NYC Week 2 Part II

So firstly, here's the Dr. Powell link I forgot to publish as promised:
http://urbanhabitat.org/20years/powell

Secondly, I just got out of class and absolutely felt the need to share this with you all. So, we're talking about the conceptions of space and how spaces are socially constructed and then how social practices and norms become constructed off of those spaces and I mentioned the article we'd discussed about how men's and women's brains have evolved over the years due possibly to our "original" roles where men were hunter-gatherers and women stayed closer to the campsite thus making men better navigators and women better multitaskers --

but my prof here informed me that this article was incorrect because -- Prof Camacho being an anthropologist -- archeological findings actually (generally) "prove" that this assumption is in itself incorrect and that in many cases it was the women who traveled farthest from camp and men who remained more reigned in. She said that this article sounded like an example of scientists working to reinforce social norms and practices by creating scientific theories to match these preexisting social practices and ideals (such as the adventurous working man with his house wife raising the children).

And this really grabbed my attention since we're usually so keen on these sorts of "normative" issues. And it reminded me of what I'd also been learning a couple semesters ago about Samuel Morton (the rotten bastard) who perverted Darwinism (as so many have) back in the dawning of the American Anthropology craze in order to reinforce his social belief that whites were biologically superior to blacks. He "proved" this theory by measuring skulls but he skewed his measurements to fit his theory rather than working to fit his theory to his "evidence" (of course, you must have evidence in order to fit theories to it, but c'est la vie).

But anyway, this notion surprised me and so I thought I'd share.

We're learning about, as I mentioned before, how social processes create spaces (such as these social norms regarding gender have affected the construction of buildings and cities -- why women have a harder time getting around walking urban areas thanks to social practices like the high heel, etc) and then how we in turn experience these spaces through social practice -- and all the while we're trying to focus on race and how race fits in with these theories. Because surprisingly most academics haven't been thinking of these problems in terms of race, but most commonly in terms of economic or gender studies.

For instance, these conversations come up a lot now when buildings aren't designed to meet the needs of those outside the "norm" such as not providing ramps for wheelchair users or third bathroom options. Progressive steps are, of course, being taken -- some of NYU's buildings are particularly impressive I think. Just take the bathroom example: many of NYU's public restrooms provide a third option bathroom that isn't even labeled "unisex" but simply "toilet" so as to not inflict systematic social violence against any one not considering themselves under either social labels of "Men" or "Women" while not trapping or isolating them under such "one size fits all" labels as "Unisex".

Another example of social practices creating space could be the current issues arising with Veteran Hospitals. Most of the VH's don't provide any OBGYN service at all and many don't even provide menstruation care products such as Tampons or Midol. A particularly violent example of these spaces not being made with women in mind is that one VH was actually discovered to have had one of the maternity chairs configured so that the stirrup end faced an open doorway -- completely violating all privacy of the female patient. But the argument in defense of these upsets is simply that VH's weren't built with women in mind -- but that shouldn't be a viable excuse anymore given how long women have been able to enlist; because of this, it becomes very clear that these spatial constructions are now encoded with social assumptions about where women are "meant" and "not meant" to be (i.e. the armed forces).

Anyway, we're trying to bring race more into this conversation (though the gender studies are obviously important) and try to figure out why no matter the economic moves or progression of time, racism continues rule how cities and suburbs are constructed. We just read a very stunning article by Setha Low called "Maintaining Whiteness: The Fear of Others and Niceness" in which she expounds the dangers of gentrification, gated communities, and the ideas of what constitute "nice" neighborhood versus a "bad" one. It's a fascinating and terrifying article that I highly recommend.

I feel that it's an important article also considering the recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee case which gave corporations the same freedom of speech rights as individuals (going against years and years and years of precedent!!! the treachery is overwhelming) because Low gets into the problem of Home Owners Associations and the real-estate companies running these selective gated communities (i.e. residential segregated communities) being able to contractually strip individual of certain freedom of speech rights by barring them from everything from painting their house a different color to kissing their significant other in view of the neighbors (seriously, this happened, a woman was fined by her home owners association for kissing her boyfriend in her garage); and is it even constitutional that these corporations should be able to contract away peoples constitutional rights? I mean, I know freedom of speech isn't strictly one of the inalienable ones, but my goodness! This has extreme danger written all over it.

But basically these are all just giant systematic steps toward privatized segregation which will only promote fear of all those not in the neighborhood and thus exacerbate preexisting ethnic tensions and isolation.

If we're not going to rewrite our constitution to enable some sort of social progress such as is being experienced by the people of Singapore, why in the wide world of sports are we rewriting it for the benefit of corporations? Won't they now be dictating our presidential elections as well as who our neighbors are and what our houses look like?

I feel like Winston Smith's harbinger or something -- this is scary stuff, folks. But I'm glad we're on the forefront -- I think so long as people like you, the people I work with all the time at SU, are the ones coming out to grapple with all of this bullshit, then we'll have a real fighting chance.
It'll be expensive, but it'll be worth it.

ciao for now chicos