Narratives and Landscapes of Culture and Power: The Making of Community Space in Two Ethnic Neighborhoods

FAIN: FT-51175-03

Karen Mary Davalos
Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles, CA 90045-2650)

This proposal seeks support for research on space, culture, and power in Chicago, IL. The study explores the narratives of space and how institutions, development policy, discourse, and social groups shape adjacent Mexican neighborhoods, Pilsen and Little Village. The research asks: How do landscapes become fields in which group identities and authority are communicated and imagined? This study is chapter three of a larger project that makes an interdisciplinary contribution to Chicana/o Studies, anthropology, cultural geography, and religious studies. It will draw on ethnographic fieldwork, literature, and history to enhance the humanistic understanding of the second largest Mexican American urban center in the country.