Browsing by Subject "gentrifikaatio"

This is a study on resistance to gentrification in Brooklyn, New York. The premise of the study is to look at the 21st century city through an anthropological lens. From the 1980s on neoliberal capitalism has led to cities around the world to become playgrounds for the hyper-healthy where private property and profit rates trump people’s right to their city. In this study gentrification is understood as a process where marginalized low-income communities of color are disproportionately threatened by displacement as new development and people appear in their neighborhoods. Thus, this study has used gentrification as a context for analyzing how urban inequalities are systematically produced on the one hand, and lived, negotiated and resisted in everyday life on the other. It examines the city as a multiplicity of layered lived realities charged with antagonisms between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and in constant renegotiation between conflict and compromise. This thesis is a contribution to anthropology of, and in, the city. As over half of humanity now lives in towns and cities, this thesis speaks to the importance of urban anthropology in understanding the human condition. In order to assemble a more comprehensive picture, the thesis combines the concept of urban cosmopolitics and anthropological theories of landscape, art, and resistance with critical urban theory that has demanded cities for people, not for profit. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in New York City between April and June 2017. The main research methods included participant observation in various events and settings, and semi-structured interviews with six activists and artists all in their own way engaged in resistance to gentrification. All of the participants had lived all or most of their lives in New York, and had personal experience with the pressures of being priced out of their neighborhoods. Supplementary information was gathered online from social media posts, blogs, websites and articles. Also, countless ethnographic encounters in and with the city have contributed to the analysis. This thesis analyzes how gentrification changes the urban landscape wherein people dwell and have formed their sense of belonging, community and identity. The urban landscape is seen as consisting of physical, political, social, historical and cultural layers. It is suggested that resistance to gentrification in New York City is resistance to systemic racism inherent in urban development. Moreover, social movements across the city have drawn an analogy between gentrification and colonialism, which is also factored into the analysis. Thus, connecting it to historical urban policies and practices the study suggests that gentrification in New York City is not merely an inevitable part of life in the city but a result of urban planning; zoning and housing policy have protected the segregation of neighborhoods and enabled the displacement of low-income communities of color. These unequal power relations that shape the city without regard to its people have been central in identifying and analyzing why people are engaged in resistance. This thesis examines various kinds of acts of resistance that vary from individual to collective, from overt to covert, and from demonstrations to imagining and circulating alternative futures and narratives. Special attention is given to art as resistance: it is analyzed as empowering the community, creating spaces of dissent, and making visible different life-worlds within the city. Finally, the thesis analyzes how resistance involves people in the politics of the city; exclusion from decision-making, unsustainable urban development, and co-optation of culture are issues that particularly disenfranchised communities across the city are facing in their struggle to assert their right to their city.