Narratives of the past in comtemporary urban politics: The case of the Boston Desegregation crisis

Urban sociologists have increasingly recognized the cultural aspects of urban politics, which are performances rich with symbolic meaning. However, more work needs to be done to integrate the cultural politics of urban politics into our understanding of how power operates in the city. Through this research I explore one thread of the fabric of symbolic meaning as it operates in urban politics: remembering cultural trauma, asking: What role do memories of the past play in contemporary urban politics? To answer this question, I consider how Boston's tumultuous and violent school desegregation crisis in the 1970s is remembered and contested in urban politics in the city today. Through engaged ethnography and interviewing I focus on two parallel, overlapping processes: a city-led initiative to change how students are assigned to schools, and a grassroots community project to remember and learn from Boston's Busing/Desegregation crisis.;Using an interactionist framework which understands social action to be a product of performances rooted in place, shared pasts, and relationships, I describe the meaning of this particular cultural trauma in the city today and how it is used as a component in enacting power and making change. First I ask how actors in the policy-making process remember and use cultural trauma in the process of policy construction. I argue that past cultural trauma is used as a point of comparison to the present in order to make the case for present policies. Furthermore, actors in the policy-making process rely on cultural discourses to construct their understanding of the relationship between the past a past cultural trauma and the contemporary city. I then ask what role remembering plays as the process of policy making unfolds. I find that in the policy making process remembering and forgetting the past are components of a strategic performance structured to enact, as well as contest, policy. Finally, I broaden the arena to consider the grassroots politics of remembering in contrast to the institutional policy-making context, asking what role grassroots efforts at remembering play in the larger field of urban politics. I find that grassroots organizations use remembering not only as a strategic tool for policy change, but as a source for knowledge production and an opportunity to not just contest dominant narratives but to alter them. Specific to this case, I argue that to understand student assignment reform in Boston -- its processes and outcomes -- we must understand both the history of the city's school desegregation crisis and how this crisis is remembered today. The case of student assignment reform in Boston suggests that public remembering is a critical component of the cultural politics of the city, with real meaning for how the city is constructed and power is enacted. Ultimately I argue that remembering is a place-based performance embedded in power dynamics which can be used to legitimize and challenge policy.