Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2003
This article uses social-movement theory to analyze how neighborhood organizations portray activi... more This article uses social-movement theory to analyze how neighborhood organizations portray activism as grounded in a particular place and scale. I apply the concept of collective-action frames to a case study of four organizations in a single neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.Using organizational documents such as annual reports, comprehensive plans, and flyers, I present a discourse analysis of the ways that organizations describe their goals and agenda. In particular, I assess the extent to which the organizations characterize the neighborhood in their justifications of organizational goals and actions. In order to legitimate their own agendas and empower community activism, neighborhood organizations foster a neighborhood identity that obscures social differences, such as ethnicity and class, among residents. They do so by describing the physical condition of the neighborhood and the daily life experiences of its residents. These ‘‘place-frames’’ constitute a motivating discourse for organizations seeking to unite residents for aneighborhood-oriented agenda, despite very different substantive issues,from crime to land-use planning. This perspective allows for a more effective understanding of how place informs activism at a variety of spatial scales. Further, by inserting place into theories of collective-action framing, this research helps to introduce a new research agenda that addresses the gap between geographical analyses of territorial identities and activism and other scholarly literatures on contentious politics. Key Words: collective action, discourse, neighborhood organizing, place-frames.
Management of “wicked problems”, messy real-world problems that defy resolution, requires thinker... more Management of “wicked problems”, messy real-world problems that defy resolution, requires thinkers who can transcend disciplinary boundaries, work collaboratively, and handle complexity and obstacles. This paper explores how educators can train undergraduates in these skills through applied community-based research, using the example of an interdisciplinary research program at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Participating students strengthened their abilities to handle setbacks in the research process, improved communication and teamwork skills, and gained familiarity with interdisciplinary investigation. Programmatic elements that could transfer well to other settings include studying local human–environment problems, working in multigenerational, small groups, and using multiple methodologies.
The lawn is a dominant feature in the suburban landscape that, under common resource-intensive ma... more The lawn is a dominant feature in the suburban landscape that, under common resource-intensive management regimes, poses risks to human and broader ecosystem health and sustainability. This article examines the role played by emotions as homeowners maintain or change yard management practices, in order to extend existing understandings that focus on external drivers of yard management (e.g., Robbins 2007). Drawing
Following recent scholarship on place and place-making, we identify key challenges for contempora... more Following recent scholarship on place and place-making, we identify key challenges for contemporary empirical research using the “Right to the City” as an analytic. We seek to distinguish between the aspirational “right” articulated as a political and conceptual call to arms on one hand, and the “actually existing rights” that are carved out through both formal and informal mechanisms (including political protest) in the everyday city on the other. Actually existing rights are defined not through fiat or via momentary revolutionary acts, but through the durability of relationships between multiple actors, including residents, citizens, states, and corporate agents. We re-articulate urban rights as actually contingent and agonistic properties of the relationships that citizens have with places. This paper uses the historic conflict over community gardens in New York as an illustration of how thinking of rights regimes as multiple, overlapping, and placed helps better illuminate potential political interventions. Thinking of rights and places as plural, overlapping, and contingent is analytically productive because it highlights (rather than overwriting) conflicts between competing articulations of rights and privileges in cities.
This paper introduces a visceral take on the role of identity in social movement mobilisation. Th... more This paper introduces a visceral take on the role of identity in social movement mobilisation. The authors emphasise how identity goes beyond cognitive labels to implicate the entire minded-body. It is suggested that political ideas, beliefs and self definitions require a bodily kind of resonance in order to activate various kinds of environmental and social activism. The authors refer to this bodily resonance as ‘visceral processes of identification’ and, through empirical investigation with the Slow Food (SF) movement, they reveal specific instances of such processes at work. Examining SF in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Berkeley, California, USA, the authors ask how SF comes to feel in the bodies of members and non-members and they interrogate the role that feelings play in the development of activism(s). Bodies are shown to both align with movements’ socio-political aims and (re)create them. The account provides a means for shifting recent social theoretical attention to bodied/material life to a broad application in political geography, political ecology and social movement theory.
Background/Question/Methods The objective of this paper is to quantify gains and losses in urban ... more Background/Question/Methods The objective of this paper is to quantify gains and losses in urban forest ecosystem services following tree removal and subsequent replanting. Increasingly common threats to urban green space, such as invasive pest outbreak, new urban development, and severe weather events can rapidly change forest structure, reducing the ecosystem services that benefit urban residents. The Burncoat and Greendale neighborhoods of Worcester, MA were thickly tree-lined prior to the infestation of Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) (Anophlophora glabripennis). ALB eradication managers extensively removed host trees in the area and subsequently planted non-host trees from 2008 to 2012. Changes in ecosystem services resulting from tree loss and replanting are quantified in this study using tree removal and tree planting inventories and i-Tree Street software. Results/Conclusions Tree removal from 2008 to 2010 caused the loss of 8,593 trees, primarily large and medium broadleaf sp...
ABSTRACT Geographers have extensively used Lefebvre's concept of space as a social produc... more ABSTRACT Geographers have extensively used Lefebvre's concept of space as a social product as a framework guiding urban and political critique. Lefebvre articulates social space through a primarily ontological engagement: he describes a complex and multi-faceted object that exists in three simultaneous but distinct, co-producing registers. The famous “triad” has become canonical within Anglophone geography, but the implications of this ontology for knowing or researching the object of “(social) space” often remain implicit. This paper suggests that recent scholarship on place-making helps to address the latent epistemological challenges of operationalizing Lefebvre's triad. We trace linkages and gaps between Lefebvrian space and contemporary theorizations of relational place. Re-examining social space through the lens of relational place highlights the potential for links between epistemologically diverse recent research and twenty years of Lefebvre-inspired critique.
ABSTRACT Revisiting work such as Edward Soja's Postmetropolis reminds us of the importanc... more ABSTRACT Revisiting work such as Edward Soja's Postmetropolis reminds us of the importance of a geographical perspective, as well as a thoroughly process oriented and dynamic consideration of the urban. Soja's work emphasizes multi-scalar processes that work to produce urbanization, and the complex, fragmented, and unequal spaces that result. Attention to spatial process and justice is essential, but is incomplete without consideration and real attention to the material and geographically embedded experiences of place that manifest urbanization in everyday life.
... development programs, government actions such as grants and policy initiatives, cultural even... more ... development programs, government actions such as grants and policy initiatives, cultural events, and ... a large audience across the met-ropolitan area, whereas the neighborhood newspaper targets ... Tribune, as major media, seek to "objectively" cover events of significance to a ...
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2003
This article uses social-movement theory to analyze how neighborhood organizations portray activi... more This article uses social-movement theory to analyze how neighborhood organizations portray activism as grounded in a particular place and scale. I apply the concept of collective-action frames to a case study of four organizations in a single neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.Using organizational documents such as annual reports, comprehensive plans, and flyers, I present a discourse analysis of the ways that organizations describe their goals and agenda. In particular, I assess the extent to which the organizations characterize the neighborhood in their justifications of organizational goals and actions. In order to legitimate their own agendas and empower community activism, neighborhood organizations foster a neighborhood identity that obscures social differences, such as ethnicity and class, among residents. They do so by describing the physical condition of the neighborhood and the daily life experiences of its residents. These ‘‘place-frames’’ constitute a motivating discourse for organizations seeking to unite residents for aneighborhood-oriented agenda, despite very different substantive issues,from crime to land-use planning. This perspective allows for a more effective understanding of how place informs activism at a variety of spatial scales. Further, by inserting place into theories of collective-action framing, this research helps to introduce a new research agenda that addresses the gap between geographical analyses of territorial identities and activism and other scholarly literatures on contentious politics. Key Words: collective action, discourse, neighborhood organizing, place-frames.
Management of “wicked problems”, messy real-world problems that defy resolution, requires thinker... more Management of “wicked problems”, messy real-world problems that defy resolution, requires thinkers who can transcend disciplinary boundaries, work collaboratively, and handle complexity and obstacles. This paper explores how educators can train undergraduates in these skills through applied community-based research, using the example of an interdisciplinary research program at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. Participating students strengthened their abilities to handle setbacks in the research process, improved communication and teamwork skills, and gained familiarity with interdisciplinary investigation. Programmatic elements that could transfer well to other settings include studying local human–environment problems, working in multigenerational, small groups, and using multiple methodologies.
The lawn is a dominant feature in the suburban landscape that, under common resource-intensive ma... more The lawn is a dominant feature in the suburban landscape that, under common resource-intensive management regimes, poses risks to human and broader ecosystem health and sustainability. This article examines the role played by emotions as homeowners maintain or change yard management practices, in order to extend existing understandings that focus on external drivers of yard management (e.g., Robbins 2007). Drawing
Following recent scholarship on place and place-making, we identify key challenges for contempora... more Following recent scholarship on place and place-making, we identify key challenges for contemporary empirical research using the “Right to the City” as an analytic. We seek to distinguish between the aspirational “right” articulated as a political and conceptual call to arms on one hand, and the “actually existing rights” that are carved out through both formal and informal mechanisms (including political protest) in the everyday city on the other. Actually existing rights are defined not through fiat or via momentary revolutionary acts, but through the durability of relationships between multiple actors, including residents, citizens, states, and corporate agents. We re-articulate urban rights as actually contingent and agonistic properties of the relationships that citizens have with places. This paper uses the historic conflict over community gardens in New York as an illustration of how thinking of rights regimes as multiple, overlapping, and placed helps better illuminate potential political interventions. Thinking of rights and places as plural, overlapping, and contingent is analytically productive because it highlights (rather than overwriting) conflicts between competing articulations of rights and privileges in cities.
This paper introduces a visceral take on the role of identity in social movement mobilisation. Th... more This paper introduces a visceral take on the role of identity in social movement mobilisation. The authors emphasise how identity goes beyond cognitive labels to implicate the entire minded-body. It is suggested that political ideas, beliefs and self definitions require a bodily kind of resonance in order to activate various kinds of environmental and social activism. The authors refer to this bodily resonance as ‘visceral processes of identification’ and, through empirical investigation with the Slow Food (SF) movement, they reveal specific instances of such processes at work. Examining SF in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Berkeley, California, USA, the authors ask how SF comes to feel in the bodies of members and non-members and they interrogate the role that feelings play in the development of activism(s). Bodies are shown to both align with movements’ socio-political aims and (re)create them. The account provides a means for shifting recent social theoretical attention to bodied/material life to a broad application in political geography, political ecology and social movement theory.
Background/Question/Methods The objective of this paper is to quantify gains and losses in urban ... more Background/Question/Methods The objective of this paper is to quantify gains and losses in urban forest ecosystem services following tree removal and subsequent replanting. Increasingly common threats to urban green space, such as invasive pest outbreak, new urban development, and severe weather events can rapidly change forest structure, reducing the ecosystem services that benefit urban residents. The Burncoat and Greendale neighborhoods of Worcester, MA were thickly tree-lined prior to the infestation of Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) (Anophlophora glabripennis). ALB eradication managers extensively removed host trees in the area and subsequently planted non-host trees from 2008 to 2012. Changes in ecosystem services resulting from tree loss and replanting are quantified in this study using tree removal and tree planting inventories and i-Tree Street software. Results/Conclusions Tree removal from 2008 to 2010 caused the loss of 8,593 trees, primarily large and medium broadleaf sp...
ABSTRACT Geographers have extensively used Lefebvre's concept of space as a social produc... more ABSTRACT Geographers have extensively used Lefebvre's concept of space as a social product as a framework guiding urban and political critique. Lefebvre articulates social space through a primarily ontological engagement: he describes a complex and multi-faceted object that exists in three simultaneous but distinct, co-producing registers. The famous “triad” has become canonical within Anglophone geography, but the implications of this ontology for knowing or researching the object of “(social) space” often remain implicit. This paper suggests that recent scholarship on place-making helps to address the latent epistemological challenges of operationalizing Lefebvre's triad. We trace linkages and gaps between Lefebvrian space and contemporary theorizations of relational place. Re-examining social space through the lens of relational place highlights the potential for links between epistemologically diverse recent research and twenty years of Lefebvre-inspired critique.
ABSTRACT Revisiting work such as Edward Soja's Postmetropolis reminds us of the importanc... more ABSTRACT Revisiting work such as Edward Soja's Postmetropolis reminds us of the importance of a geographical perspective, as well as a thoroughly process oriented and dynamic consideration of the urban. Soja's work emphasizes multi-scalar processes that work to produce urbanization, and the complex, fragmented, and unequal spaces that result. Attention to spatial process and justice is essential, but is incomplete without consideration and real attention to the material and geographically embedded experiences of place that manifest urbanization in everyday life.
... development programs, government actions such as grants and policy initiatives, cultural even... more ... development programs, government actions such as grants and policy initiatives, cultural events, and ... a large audience across the met-ropolitan area, whereas the neighborhood newspaper targets ... Tribune, as major media, seek to "objectively" cover events of significance to a ...
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Papers by Deborah Martin
in a particular place and scale. I apply the concept of collective-action frames to a case study of four organizations in a
single neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.Using organizational documents such as annual reports, comprehensive
plans, and flyers, I present a discourse analysis of the ways that organizations describe their goals and agenda. In
particular, I assess the extent to which the organizations characterize the neighborhood in their justifications of
organizational goals and actions. In order to legitimate their own agendas and empower community activism,
neighborhood organizations foster a neighborhood identity that obscures social differences, such as ethnicity and
class, among residents. They do so by describing the physical condition of the neighborhood and the daily life
experiences of its residents. These ‘‘place-frames’’ constitute a motivating discourse for organizations seeking to
unite residents for aneighborhood-oriented agenda, despite very different substantive issues,from crime to land-use
planning. This perspective allows for a more effective understanding of how place informs activism at a variety of
spatial scales. Further, by inserting place into theories of collective-action framing, this research helps to introduce a
new research agenda that addresses the gap between geographical analyses of territorial identities and activism and
other scholarly literatures on contentious politics. Key Words: collective action, discourse, neighborhood organizing,
place-frames.
Massachusetts, USA. Participating students strengthened their abilities to handle setbacks in the research process, improved communication and teamwork skills, and gained familiarity with interdisciplinary investigation. Programmatic elements that could transfer well to other settings include studying local human–environment problems, working in multigenerational, small groups, and using multiple
methodologies.
in a particular place and scale. I apply the concept of collective-action frames to a case study of four organizations in a
single neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.Using organizational documents such as annual reports, comprehensive
plans, and flyers, I present a discourse analysis of the ways that organizations describe their goals and agenda. In
particular, I assess the extent to which the organizations characterize the neighborhood in their justifications of
organizational goals and actions. In order to legitimate their own agendas and empower community activism,
neighborhood organizations foster a neighborhood identity that obscures social differences, such as ethnicity and
class, among residents. They do so by describing the physical condition of the neighborhood and the daily life
experiences of its residents. These ‘‘place-frames’’ constitute a motivating discourse for organizations seeking to
unite residents for aneighborhood-oriented agenda, despite very different substantive issues,from crime to land-use
planning. This perspective allows for a more effective understanding of how place informs activism at a variety of
spatial scales. Further, by inserting place into theories of collective-action framing, this research helps to introduce a
new research agenda that addresses the gap between geographical analyses of territorial identities and activism and
other scholarly literatures on contentious politics. Key Words: collective action, discourse, neighborhood organizing,
place-frames.
Massachusetts, USA. Participating students strengthened their abilities to handle setbacks in the research process, improved communication and teamwork skills, and gained familiarity with interdisciplinary investigation. Programmatic elements that could transfer well to other settings include studying local human–environment problems, working in multigenerational, small groups, and using multiple
methodologies.