Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place (New Directions in Ethnography)

Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place is the fascinating story of an urban neighborhood undergoing rapid gentrification. It is a story about how the members of a multi-ethnic, multi-class Washington, D.C., community deploy language to project conflicting images of their neighborhood. Waging wars around such issues as public toilets and public urination, the “morality” of co-ops & condos, and characterizations of “good” girls and “bad” boys, community members use these themes to create identities for themselves as legitimate community members (e.g., as tough urbanites or sophisticated historic preservationists) while creating identities to discredit others (e.g., “People who belong in the suburbs”). Turf Wars taps the power of discourse analysis to provide insight into the ways that local activity shapes larger urban social processes.

In this innovative text, cultural anthropologist and linguist Gabriella Modan offers a detailed, rich, and highly engrossing ethnographic account of a neighborhood and the people who live and work there. She also provides readers with little background in linguistic anthropology, cultural geography, and urban anthropology a primer to key concepts and presents a range of sophisticated ideas in an accessible manner.

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.

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

Gabriella Gahlia Modan (PhD Georgetown University) is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, The Ohio State University.

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.