Title

Deracialized Nostalgia, Reracialized Community and Truncated Gentrification: Capital and Cultural Flows in Richmond, Virginia and Durban, South Africa

DOI

10.1080/08873631.2019.1595914

Abstract

Gentrification literature often focuses on frictions between gentrifiers (often white) and those being displaced by the process (often low-income people of color). Far less attention is paid to a revealing place-marketing strategy that papers over race politics. Businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods appeal to their customers’ sense of nostalgia for a vanished way of life, while eliding racial injustices prevalent in the times they evoke. The process entails re-racialization of such sites without reference to the segregatory politics central to their creation: a mode of remaking history, without memory. In larger cities this may not be so evident, since gentrification dynamics are driven by both a sufficiently large share of the population with high disposable incomes, and a well-developed property redevelopment industry with the capacity to unleash real estate speculation. In contrast, smaller cities that have partially gentrified still exhibit incomplete erasure of the past. They provide a valuable window into this process of historical de- and re-racialization. Two such secondary cities are Richmond, Virginia, and Durban, South Africa. Both have histories of legally-enshrined racial segregation, and both are attempting, with varying degrees of success, to recast inner-city neighborhoods as cool, creative places for middle-class residents to live, consume, and produce.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-28-2019

Publisher Statement

Copyright © 2019 Taylor & Francis. This article first appeared in the Journal of Cultural Geography 36:2 (2019), 211-245.

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Citation Example for Article (Chicago):

Bond, Patrick, and Laura Browder. "Deracialized Nostalgia, Reracialized Community and Truncated Gentrification: Capital and Cultural Flows in Richmond, Virginia and Durban, South Africa." Journal of Cultural Geography 36, no. 2 (March 2019): 211-245.

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