Through the Window of the Past: the Cultural Politics of the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project

• In Event: 277 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Culture and Movements 1

Abstract

Abstract: Over the course of two years the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project unfolded as a dynamic project of community-based knowledge production, weaving together a tapestry of stories about the past to make meaning about contemporary inequities. Through an engaged activist ethnography of this project, this paper asks what role narratives of history play in cultural politics. I argue that the BBDP engages in a cultural politics of the past – a politics not geared at telling a narrative of history, but of re-framing the present as one in which the inequitable distribution of resources across race and class are at the forefront. To do so the BBDP engages multiple approaches to the past, always in service of meaning-making for contemporary social relations and structures. This research suggests that the cultural politics of the past are not only a part of everyday memory talk, but also used as a tool in active contention.

Author

• Meghan V. Doran, Northeastern University