Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
it into a more lucrative reality are equally compelling ideals to her. In her daily round,
thereisneveraslippageineitherideal.Atthemoment,herluminousbodyingandstyles
of engagement continue to boldly embrace this paradox.
Discussion and Conclusion
A new kind of elite privileging—land and blocks transformed into globally declarative,
affluent play spaces—now marks many major American cities (Wilson 2004, 2007;
Wyly et al. 2009). This remaking now moves far beyond downtown cores to engage a
new terrain: once flagrantly marginalized black communities and their blues-scapes. In
Chicago, its South Side blues-scape (a scatter of nine aging blues clubs) experiences
this, attracting intense media attention after being consigned to policy oblivion for dec-
ades. Chicago's redevelopment governance, one more time, harnesses the power of the
state andplanning apparatus toachieve its objectives. Amobile, quick acting capitalism
strikes out to expand this class's “city consumption field” that works through produc-
tions ofelaborate imaginaries and city need. At a rhetoric's core, a supposed new hyper-
competitive reality makes Chicago easily discardable as a place for investment, produc-
tion, and business. Against this supposed reality, Chicago is now a threatened, but still
historically resilient locale that once again must act innovatively to survive.
Multiple scenarios exist for how this commodification will proceed and what this
blues-scape will become. A dominant vision, one that needs interrogating, suggests that
power is overtly and bluntly applied in a hegemonic process and these clubs will simply
be overwhelmed by capital's creeping, infiltrating prowess (Martin 1998; Koval et al.
2006).Bluesclubs,inthisvision,willsoonbeonemoregentrifiedcityelementthatwill
be normalized under a creative destruction ethos (spatially extending the go-global re-
structuring project). A powerful streak of determinism, but also a sense of intense real-
ismandreferencetoon-the-groundhistory,cutsthroughthisvision.Yet,thisvisionmay
be too simple; that is, it ignores the fact that these core South Side clubs have defied
the odds before and have been remarkably resilient in the face of different kinds of eco-
nomic pressures (from both intense commodification and economic decline). Moreover,
there is evidence that these clubs contain a potent mixture of vibrant human agency,
unpredictable human vision and social constructing, and intense personal striving for
pleasureandmeaningthatmaketheoperationofthiscommodification influenceunduly
complex.
My findings corroborate this idea of a complex commodification process and unpre-
dictableclubfutures.Atthecoreofthis,thepresentstudysuggeststhatclubowners,the
central decision-makers of club futures, are reflexive people who engage, internalize,
andworkthroughthree central forces: newneoliberal subject realities, governmentality,
and class-race identity constituting. These multiscaler, worked-through “templates”
