When Sociologists Come to Richmond, for the Southern Sociological Society Meetings in April this year, they are unwittingly conferencing in the midst of urban change. Since the 1970s small cities like Richmond have invested a lot of time and money into cultivating a sense of place. Projects to revitalize the downtown business district, to unite racially segregated neighborhoods, and to draw in consumers and tourists have thrived and failed in turn. Richmond development in this era evidence a struggle between development philosophies that has lead a patchwork of ‘mega-projects’ and locally focused small-scale projects of new urbanism. At the Southern Sociological Society Meetings to be held at the Marriott in April, they will live, work and play in the liminal space between Jackson Ward and Downtown, between New Urbanist designs and mega-projects, between wealth and hardship.
As sociologists, they will be interested in issues of urban change, social inequalities of race, class and gender, and in the local economy. At the same time, as conference goers, they are the target audience for Richmond's projects of place. As a sociologist and consumer, as an analyst of place-making and a lover of authentic locality, I created a guide to Richmond for Sociologists reproduced here:
Richmond Marriott | 500 East Broad Street
The Richmond Marriott, built in 1984 as part of a Broad Street revitalization project, is a mega-project that was designed to draw convention goers to the city of Richmond. At the time, these structures were seen as a way that Richmond, the old Capital of the South, could compete with ex-urban Atlanta, the new Capital of the South by basing much of its inner city development on amenities for convention attendees.
Sixth Street Marketplace | 550 East Marshall Street
The intersection of 6th and Broad Streets was historically an open-air marketplace. The Sixth Street Marketplace, a covered mall that housed local businesses, was a built in 1985 as the commercial component to the convention area and as a well-touted catalyst of downtown renewal and racial reconciliation. With its financing and construction, the marketplace was the first public-private partnership to dot the downtown landscape. There is much local debate about its demise – whether it was the fault of city bureaucracy or private mismanagement. The marketplace was demolished in 2003 and just this year the remaining food court was closed.
Nanci Raygun (Formerly) | 929 West Grace Street
This building, currently under renovation to become a bagel shop, has historically been the center of Richmond’s homegrown punk and hardcore scene. Originally opened as a convenience store that made its own whiskey in the 1970s, it later became a record store, restaurant and finally full-fledged club. Most recently, going by the name of Nanci Raygun, it hosted all-ages hardcore shows, hip-hop producer battles, and metal shows. The music scene lives on in nearby house shows and makeshift venues (in warehouses, vintage shops and sushi restaurants) as well as in the Shockoe Bottom neighborhood at Alley Katz and Toad’s Place.
Hyperlink Café | 814 West Grace Street
The music scene also lives on down the street at Hyperlink Café, a business interested in fostering creativity and community through smart entrepreneurship. This business is part of a growing movement to foster the cultural economy of the city, acting as café, Internet hub, upscale bar, and gritty music venue. The vibe is postmodern cosmopolitanism, as the café merges indie rock, hip-hop, hardcore, and world music in one venue. It comes complete with an oxygen bar -- unlike other venues in this tobacco-friendly town, there is no smoking here.
Ipanema Café | 917 West Grace Street
This basement café exudes warmth through the scratchy sounds of records that play over small speakers and the cozy bohemian scene of art students, punks, and hipsters. One of several vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the area (Harrison Street Café and Panda Veg are two others), it is also host to an emerging indie, folk-punk scene of edgy acoustic guitarists.
Gallery 5| 200 West Marshall Street
Gallery 5 is an experiment in community arts and arts entrepreneurship. Loosely partnered with RVa Magazine, Gallery 5 hosts art shows, books musical events and promotes them on-line and through print media. They create multi-media events with art, music and performance that complement each other. Gallery 5 is not only hooked in across the arts scene, they are also firmly rooted in local history, as they are the stewards of the Police and Fire Museum, the building in which they reside.
Richmond Center Stage| 600 East Grace Street
Richmond Center Stage is a private foundation, working in partnership with the city of Richmond to develop the downtown around the performing arts. Under construction are three venues and an education center. One of the three venues, the Carpenter Center was originally built as a movie house in a cultural boom that brought several theatres and opera houses to Richmond in the 1920s.
Ghostprint Gallery | 220 West Broad Street
This new gallery opened in November of 2007, combining an art gallery with a tattoo parlor in an effort to redefine the boundaries of high art. The April show is entitled Everything Has a Deeper Meaning – a show of Anna Kaarina Nenonen that ‘represents female sexuality in an ironic and provocative manner.’
The Black History and Culture Museum | 00 Clay Street
Purchased in 1922 by bank CEO Maggie Walker, the museum building was previously the Black branch of the Richmond City Library. According to its website, the museum currently aims toward becoming the state resource for Black history in Virginia. Its exhibits tell the story of Jackson Ward and in doing so tell the story of African-American history in Richmond and in the nation. Its exhibits document the insurance companies, banks, and other business supported through community organizations as well as the cultural life of Two Street – an important Southern tour stop on the Jazz and vaudeville circuit. In April, it will exhibit the research of James E. Wright Jr. on The Gift of Black Inventors.
The Hippodrome | 530 North Second Street
This theatre, hosting musical performance, theatre and film, was the centerpiece of the music scene of Two Street during the World War II era. It hosted musicians Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and James Brown among others. It thrived until a fire forced its closure in 1945, and then reopened as a movie theatre. It is currently closed, though many plans have been laid to reopen the venue for music.
The Leigh Street Armory | 122 West Leigh Street
This Armory, soon to be converted into apartments under historic restoration standards, is the oldest armory in Virginia. It served African-American troops from the Spanish-American War through World War II and has also served as a building for several African-American schools in the years prior to Brown v. Board of Education. The building, in serious disrepair, has been threatened by the wrecking ball, but in recent years local citizens gained federal support to maintain the building.
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Two-Dimensional Sociology
If Comcast was working, which it never is, I would have created this entry on my birthday (09.13.07). I turned 29, which makes me "in my late 20s," that ambiguous age where you are still young enough to avoid total responsibility and old enough to feel confident, or where you are awaiting some marker of adulthood that will come next year. I've changed a lot in the last year, particularly in terms of curbing my idealism and trying to be more systematic, structured and pragmatic. I get up early, balance my checkbook and wear professional clothes. I feel not only in limbo between late 20s and 30, but also between student and professional, something that has been making me act more confident on the outside, but feel less confident inside.
Today, in a class I'm teaching on Culture and Power, we read Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. His critique of one-dimensional thought, which says we've lost our critical edge in the pursuit of positive fact, is inspiring to read. His critique of the use of technology for oppression during the cold war could not be more relevant to the War (without end) on Terror. Marcuse, though he didn't want to be, was considered the father of the New Left. This movement, among others of the era, like feminism and Black and Yellow Power, resisted one-dimensional thought, acting toward alternative possibilities in an era of severe repression.
Being born in 1978 makes me late genX/early genY. I was always in awe of that previous era and its revolutionary power. But lately I've become disillusioned with the cultural celebration of the Woodstock generation because that celebration that has eclipsed their political potency. The energy of that generation, to me, has coalesced into complacent establishment liberalism. We were taught that we didn't need to act because everything was already fixed for us.
But I know boomers, like my parents, who are still resisting one-dimensional thought, fighting for services for my adult disabled sister and speaking out in their church which has been commandeered by fundamentalists. Or like my friend Annie who has served in Americorps and is the president of NOW in Maine. At the same time, there are plenty of Gen X and Y folks who desire change but feel it so outside the realm of possibility.
Marcuse's writing renews that possibility. In my race to professionalize and become part of the establishment, I have forgotten why I care about teaching and sociology itself - the possibility of transformation, the promise of dialog, and the capacity for science to interrogate prejudice and what Christina Brinkley (at Simmons College) calls dis-information, not just wrong information, but disempowering information.
I had stopped writing in this blog because I didn't know what identity it should have - what about those who might read it, would they question my interests, my ethics? This worry about whether connection with the people and places I study will make me look like less of a sociologist, or somehow disqualify me in the game, is the result of falling into my own one-dimensional thinking about what the sociological enterprise means. This realization was reinforced for me by an experience I had meeting an engineer later that day at a professional development meeting.
She also asked me what my research was about. I told her its about musicians. She wanted to know - would I be developing any tools or applications for musicians so that they could more effectively navigate the music industry and local music scene? I immediately told her that if I did it could not be part of my project, which was to analyze the structures and values involved in the functioning of the music scene. If I did develop any tools, that would be on my own time. And it still wasn't clear to me if and how that could happen.
As I thought about it more I realized that empiricism in sociology has come to stand in for "science." Yet here I am, talking to a scientist who sees action, change, possibility, and public engagement as part of the enterprise.
Recent debates over public sociology and the sociologist's role in society show a renewed interest in critical engagement with the social world. But at what point in the research process can sociology be public - is it only legitimate to engage the public after the research has been done in isolation? Does engaging the pubic during research disqualify the work as ideological? Exactly what is political about public sociology and why should it be assumed that public engagement reduces a piece of research into its author's ideological interests? If sociologists see public sociology as political and private sociology as science, we have too simplified a view of science.
Sociologists can never be in a lab or experimental situation where we are not both affected by and affecting the things (i.e. people, groups, societies) we study. There is no perfect solution for non-reactivity in the social sciences. Sociologists have come to treat this as a flaw to be hidden by retreating from the social worlds we study. Why not recognize this 'double hermeneutic' as a particular benefit that sociology can contribute to intellectual knowledge and the world? To me, sociology's value is its critical, scientific ability to analyze social relationships and institutions.
One-dimensional sociology is an impediment, not a virtue.
Today, in a class I'm teaching on Culture and Power, we read Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. His critique of one-dimensional thought, which says we've lost our critical edge in the pursuit of positive fact, is inspiring to read. His critique of the use of technology for oppression during the cold war could not be more relevant to the War (without end) on Terror. Marcuse, though he didn't want to be, was considered the father of the New Left. This movement, among others of the era, like feminism and Black and Yellow Power, resisted one-dimensional thought, acting toward alternative possibilities in an era of severe repression.
Being born in 1978 makes me late genX/early genY. I was always in awe of that previous era and its revolutionary power. But lately I've become disillusioned with the cultural celebration of the Woodstock generation because that celebration that has eclipsed their political potency. The energy of that generation, to me, has coalesced into complacent establishment liberalism. We were taught that we didn't need to act because everything was already fixed for us.
But I know boomers, like my parents, who are still resisting one-dimensional thought, fighting for services for my adult disabled sister and speaking out in their church which has been commandeered by fundamentalists. Or like my friend Annie who has served in Americorps and is the president of NOW in Maine. At the same time, there are plenty of Gen X and Y folks who desire change but feel it so outside the realm of possibility.
Marcuse's writing renews that possibility. In my race to professionalize and become part of the establishment, I have forgotten why I care about teaching and sociology itself - the possibility of transformation, the promise of dialog, and the capacity for science to interrogate prejudice and what Christina Brinkley (at Simmons College) calls dis-information, not just wrong information, but disempowering information.
I had stopped writing in this blog because I didn't know what identity it should have - what about those who might read it, would they question my interests, my ethics? This worry about whether connection with the people and places I study will make me look like less of a sociologist, or somehow disqualify me in the game, is the result of falling into my own one-dimensional thinking about what the sociological enterprise means. This realization was reinforced for me by an experience I had meeting an engineer later that day at a professional development meeting.
She also asked me what my research was about. I told her its about musicians. She wanted to know - would I be developing any tools or applications for musicians so that they could more effectively navigate the music industry and local music scene? I immediately told her that if I did it could not be part of my project, which was to analyze the structures and values involved in the functioning of the music scene. If I did develop any tools, that would be on my own time. And it still wasn't clear to me if and how that could happen.
As I thought about it more I realized that empiricism in sociology has come to stand in for "science." Yet here I am, talking to a scientist who sees action, change, possibility, and public engagement as part of the enterprise.
Recent debates over public sociology and the sociologist's role in society show a renewed interest in critical engagement with the social world. But at what point in the research process can sociology be public - is it only legitimate to engage the public after the research has been done in isolation? Does engaging the pubic during research disqualify the work as ideological? Exactly what is political about public sociology and why should it be assumed that public engagement reduces a piece of research into its author's ideological interests? If sociologists see public sociology as political and private sociology as science, we have too simplified a view of science.
Sociologists can never be in a lab or experimental situation where we are not both affected by and affecting the things (i.e. people, groups, societies) we study. There is no perfect solution for non-reactivity in the social sciences. Sociologists have come to treat this as a flaw to be hidden by retreating from the social worlds we study. Why not recognize this 'double hermeneutic' as a particular benefit that sociology can contribute to intellectual knowledge and the world? To me, sociology's value is its critical, scientific ability to analyze social relationships and institutions.
One-dimensional sociology is an impediment, not a virtue.
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