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Cover for the book: Place We Call Home, A
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A Place We Call Home

Gender, Race, and Justice in Syracuse

K. Amimahaum Ducre

Hardcover $24.95s | 9780815633068Add to cart

eBook $24.95s | 9780815652021Add to cart

Subjects: women's and gender studies, New York State, peace studies, social justice

"Ducre provides an intervention into the ways that scholars think about mapping, power, and race/gender/class intersections by outlining a project conducted with Black women in Syracuse."—Journal of Cultural Geography

"The greatest contribution of Ducre’s work is bringing the voices of poor, working class Black mothers to the forefront of analyses, and examining their oppression through the intersectionality of the multiple social identities the women occupy, including race, class, gender, and geography."—Community Development

Description

Faith holds up a photo of the boarded-up, vacant house: “It’s the first thing I see. And I just call it ‘the Homeless House’ ‘cause it’s the house that nobody fixes up.” Faith is one of fourteen women living on Syracuse’s Southside, a predominantly African-American and low-income area, who took photographs of their environment and displayed their images to facilitate dialogues about how they viewed their community. A Place We Call Home chronicles this photography project and bears witness not only to the environmental injustice experienced by these women but also to the ways in which they maintain dignity and restore order in a community where they have traditionally had little control.

To understand the present plight of these women, one must understand the historical and political context in which certain urban neighborhoods were formed: Black migration, urban renewal, white flight, capital expansion, and then bust. Ducre demonstrates how such political and economic forces created a landscape of abandoned housing within the Southside community. She spotlights the impact of this blight upon the female residents who survive in this crucible of neglect. A Place We Call Home is the first case study of the intersection of Black feminism and environmental justice, and it is also the first book-length presentation using Photovoice methodology, an innovative research and empowerment strategy that assesses community needs by utilizing photographic images taken by individuals. The individuals have historically lacked power and status in formal planning processes. Through a cogent combination of words and images, this book illuminates how these women manage their daily survival in degraded environments, the tools that they deploy to do so, and how they act as agents of change to transform their communities.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

An Introduction

Welcome to the South Side

Disruption and Dislocation of Black Spaces in Syracuse

Exploring Black Mothers’ Spatiality through Community Mapping

Women’s Photovoice from Belfast to the South Side

Conclusion: Evaluating Spatial Strategies in Feminist Theorizing and Research

References

Index

About the Author

K. Animashaun Ducre is assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. Ducre and her colleague Linda Carty were awarded a grant from the Ford Foundation to expand the curriculum around themes of gender and environmental justice. A committed advocate for environmental justice for over a decade, she worked as a toxics campaigner for Greenpeace for four years.


Related Interest

2001 Race Odyssey
Salt City and its Black Community

Series: Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution

6 x 9, 172 pages, 23 black and white illustrations

January 2013

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