University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 Durham’s Self-Help And The Financialization Of The Bull City: Development Without Displacement? Or Displacement Without Development? Emily Ladue University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the American Studies Commons, Communication Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Ladue, Emily, "Durham’s Self-Help And The Financialization Of The Bull City: Development Without Displacement? Or Displacement Without Development?" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2905. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2905 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2905 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Durham’s Self-Help And The Financialization Of The Bull City: Development Without Displacement? Or Displacement Without Development? Abstract This dissertation is an ethnography of the nonprofit institution, the Center for Community Self-Help, and the development media in Durham, North Carolina that together work to support rent-intensifying pro- growth development in the city. Self-Help discursively, financially, and geographically manages rent- intensifying development in Durham by partnering with the city and other institutions, principally Duke University, to manage community relations, shepherd state and federal tax credits and other public financing, and act as a symbol of progressive politics. Through innovative methods developed over a five- year media and institutional ethnography of Self-Help in Durham, this case study examines development media: the discourses, institutions, actors, and publications that work to support pro-growth development in the city by various means, including critiquing the very development that they support.