Katherine B. Hankins

Guest Editorial: Geographies of Citizenship

Citizenship is a political concept and category of social analysis that is subject to a wide range of theoretical and practical interpretations. Inflected with various traditions of thought that have been in dialogue for centuries, the fundamentally geographical concept of citizenship mediates, in different guises, between self and society, inclusion and exclusion, private and public. Periodic renewal of academic interest in citizenship in response to global political and economic change highlights tensions between enduring ideals of citizenship and the contingent conditions under which citizenship is understood and practised. Geographers have distinguished between formal and socio-cultural dimensions of citizenship to contrast the formal uniformity of citizen rights and obligations with socio-spatial differentiation in the experience of citizenship (Painter and Philo, 1995; Pincetl, 1994; Kofman, 1995). Doing so highlights the unevenness of citizens’ access to political, civil and social rights (Painter and Philo, 1995; after Marshall and Bottomore, 1950/1992) and the ways in which discourses of citizenship are leveraged in everyday life to effect inclusion and exclusion in various political communities (Kofman, 1995; Clark, 1994; Secor, 2003). Geographers have investigated the interplay of formal, socio-cultural and discursive dimensions of citizenship with both implicit and explicit attention to place, space and scale. Expanding on earlier geographical engagement with citizenship, the papers in this Special Issue of Space & Polity consider how different political subjectivities are fostered across spaces and scales of citizenship, and investigate how these subjectivities are negotiated in tension with formal provisions for citizenship. The papers included in this Special Issue examine how the interaction of formal and socio-cultural dimensions of citizenship shapes social space in a range of settings. These papers offer insight into the spatial constitution of citizenship as political borders are both formally redrawn and reimagined in popular discourse. They provide empirical examinations of the interaction between state-centred definitions of the rights, obligations and membership requirements of citizenship and the discursive and active practices of citizenship as they unfold in different times and spaces—from contemporary Nigeria to post-9-11 US. They share a complex treatment of the conditions under which citizenship has become reimagined and practised in different settings. In order to locate the contribution

Making space, making race: reconstituting white privilege in Buckhead, Atlanta

The comfortable relationship between the overwhelmingly white, southern Atlanta neighborhood of Buckhead and a major hub of nightlife in the region unraveled in the early 2000s as the entire nightclub cluster was delegitimized, discursively constructed as dangerous and out of control, and ultimately razed to make space for luxury shopping. This paper sets out to query what social and cultural relations account for this massive and unpredicted reconfiguration of urban space in the epicenter of wealth, whiteness, and power in Atlanta. By mobilizing the concept of the socio-spatial dialectic (Soja 1980, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70: 207–225), we draw on Pulidos (2000, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90: 12–40) work on the construction and perpetuation of white privilege to argue that the racialized production of space is a relevant framework for understanding the processes at work in Buckhead. We argue that race was an unstated but deeply important social relation shaping the process by which this particular space was remade. In so doing, we seek to advance the literature on whiteness by demonstrating the ways in which it articulates with the political economy of cities in the present conjuncture.

‘Gentrification with Justice’: An Urban Ministry Collective and the Practice of Place-making in Atlanta’s Inner-city Neighbourhoods

Scholars and policy-makers have increasingly sought to understand the relationship between poverty and place in the inner city. This paper examines the spatiality of an anti-poverty strategy called ‘gentrification with justice’ and implemented by an urban ministry collective in three neighbourhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This place-based approach centres on the movement of middle-class ‘strategic neighbours’ into impoverished neighbourhoods as a way to transform the local socio-spatial dialectic of poverty. The urban ministry collective draws upon notions of diverse community, social justice, the ‘where’ of faithful practice and a faith-governed market in seeking to redevelop neighbourhoods. Based on archival analysis and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with leaders and members of the urban ministry collective, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the place-making role that faith-motivated actors play in local contexts of poverty.

The Restructuring of Retail Capital and the Street

In recent years retail geography has featured theoretically rich debates about the restructuring of retail capital and the ways in which this restructuring has changed the dynamics of retailing. New spatial forms of retailing have emerged: the redeveloped retail street in the American urban landscape is one such form. National and multinational chain stores are invading small, main street spaces, which has economic and cultural implications for retailers and consumers. Old Town Pasadena in Pasadena, California, is examined as a case study to trace investment and disinvestment in the retail space of Colorado Boulevard throughout the twentieth century. In addition to archival documents, assessed land and improvement values are examined to reveal the changing dynamics of retail spatiality over a 100-year period.

Regime Politics in Geography

At the current conjuncture of neoliberal urbanism, when more than 20 years have passed since scholars identified the retrenchment of the federal state from urban affairs and the shift from urban government to urban governance, those of us engaged in questions of urban politics have much yet to learn about the power relations in American cities. At the same time, we must recognize those key concepts and frameworks that have shaped our ability to understand both the processes involved in urban politics and the expressions of those processes, as they are manifest in concrete places and often, literally, in places made of concrete. The urban regime, as explained by Clarence Stone a quarter century ago in Regime Politics, is one such concept, as illustrated in a very compelling empirical investigation, that has shaped the lexicon of how we understand cities. Stone’s contribution came along at a time when geographers were grappling with understanding the local and the global and their relationship to capitalism. Geographers engaged regime theory in fits and starts with other conceptual innovations in the field, including the regulation approach, flat ontologies, and relational sense of place. If we apply these three conceptual innovations to the regime approach, as I argue we should, then we get a much more robust conceptual tool to understand the contemporary urban political landscape.

Creative democracy and the quiet politics of the everyday

ABSTRACT John Dewey envisioned creative democracy as a process of agonistic engagement, and Bob Lake shares Dewey’s optimism for the possibilities of creative democracy. In this response, I suggest that scholars should look beyond the obvious moments of democratic political engagement, whether activism in the public square or in the occupied park, to pay attention to the quiet politics of the everyday, where everyday decisionmaking by individuals and communities can gradually, episodically, change dominant hegemonic norms and understandings, proviing new understandings for social change. I highlight several examples, including the Settlement house movement from the late 19th century and intentional neighboring from the twenty-first century, that illustrate the kind of daily work that brings together different social classes and ethnicities in a situation of sharing and working toward conditions of equality and new ways of living in the world.

“These Maps Talk for Us:” Participatory Action Mapping as Civic Engagement Practice

Geographers have long been associated with mapping and cartography, because the visual representation of space fits neatly into the wide-ranging discipline that engages both the physical and the social worlds. Mapmaking remained in the domain of experts for centuries until the advent of new mapping technologies, which have widened the possibilities for mapmaking from experts and nonexperts alike. Simply widening participation in mapmaking does not necessarily democratize the knowledge-production process, however, as scholars have recently argued. What is required, we suggest, are critically trained geographers who take seriously both the conventions of professional cartography and the power relations embedded in and reflected in the map-making process and in maps themselves. We name participatory action mapping (PAM) as a methodology that seeks to be as effective in advancing the mapping needs of the public as it is critical in evaluating the processes through which maps are produced. PAM is a practice of civic engagement that borrows from community mapping and public participatory geographic information systems and that is deeply informed by participatory action research. We highlight the contours of PAM through a case study of our work with the Westside Atlanta Land Trust in Atlanta, Georgia.