Turf Wars Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place [Hardcover]

Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place is the fascinating story of an urban neighborhood undergoing rapid gentrification.

• Explores how members of a multi-ethnic, multi-class Washington, DC, community deploy language to legitimize themselves as community members while discrediting others.
• Discusses such issues as public toilets and public urination, the morality of co-ops and condos, and characterizations of good girls and bad boys.
• Draws on linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis to provide insight into the ways that local activity shapes larger urban social processes.
• Draws also on cultural geography and urban anthropology.

Series Preface.

List of Figures.

Acknowledgments.

Part I: The Ethnography.

1. Sketching the Landscape.

2. Mt. Pleasant History and Social Geography.

3. The Moral Geography of Mt. Pleasant.

4. The Politics of Filth.

5. La Loca vs. the Cultural Vampires.

6. Keeping it in the Family.

7. Home Ties, Winds of Change.

Part II: The Making of Turf Wars.

8. Theorizing Discourse.

9. Geography and Social Locations.

Addendum: Defining Terms.

Bibliography.

Index.

The style of writing in Turf Wars is refreshing. ... .Modan aims to bring to a wider audience an understanding of how language works through the adoption of this more informal style. (Cultural Geographies, January 2010)

A highly readable, lively, and unusually accessible work of ethnography that could be the centerpiece of many different kinds of classes from introductlÓ>