This project is a relational ethnography that explores valuation as a social process and its relationship to the production and reproduction of inequality in urban space. I connect the subjective valuation process with struggles over material resources and the politics of recognition. With each chapter of this dissertation I demonstrate that race and ethnicity are encoded in the value of urban spaces through analyses of various micro-level meaning-making practices and structures that constitute cultural processes relevant to valuation. In addition to participant observation, I incorporate semi-structured photo-elicitation interviews, unstructured interviews, a semiotic analysis and analyses of existing literature to historicize the project. My overall epistemological objective is to marry a political and material focus on worth with a study of the mechanisms through which culture enters into valuation processes and, consequently, inequality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D8G73DX0 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Valle, Melissa Mercedes |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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