Not in My Gayborhood

Auteur
Theodore Greene is associate professor of sociology at Bowdoin College.

Texte du rabat

Exploring "gayborhoods" in Washington, DC, Theodore Greene investigates how neighborhoods retain their cultural identities even as their inhabitants change.

Résumé
Gay neighborhoods are disappearingor so the conventional story goes. In this narrative, political gains and mainstream social acceptance, combined with the popularity of dating apps like Grindr, have reduced the need for LGBTQ+ people to seek refuges or build expressly queer places. Yet even though residential patterns have shifted, traditionally gay neighborhoods remain centers of queer public life.

Exploring gayborhoods in Washington, DC, Theodore Greene investigates how neighborhoods retain their cultural identities even as their inhabitants change. He argues that the success and survival of gay neighborhoods have always depended on participation from nonresidents in the life of the community, which he terms vicarious citizenship. Vicarious citizens are diverse self-identified community members, sometimes former or displaced locals, who make symbolic claims to the neighborhood. They defend their vision of community by temporarily reviving the traditions and cultures associated with the gay neighborhood and challenging the presence of straight families and other newcomers, the displacement of local institutions, or the taming of sexual culture. Greene pays careful attention to the significance of race and racism, highlighting the important role of Black LGBTQ+ culture in shaping gay neighborhoods past and present. Examining the diverse placemaking strategies that queer people deploy to foster and preserve LGBTQ+ geographies, Not in My Gayborhood illuminates different ways of imagining urban neighborhoods and communities.

Contenu
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Making Dupont Gay Again

1. Still a Very Gay City: A Historical Impression of Washington's LGBTQ Communities
2. J'ai Deux Amours: The Promiscuity of Community Attachments in the Postmodern City
3. Places in Abeyance: Placemaking and the Construction of Community in Institutional Anchors
4. Heteros, Beware! Monitoring and Preserving Queer Culture Through Normative Vicarious Claims
5. Presente! Presente!: Place Ruptures and the Enactment of Radical Vicarious Claims
6. Political Vicarious Claims and the Art of Self-Enfranchisement
   Conclusion: Place Reactivation and Vicarious Citizenship Beyond the Gayborhood
   Appendix A: Map of Washington, D.C., Gayborhoods Referenced
   Appendix B: Washington, D.C., LGBTQ Places Referenced
   Notes
   References
   Index