Abstract
In this chapter, the author discusses the overarching theme of place, specifically the ways in which the youth at the Hope after-school club in New York City used visual material culture (VMC) to make sense of and construct place and their place-based identities. After describing her early fieldwork interactions at the Hope, Eglinton illustrates how the youth drew on themes from VMC to construct the places that were part of their worlds. Concepts from human geography and anthropology including Holland et al.’s (Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998) concept of ‘figured worlds’ and Benedict Anderson’s (Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.Verso, London, 1983) ‘imagined communities’ are introduced. Eglinton argues the places that the youth constructed were similar to Anderson’s imagined communities and illustrates how, together with forms of VMC, imagined communities served as mediating tools the youth at once produced and employed in the construction of their own place-based identities.
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Notes
- 1.
GVHS was the recipient of a project that went into schools to decorate and improve the physical sites. As part of this project, the walls of the cafeteria were painted in various pastels, including purple, red, and yellow.
- 2.
Timo was about 19 years old and the group leader. He grew up in lower Manhattan, often spoke his mind to other staff, and was quite strict with the boys in the group (whose behaviour was often considered ‘problematic’).
- 3.
Patti LaBelle is a black soul singer from the United States.
- 4.
‘Husky’ usually describes someone heavyset, small, and tough. There is more muscle than fat.
- 5.
Louis, for example, expressed surprise when I told him I worked in both Harlem and the South Bronx. Laughing, he told me about how his sister lives in Harlem and he in the Bronx. He said whenever he sees a person like me (i.e. white) in the Bronx or Harlem, he ‘thinks two things: they are either on crack or lost’.
- 6.
Quinn (2005) notes the term ‘ghettocentric’ was first used by Nelson George in his 1991 article for the Village Voicecalled ‘ghettocentricity’ later reprinted in 1994: Buppies, B-Boys, and Bohos: Notes on a Post-Soul Black Culture(New York: Harper Collins).
- 7.
From the time I started at the Hope, I would see Jeremy hanging around, and he would often ask: ‘Yo, come on Kris, can’t I work wit you?’ While I would have been happy to say yes, he was in a group much younger than Timo’s, and I was not sure if I would have the resources to work with him on a video. I would usually say that he could hang around with me, but that I didn’t know if we would have time to do a video together. Yet, he was persistent, and as we started to work together more closely, I came to recognise Jeremy as kind, mature, and one of the friendliest youth in the programme. Granted he was always getting into some kind of trouble, and though he told me at first he was 12 (and left back in school, and, therefore, in a younger group at the Hope) and later admitted he was ‘about’ ten (I believe he may have even been nine), to me he was irresistible.
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Eglinton, K.A. (2013). Representin’ Place: Place-Making and Place-Based Identities. In: Youth Identities, Localities, and Visual Material Culture. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4857-6_4
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