In Monday’s class each group worked together to construct a historical narrative of what’s shaping NYC/your issue, drawing on key terms from this week’s readings, including: location/dislocation, fiscal crisis, neoliberalism, global capital, inequality, gentrification, growth machine, race, class, community planning/resistance, production/social reproduction, and post-industrial city.  Think of these narratives as first drafts for the historical overview of your issue that will be part of your white paper.  A few things we discussed in class that you should keep in mind and continue to work on in your projects:

• Each of your issues is shaped by and shaping the particulars of local politics and culture, and by structural dynamics, i.e. global capitalism.  It’s really important that you situate your issue within and across these scales, as specifically as possible.  Your project should help us better understand really difficult concepts like neoliberalism (and resistance/alternatives to neoliberalism), by going deeply into a real life, concrete example as it is playing out. The readings from class should help with this- especially Tom Angotti’s book.
• Please be careful with making assumptions and drawing conclusions that are not supported in the readings or in your research (which also means these need to be well cited).  There are lots of dominant narratives and theories out there – i.e. culture of poverty- that must not be taken for granted!  This is not to say you can’t engage with them- but critically.  The readings in the next section should help with this, as well as the news articles that I send and post.