The Diversity We Are Given: Community Economies and the Promise of Bataille

For over 20 years J K Gibson‐Graham and the Community Economies Collective have endeavoured to reveal the diversity of economic practice already operative in our so‐called capitalist world. The aim of this paper is to further this ambition by illuminating an occlusion in Gibson‐Graham's own political vision. It argues that diversity, in Gibson‐Graham's thought, is primarily conceptualised as something produced. Drawing upon the work of George Bataille, this paper conceptualises the economy as a superlative and prodigal system of energy exchange that, by definition, is over‐productive and wasteful. In this framing, diversity is not the result of positive relations but emerges from the prolific nature of the general economy. The idea is developed through a discussion of the Detroit urban farming movement. Specifically it argues that the inefficient, redundant and wasteful nature of urban farming is an appropriation of potentialities resident within the general economy.     

Mounds,Towns, and their Surrounds: An Archaeological,Historical, and Geophysical Approach to Burial Mounds,Residential Space,and Cultural Landscapes of the Late Woodland Springwells Site (a.d. 800–1400) at Historic Fort Wayne,Detroit

Historic Fort Wayne is located on the Detroit River in a landscape of heavy industry and marginalized urban neighborhoods (figure 1). Geophysical survey south of the Fort Wayne Mound—a Late Woodland Period burial mound enclosed by the Fort—indicates that pre-contact residential structures may be preserved at the site. Residential sites with mortuary monuments are uncommon in southeastern Michigan and represent an opportunity to better understand variation in Late Woodland settlement. Our approach combines existing archaeological research, historical records, and non-invasive geophysical survey in a culturally sensitive Native American site context presently unavailable for conventional archaeological excavation. We examine archaeological and historical records from Springwells and Late Woodland period settlements in the region to contextualize geophysical evidence from the site. The research prioritizes protection of Native American heritage sites in urban contexts together with ongoing archaeological interpretation of the Late Woodland cultural Landscape.     

Hispanic population change in southwestern Detroit and surrounding suburbs, 1990–2000: a study of the succession process

Rapid growth in Hispanic population in southwestern Detroit during the 1990s led to a transformation of the area from predominantly non-Hispanic white to Hispanic. Focusing on the Hispanic population, a typology of racial/ethnic changes between 1990 and 2000 is undertaken in 99 census tracts in southwestern Detroit and surrounding suburbs. Two of the tract types that experienced the greatest transition to Hispanic underwent substantial declines in non-Hispanic white population, but still experienced growth in total population. At the same time, these tracts experienced a decline in housing stock, which undoubtedly put pressure on the ability to secure housing. Although Hispanics could afford to reside in predominantly black tracts, few did so, probably indicating competition for scarce housing resources. Contiguous to the rapidly transitioning tracts is the suburb of Dearborn, which contains an established Arab enclave. Median housing values in these tracts were about three times that of tracts in the area undergoing succession to Hispanic population, which helps to explain why these tracts experienced little growth in Hispanic population. Not surprisingly, predominantly white tracts in the suburbs also experienced little growth in Hispanic population due to higher housing values. It is concluded that limited financial resources of Hispanics as well as competition for affordable housing in the city were responsible for the rapid growth and concentration of the Hispanic population in southwestern Detroit.     

A century of Grace; restorative spatial justice,pedagogy, and beloved community in twenty-first century Detroit

This article poses feminist biographical investigation as a dialectical approach to situated knowledge, and as a potential avenue for a feminist theorization of space and place. By exploring biography as a departure from canonical epistemological structures, the attempt here is to credit, contextualize and identify key places and people of origin in the evolution and production of theory and knowledge without such heavy dependency on the usual resources that legitimize theoretical and pedagogical contributions; such as academic publications, teaching contributions and references. The biographical focus of this article is the life and work of Grace Lee Boggs, an important contributor to urban studies whose theoretical and pedagogical contributions have gone largely unacknowledged by geographers and spatial thinkers. What can a biographical investigation teach us about feminist knowledge production relating to the production of space? What does feminist biography offer epistemologically to our understandings of space? These questions are examined here through the theoretical contributions of Grace Lee Boggs, a long-time resident of Detroit, second generation Chinese American, civil rights and feminist activist and working class philosopher, as a means of exploring biography as a feminist research methodology.     

Rethinking Land Struggle in the Postindustrial City

The racial and cultural politics of land and property are central to urban struggle, but have received relatively little attention in geography. This paper analyzes land struggles in Detroit where over 100,000 parcels of land are classified as “vacant”. Since 2010, planners and government officials have been developing controversial plans to ruralize Detroit's “vacant” neighborhoods as part of a program of fiscal austerity, reigniting old questions of racialized dispossession, sovereignty, and struggles for liberation. This paper analyzes these contentious politics by examining disputes over a white businessman's proposal to build the world's largest urban forest in the center of a Black majority city. I focus on how residents, urban farmers, and community activists resisted the project by making counterclaims to vacant land as an urban commons. They argued that the land is inhabited not empty and that it belonged to those who labored upon and suffered for it. Combining community‐based ethnography with insights from critical property theory, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory, I argue that land struggles in Detroit are more than distributional conflicts over resources. They are inextricable from debates over notions of race, property, and citizenship that undergird modern liberal democracies and ongoing struggles for decolonization.