| This study of networks and resource mobilization in three localities shows how community members access resources through social circuits to create markers of the racial, ethnic, and class dimensions of their communities. Without access to the consistent resources of traditional labor markets, arts producers rely on network relationships based in trust, reciprocity, and mutual concern for the locality to bring together participants and sustain their art production activity. Through interviews with sixty-six people and participant observation of their events, I traced art production networks through connections of participants in three distinct urban communities: a predominantly Black/African-American area (Bronzeville); a predominantly White/Hispanic/Mexican-American one (Pilsen); and a diverse community (Rogers Park). Rather than reproducing historic inequalities by misrecognizing a dominant culture as the legitimate culture of the community (Bourdieu 1984), participants produce art parties and territorial markers that represent the community, its history, its people and its potential vitality to itself and outsiders while contesting historically subordinate statuses. This "local color" has become another resource to be exploited by individuals and organizations. |
