“Keeping it Fresh”: How Young Black Women Negotiate Self–Representation and Controlling Images in Urban Space

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis S. McCurn
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Young Black Women

Few scholars have explored the collective experiences of young African American women and their creative strategies for negotiating daily life in distressed neighborhoods. This study draws on nearly two years of field research in East Oakland, California, to provide an ethnographic account of how young Black women negotiate daily life amid poverty and social isolation while managing the emotional impact of stigma associated with poverty. The accounts from young women in this study reveal the situated strategy of “keeping it fresh,” a form of impression management that contradicts prevailing notions of what poor Black women and girls ought to look like and, in turn, how they should be treated in public space. Women and girls who keep it fresh invest in constructing and maintaining a neat and stylish appearance enhanced by expensive clothes, shoes, and accessories acquired through informal networks. This form of self–presentation aims to discredit the evaluation of those who keep it fresh as poor and unworthy of respect, if only for a moment.

scholarly journals Design of Sound and Place - Recent Studios

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Paul MacDonald ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
The Public ◽  
Built Form

Urban public spaces and their associated architecture should be capable of eliciting responses from all of the human senses, yet traditionally urban and architectural designers rely primarily on visual display to persuade the public of the qualities of new proposals. As it becomes more common to use a variety of media to depict and simulate proposed urban spaces, designers and teachers of design look for ways to sensitize emerging designers to the full spectrum of sensations that inform potential users of a public space. The design studios discussed in this paper bring together the issues of the design of the experience of visual and aural settings, in an era of podcasts and ear-buds.In order to address issues of sound and public space, the author selected examples from two architectural design studios that took place in 2016 and 2018. Undergraduate students composed their own programs and projects to take into account the aural as well as visual qualities associated with their design intentions and ambitions. The process began with a programming phase to designate performing and listening as interactions that constitute primary activities happening in the context of the proposed public built form and related urban space. The research continued with an exploration of the tectonics and materials of the projects. Preliminary field research located and mapped small centralized urban organizations related to the sonic: collectives and small businesses working, for example, in the areas of sound recording, radio and musical performance.

scholarly journals Shadism from the Perspective of Intersectionality in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 222-227
Author(s):  
Ahmed Seif Eddine Nefnouf
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
New Vision

This paper aims to discuss shadism from a perspective of intersectionality and how people with a darker skin tone suffered particular forms of discrimination due to the issues of shadism and its interaction with the class, gender, age, ability, and race.  Shadism has infused the black society for many centuries, hence outlined during slavery. Shadism is the discrimination against a person with a darker skin tone, typically among individuals of the same racial group. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison describes how African American women and girls like Pecola are considered ugly by her family and the community due to her darker skin tone. in this research paper we are going to explore shadism and examine intersectionality theory like race, gender, sexuality and class, and their influence on dark-skinned black women, through the main character Pecola Breedlove. Using intersectionality theory to understand shadism helps to know that there are different ways a person could face oppression and domination. This paper gives a new vision of shadism which have been studied as amatter of racism, but throughout the intersectionality of the the identity component. The analysis shows that shadism is influenced by race and other aspects of intersectionality such as gender, race, age and ability, and other aspects of identity.

scholarly journals Homelessness and Exclusion: Regulating public space in European Cities

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Doherty ◽  
Volker Busch-Geertsema ◽  
Vita Karpuskiene ◽  
Jukka Korhonen ◽  
Eoin O'Sullivan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Urban Regulation ◽  
And Control

Public space is an essential component of the daily life of homeless people, whether rough sleepers or hostel dwellers or others who are inadequately housed. During 2006 a group of researchers from the European Observatory on Homelessness considered the ways in which the increasing surveillance, regulation and control over public space, evident in all European cities, has impacted on the lives of homeless people. In this paper we chart the background to this latest phase in the 'regulation of urban space' and assemble evidence from across Europe and especially from our case study countries – Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden. We attempt an analysis of these trends using concepts of 'border control', 'discipline' and 'deterrence'. We also consider a limited number of examples of resistance by and on behalf of homeless people to the imposition of restrictions on public space access. In the concluding section, we reflect on related wider societal processes associated with urban regulation and surveillance and their impact on the use of public space.

The Book of Joy

2019 ◽  
pp. 250-259
Author(s):  
Anya M. Wallace ◽  
Jillian Hernandez
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
South African ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Collection Selection ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Young Black Women ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Writing Practice

The Book of Joy is an exhibition for which we have compiled an eclectic collection of images, poems, and interview transcripts culled from our research on queer young black women’s sexualities and arts-based community work. Taking our cue from the practice and passion of Zanele Muholi, a black queer South African artist and activist based in Johannesburg who generates portraits of queer communities, we purposefully stray from our scholarly essay writing practice here in order to situate an evocative and more direct accounting of black queer young women’s erotics within the larger framework of this anthology. Although the work of our participants is nevertheless mediated through our process of collection, selection, framing, and ordering, we, like Zanele, believe that the creative expression and documentation of queer black lives is a significant politic. This project stems from the desire to witness and consume representations of Black female sexuality that are diverse, full, and comprehensive. In curating this exhibition, we draw on our action research designed to facilitate collective learning experiences with young Black women and girls in regards to visual culture, sex, sexuality, and pleasure. When the discussion of black queer young women’s lives is either non-existent or saturated by the overwhelming realities of harassment, trauma, depression, and violence that can also mark them, a focus on pleasure becomes an urgent project.

The Story of Storyboards from East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Martin Soukup ◽  
Dušan Lužný
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Tourism ◽  
The Village

This study analyzes and interprets East Sepik storyboards, which the authors regard as a form of cultural continuity and instrument of cultural memory in the post-colonial period. The study draws on field research conducted by the authors in the village of Kambot in East Sepik. The authors divide the storyboards into two groups based on content. The first includes storyboards describing daily life in the community, while the other links the daily life to pre-Christian religious beliefs and views. The aim of the study is to analyze one of the forms of contemporary material culture in East Sepik in the context of cultural changes triggered by Christianization, colonial administration in the former Territory of New Guinea and global tourism.

Transnational Habitus and Sociability in the City: Zimbabwean Migrants’ Experiences in Johannesburg, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khangelani Moyo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Transnational Migrants ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
The City

Drawing on field research and a survey of 150 Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, this paper explores the dimensions of migrants’ transnational experiences in the urban space. I discuss the use of communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook as well as other means such as telephone calls in fostering the embedding of transnational migrants within both the Johannesburg and the Zimbabwean socio-economic environments. I engage this migrant-embedding using Bourdieusian concepts of “transnational habitus” and “transnational social field,” which are migration specific variations of Bourdieu’s original concepts of “habitus” and “social field.” In deploying these Bourdieusian conceptual tools, I observe that the dynamics of South–South migration as observed in the Zimbabwean migrants are different to those in the South–North migration streams and it is important to move away from using the same lens in interpreting different realities. For Johannesburg-based migrants to operate within the socio-economic networks produced in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, they need to actively acquire a transnational habitus. I argue that migrants’ cultivation of networks in Johannesburg is instrumental, purposive, and geared towards achieving specific and immediate goals, and latently leads to the development and sustenance of flexible forms of permanency in the transnational urban space.

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