SMALL CITY NEIGHBORS: RACE, SPACE, AND CLASS IN MANSFIELD, OHIO BY ALISON D. GOEBEL DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Alejandro Lugo, Chair Associate Professor Brenda Farnell Assistant Professor Ellen Moodie Professor David R. Roediger ! ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates social relations in a small deindustrializing city to analyze the socio- spatial specificity of class, “race relations,” and small city “cityness” within the United States. I base my arguments on research conducted over five years (2005-2010) in Mansfield, Ohio—a multiracial, class stratified city of about 50,000 residents. The central aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate that small cities—and how they cope with race, class, and space—offer anthropologists and cultural theorists a rich and necessary perspective on sociocultural processes within the United States. I make the case that comprehensively acknowledging urban variation strengthens our analyses and understandings of social phenomena that occur in urban settings and elsewhere. This research project is indebted to, and engages with, anthropological studies of class, race, and the city. My arguments are grounded in an “ordinary cities approach” (Robinson 2006), which refuses to hold conventionally named “global” and “world” cities as the unmarked category against which all other forms of urbanity are measured and, instead, broadens understandings of cityness to embrace a multitude of difference. I utilize discourse analysis to do fine-grain analyses of informants' speech while simultaneously situating, in relation to one another, national processes of middle class white privilege, the lived practices of race, class, gender, and space under global capitalism, and Mansfielders’ subjective interpretations of middle class whiteness. I use ethnography, history and Census analyses to nuance dominant narratives of deindustrialization and to highlight the socio-spatial particularities of global and neoliberal capitalism. I conclude that Mansfield's small size and industrial history has made it particularly susceptible to the destabilizing effects of current economic restructuring processes, but that new opportunities for select residents have arisen also from the city's specific socio-spatial histories of space, race, and class. ! ii My research in Mansfield contributes to studies of whiteness and U.S. race relations by examining from multiple angles, the ways whiteness hierarchically structures social relationships among neighbors. In analyzing how whiteness, especially middle class white dominance, responds to pressures that seek to undermine its privileges, my dissertation offered a small city-specific view of U.S. race relations. While my dissertation captures ordinary, idiosyncratic particularities of the fieldsite, it also recounts consequences of global neoliberal capitalism and white racial privilege that are common throughout the United States. Two themes dominated my research findings: neighborly relations and notions of trust (which shape encounters between neighbors) appear frequently in the text because these discourses were central to the ways residents created and understood interpersonal interactions. Moreover, these twin frames—neighborliness and trust—conditioned the ways residents interpreted, navigated, and, at times, reproduced larger structural processes like class inequalities, racial hierarchies, and the spatialization of difference. By ethnographically analyzing small city neighborly relations and notions of trust, this dissertation complicates and expands dominant representations and theorizations of “the city,” capitalism, and U.S. racial formations. By examining how Mansfield's socio-spatial dialectics of cityness, class, and whiteness simultaneously produce projects that reinforce social disparities and moments that resist hierarchies of privilege, my dissertation argues that small cities provide critical insight into some of the most pressing concerns in American society: whiteness and racial hierarchies, class stratification under neoliberal capitalism, issues of neighborliness and trust, and how these processes become spatialized. ! iii For my grandparents: LaVera Nelson, Eugene Andereck, Louis Goebel and Audree Goebel ! iv Acknowledgments This dissertation research was supported by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign department of anthropology, the UIUC Graduate College, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Thank you for institutional and financial support. First and foremost, my sincere and appreciative thanks goes to all of Mansfield’s residents for their generous hospitality and candor. You have all taught me so much. I am inspired by your resilience and grace and humbled by the stories you have shared with me. Thank you. Thanks to my committee, Brenda Farnell, David R. Roediger, and Ellen Moodie for training me to be a critical and compassionate analyst. Their work beyond the classroom has influenced as much as their syllabi, lectures, and feedback have. Thanks to my advisor, Alejandro Lugo, who is the quintessential teacher, scholar, and activist. He has supported me since day one. Without his advice, questions, and mentorship, this dissertation and my PhD would not be possible. Thank you for everything. Thanks also to various employers over the years who provided me with much more than a paycheck. Alma Gottlieb, Janet Dixon Keller, and Marc Perry in the department of anthropology, Joan Catapano, Laurie Matheson, and Kendra Boileau at the University of Illinois Press, and Lavea Brachman of the Greater Ohio Policy Center have all asked after my progress and graciously accommodated my student schedule. Their lessons and guidance have taught me how to conduct myself as a professional; an invaluable skill for a young scholar. Alejandro Lugo's advisee dissertation writing group has been an incredible community. Thanks to Aidé Acosta, Cristóbal Valencia Ramírez, and Korinta Maldonado Goti for their many years of friendship, advice, and support on all things dissertation and non-dissertation related. I could not have done it without every one of you. Scholars from Mansfield whose friendships, perspectives, and historical knowledge have been invaluable, include Kevin Jerome Everson, Loretta Robinson Hilliard, Austin McCoy, Timothy Brian McKee, Bvenitta Williams, and Jessica Winck. Thank you. This dissertation would not be here today if it weren't for the supportive peer pressure of my writing posse which began in 2007 and still continues electronically in 2011. Thanks to Natalie Havlin for always having access to great writing rooms, excellent reference suggestions, and lots of feedback on scholarly and life ideas. Rebecca Nickerson gets double billing as the awesomest writing partner ever and the best email buddy in the world. Although we no longer meet in the early morning for power writing sessions, she has encouraged and kept tabs on every piece of writing I've ever even contemplated since 2008. I would have not made it through grad school without Andrew Herscher's friendship, sage advice, and infectious silliness. Thanks dude, you always know what to say and how to make the perfect margarita. ! v Mad props to my number one confidant, intellectual role model, and bff, Suzanne Pennington. She's been with me through the worst and the best and has over a decade's worth of pictures to provide it. Thanks gal for our regular phone calls and everything else. My thanks to Joe VanCamp who I met in a Columbus, Ohio bookstore just as I was completing my first attempt at a dissertation chapter. With every draft since then, he has been a constant source of support, help, and encouragement. Every day he makes me laugh and feel loved. I can't wait for post-dissertation life together. Thanks to my parents J.B. Goebel and Amy Andereck Goebel. They have supported me every step of the way by asking questions, listening to rants, and generally being the ideal parents every child should have. I am so blessed by their love and am forever indebted to them. My sister Lauren's random phone calls, old celebrity magazines, and cast-off clothes have kept me entertained and well dressed through grad school and dissertation writing. I dedicate this dissertation to my grandparents. LaVera Nelson has seen this dissertation to the end and has always offered wonderful stories from her own life. Thanks Grandma. When I was a child, Gene Andereck encouraged my love of words and compelling writing. Louis and Audree Goebel did not live to see me go to college and graduate school but their foresight and generosity made it possible. The money tree they planted years ago allowed me so many educational privileges; everyone should have the kinds of opportunities Papa and Ahma ensured I would have. I hope this dissertation and my further work will begin to make that possible. ! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: MAPPING THE TERRAINS OF MANSFIELD.....................................................1 CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL HISTORIES OF A SMALL CITY, 1808-1990s....................................40 CHAPTER 3: POLITICAL ECONOMY IN A CHANGING COMMUNITY, 1970s-2010..........................................................................82 CHAPTER 4: TRUSTING NEIGHBORS: MAKING RACE THROUGH RELATIONAL SPACE AND STORYTELLING..................................................119