Search results

Drawing on shared research and educational trajectories, the authors illustrate the importance and challenge of tracing Black gay social life in urban ethnography. This chapter investigates the ephemeral nature of Black gay geographies using live experience and data collection from Los Angeles. Guided by Joseph Beam’s (1984) key sociological insight, we offer and amplify a new warrant for urban ethnography emergent from the study of Black and LGBTQ life, visibility is survival. In so doing, we aim to underscore the importance of ethnographic inquiry to understand the spatial and communal navigation of cities by Black gay people. In examining the unique Black gay maps of a rapidly changing Los Angeles, we articulate the multitude of ways that ethnographic inquiry serves as a correction to the record and a form of documenting threatened histories and everyday realities of Black LGBTQ life.

This chapter draws on 10 years of ethnographic fieldwork collected in gay bars from three American cities to explore the strategies LGBTQ subcultures deploy to recreate meaningful places within the vestiges of local queer nightlife. As gentrification and social acceptance accelerate the closures of LGBTQ-specific bars and nightclubs worldwide, venues that once served a specific LGBTQ subculture (i.e., leather bars) expand their offerings to incorporate displaced LGBTQ subcultures. Attending to how LGBTQ subcultures might appropriate designated spaces within a gay venue to support community (nightlife complexes), how management and LGBT subcultures temporally circumscribe subcultural practices and traditions to create fleeting, but recurring places (episodic places), and how patrons might disrupt an existing production of place by imposing practices associated with a discrepant LGBTQ subculture(place ruptures), this chapter challenges the notion of “the gay bar” as a singular place catering to a specific subculture. Instead, gay bars increasingly constitute a collection of places within the same space, which may shift depending on its use by patrons occupying the space at any given moment. Beyond the investigation of gay bars, this chapter contributes to the growing sociological literature exploring the multifaceted, unstable, and ephemeral nature of place and place-making in the postmodern city.

Shortly before the Second World War, a woman who had never accepted her orphan status, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed ‘Little Coco’ by her father and known as ‘Coco’ to her relatives, became the first women in history to build a world-class industrial empire. By 1935, Coco, a fashion designer and industry captain, was employing more than 4,000 workers and had sold more than 28,000 dresses, tailored jackets and women's suits. Born into a poor family and raised in an orphanage, she enjoyed an intense social life in Paris in the 1920s, rubbing shoulders with artists, creators and the rising stars of her time.

Thanks to her entrepreneurial skills, she was able to innovate in her methods and in her trendsetting approach to fashion design and promotion. Coco Chanel was committed and creative, had the soul of an entrepreneur and went on to become a world leader in a brand new sector combining fashion, accessories and perfumes that she would help shape. By the end of her life, she had redefined French elegance and revolutionized the way people dressed.

As the First Lady, Michelle Obama stated that she had a number of priorities but that the first year would be mainly about supporting her two girls in their transitions to their new life in the White House. Her choice to be mom-in-chief drew unusually intense and rather puzzling, scrutiny. The chapter briefly discusses the range of reactions along the political spectrum as well as African-American feminists’ analyses of the stereotypes of Black women underlying those reactions. This analysis engages the debates from a different perspective. First, the chapter addresses the under-theorizing of the racialized gender norms embedded in the symbolism of the White House and the role of First Lady. It challenges the presumption of traditional notions of true womanhood and the incorrect conclusion that mothering would preclude public engagement.

Second and most importantly, this chapter argues that there are fundamental misunderstandings of what mothering meant for Michelle Obama as African-American woman. Cultural traditions and socio-historical conditions have led Black women, both relatives and non-kin, to form mothering relationships with others’ children and to appreciate the interdependence of “nurturing” one's own children, other children, and entire communities. Those practitioners whose nurturing activities encompassed commitment and contributions to the collectivity were referred to as community othermothering. Using primary sources, this chapter examines in detail Michelle Obama's socialization for and her practice of community othermothering in her role as First Lady. Attention is focused on her transformation of White House events by extending hospitality to more within Washington, DC, and the nation, plus broadening young people's exposure to inspiration, opportunities, and support for setting and accomplishing their dreams. Similarly, the concept of community othermothering is also used to explain Michelle Obama’s reinterpretation of the traditional First Lady's special project into the ambitious “Let's Move” initiative to end childhood obesity within a generation. The othermothering values and endeavors have helped establish the White House as “the People's House.”