is still known as the ‘black section of Venice’ despite the fact that Latinos have outnumbered African Americans since 1980 and whites have outnumbered them since 1990. Historical and ethnographic research illuminates the divergent processes through which African Americans and Latinos became associated with Oakwood, established qualitatively distinct ties to the area, and maintained differing degrees of influence over its local culture. African Americans’ social institutions, political organizations, visible patterns of public interaction, and periodic celebrations and commemorations enabled them to sustain their claim to the neighborhood, while Latino immigrants’ marginal citizenship status, avoidance of public spaces, and affiliation with other places prevented them from attaining collective visibility.

Forging Distinct Paths Towards Authentic Identity Outsider Art, Public Interaction, and Identity Transition in an Informal Market Context

This article demonstrates how boardwalk artists who arrive at Venice Beach through various biographical channels adapt to an informal market context by learning economic skills that enable them to present themselves as “Venice Beach Artists.” Although the boardwalk market blurs original biographical distinctions between people who come to share the same market identity in the eyes of visitors, individuals also pursue different versions of authentic identity as Venice Beach Artists. Interlinking studies of outsider art, public interaction, and identity transition, I examine how artists forge distinct paths towards the achievement of authentic identity. Some artists create standards of local authenticity by prioritizing their attachment to the context of Venice Beach and immersing themselves into the neighborhood counter culture. Others manufacture cosmopolitan authenticity by prioritizing their attachment to their perceptions of a successful art career.

The Uses of Ambiguity in Sociological Theorizing: Three Ethnographic Approaches:

Claims of causality and generalizability are the primary means through which sociologists triumph over ambiguity. Yet ambiguity also has significant uses in the process of theorizing. This article identifies and examines three ethnographic approaches: (1) Ambiguity in shared situations highlights how subjects create and resolve disruptions in face-to-face interactions, (2) ambiguity as a transitional social form addresses certain stages and spaces as persistently ambiguous types of situations and phenomena, and (3) ambiguity as separating means from ends identifies mechanisms that conceal from subjects the risks and limitations of their own behaviors and choices in their everyday lives. Each of these approaches presents patterns in how ethnographers use analytic techniques to make sense of where ambiguities come from and how they can be turned into sociological cases. By making these approaches explicit, researchers can become better equipped at using them as provocations for sociological theorizing.

Review symposium on There Goes the Gayborhood

Gays come to the city; this is an old story. But how they come and what happens next, that is a newer story and one that informs Amin Ghaziani’s There Goes the Gayborhood? For urban scholars, those schooled in the classics of urban sociology in particular, the case of the gayborhood goes against the inherited analytic grain—in ways taken up with wide-ranging intelligence by a group of critics whose remarks follow this introduction. The distinctive demographic and cultural texture of a particular group has transformed the meaning of places and their occupants. Before there were gay people, there were “homosexuals” relegated to the “zone of transition”—the city’s social dumping ground where investments ceased while awaiting the higher and better uses to come. Granted some degree of refuge through this neglect, gay people’s beings could not be discussed much less be featured in urban analysis. The muck of deviance was residual. What a flip! In the new model of urban dynamism, gays come to be branded as creative heart. The ethnic groups and remaining subalterns may continue the trudge across the concentric rings and into the suburban sectors, but their distinctive potential dissipates as inter-mating and cordiality take their toll. There is, of course replenishment through the new migrants from around the world, sometimes celebrated for their “energies” (or at least cheap labor). But settlements of the other Americans—the great white washed—have become dynamically useless. The opinion surveys reveal that for no other group has public attitude so shifted as toward gays and lesbians—in an overwhelmingly positive direction. Indeed, the stigma system has almost been turned on its head: gays (the men in particular) are where it is happening. Good economic and networking cred comes from associating with their lifestyle, whether as gayborhood resident, once resident, or just part of the alliance. Of course, as Ghaziani notes, the US is not free of gay oppression, and some of it is systemic and violent. But the gayborhood, as it exists and is widely interpreted, sits as shining beacon: the ghetto on the hill not only for those whose sexuality makes them dream of such a place, but for anyone who dreams that powerful shifts in social and political life are possible.

The Architecture of Ethnographic Knowledge: Narrowing Down Data and Contexts in Search of Sociological Cases

Building ethnographic knowledge is a tacit epistemic process involving two steps: narrowing down the framework through which ethnographers hold constant empirical units as social relationships of the same kind, and paring down the boundaries of time and space to contextualize the data as levels of analysis. This article explicates the workings of and relationships between these hermeneutic and phenomenological processes as the underlying architecture of ethnographic knowledge. It shows that narrowing down data and contexts is fundamental to moving beyond the substantive contribution to the development of sociological cases. In this regard, case development is paradoxical: Narrowing down is necessary for generalizing up.

Street Level: Los Angeles in the Twenty-First CenturyStreet Level: Los Angeles in the Twenty-First Century, by SullivanRob. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. 190 pp.

immigrants are seen as less deserving of help. Although the idea of a social welfare covenant might be less relevant in the U.S. context, the experimental survey model could be used to understand whether treatment of immigrants varies similarly. At the least, replicating this work in the U.S. context would provide interesting data with which to compare the findings from this book. In their final move to understand the attitudes and behaviors of Danish citizens toward immigrants, the authors of Paradoxes reexamine the concept of tolerance and, in the end, argue for the necessity of ‘‘inclusive tolerance.’’ The theoretical discussion of this concept and the uses and abuses of the word ‘‘tolerant’’ is a high point in the book. The authors’ definition of inclusive tolerance includes affective and active components: affect involves thinking well of minorities, positive actions require treating minorities well and fully including them as members of the community. The authors make a compelling case for a return to studying tolerance in an era of intolerance. Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy provides a fascinating glimpse into the Danish Cartoon Crisis specifically and support for the political rights of Muslims and immigrants in general that would be of interest to a wide audience. The authors’ writing is accessible, frank, and refreshingly straightforward, making it suitable for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses. Because the authors are particularly attuned to conflicting explanations they offer reasoned rebuttals and careful critique of their own assumptions. Students would benefit from reading academic writing that bravely confronts alternative explanations for findings and employs an inventive experimental survey design. Street Level: Los Angeles in the Twenty-First Century, by Rob Sullivan. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. 190 pp.

149.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781409448402.

149.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781409448402.

Seeing Cities Change: Local Culture and Class

the processes by which they do it. It remains unclear to this reader how the concept of collective axiology captures either this potential for war or peace in all societies and the power contest behind the processes of cultural interpretation that fuel both war and peace. My own theoretical hesitations aside, the collection nevertheless catches the field at an exciting time, as it and the world are just beginning to articulate a fuller conception of the cultural demands and support for peace. The variety of areas for study nearly overwhelm and include public discourses, history education, personal discourse, media discourse on global poverty, media discourse and images, social marketing for peace, and peace communication within war zones. The styles and methods of this collection vary greatly as well, ranging from Marc Gopin’s gripping interview with a Palestinian peacemaker’s journey, to more turgid theoretical accounts detailing the broad theoretical contours of a culture of peace. Particularly strong chapters should be noted. Michael Karlberg details the necessity of a broad framing of social life with the ‘‘social body’’ frame that requires cooperation and portrays human actors as interdependent, rather than the two dominant frames, social command and social contest, that stress obedience to authority and the dictates of market forces and competition, respectively. Korostelina’s chapter demonstrates how history education for peace sheds important light on how collective memory is constructed and transmitted and can form the foundation for attitudes and the possible foundations for future conflicts through its influence on national identity via public discourse about the past. Finally, Gopin shows the crucial importance of critical self-reflection for those victimized by violence in order to avoid perpetuating cycles of destruction. As with any edited collection, many readers will be unsatisfied with the breadth and scope of the book’s theoretical and empirical range—the book’s contributors gallop along, leaving many questions unresolved and lines of inquiry unexplored. Additionally many sociologist readers will find the book’s obvious normative perspective and commitments challenging, but to work in the area of peace studies is to generally operate in an academic area of inquiry that is comfortable and explicit in its privileging of peace over war. Uneven at times, this collection nevertheless is worthy of attention to those interested in peace and culture first and foremost. It captures a diversity of approaches and disciplines in the nascent academic movement to better understand the culture of peace, a culture very much worth our understanding and promotion, both for theoreticians and practitioners. Selections from the book may be useful for reading in advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in culture, conflict transformation, or peacebuilding.