Dividing and Defending Ogden: The Intersection of Race Making and Space Making in a Diverse Community

• In Event: 189 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Conceptualizing Community

Abstract

While researchers frequently link the construction of racial meanings with spatial meanings, studies of race have paid little attention to how other forms of space making affect racial divisions. This study, based on interviews collected while residents of Ogden, Utah traveled around their city, explores how collective attachments to place intersect with racialized divisions of it. Residents saw their community as divided into good (white) and bad (minority) areas. Yet, they also felt united as residents. This was partly in response to non-residents who defined the city negatively, and they defended the city against these attacks. These multiple understandings, simultaneously dividing and uniting the city, suggest that racialized definitions of space can be tempered and even challenged by other forms of spatial meaning making.

Author

• Pepper Glass, Weber State University