Geography

Constructing the 'neighborhood sphere': Gender and community organizing [1]

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article examines organizing styles and issues in neighborhood activism to illustrate how activists seek to constitute a neighborhood community. It identifies the ways in which community organizing is gendered in both style and content, often separating 'women's' and 'men's' issues along an artificial public-private divide. This research illustrates, however, how neighborhood activists can use and challenge gendered forms of activism to integrate both public and private into an ideal of a neighborhood community. Using a case study of the Thomas-Dale Block Clubs in St Paul, Minnesota, the article examines how residents use gender-essentializing discourses of safety, and parenting to insert household and family issues into a broader community arena. Further, it identifies how these discourses overlay cultural tensions in a diverse neighborhood. 7he activism in the block club organization studied here reflects a wide variey of communiy organizing strategies and concerns, focusing on defining and creating a neighborhood public sphere, to which, as the organization argued, every resident ought to be responsible and accountable.

Publication Title

Gender, Place and Culture

Publication Date

12-1-2002

Volume

9

Issue

4

First Page

333

Last Page

350

ISSN

0966-369X

DOI

10.1080/0966369022000024678

Keywords

activism, neighborhoods, communities, United States

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