Resisting Place Stigma on the Bronx River

Abstract

The research presented here blends different theoretical approaches to investigate place-based group-building in an urban setting and how environmental symbolic, discursive acts as well as environmental stewardship influence place meanings. The bulk of this research highlights program processes and outcomes at Rocking the Boat (RTB), a positive youth development (PYD) organization that serves primarily Black and Latine youth in the Bronx, NY, while the third chapter focuses on media representations of the Bronx River. The overarching questions driving this research were (1) How do Bronx River-based activities support RTB youth’s place and group identity development? (2) How do Bronx River-based activities foster Bronx residents’ resistance to negative social representations and territorial stigmatization of the Bronx? And (3) To what extent does the Bronx River symbolize restoration in Bronx River-related media, thereby challenging dominant narratives of stigma about the wider Bronx? To investigate these questions, I conducted two studies with RTB and a topic modeling and sentiment analysis of New York Times and Twitter posts related to the Bronx River. I employed engaged research methods and operated within a transformative research paradigm to conduct research with RTB. Key findings include that youth who participated in environmental stewardship activities at RTB engaged in a process of identity construction that enabled them to contest the hegemonic, racialized representations of Bronx-based stigma. I also found that RTB functions as a small anchor institution, metaphorically anchoring alumni identification and social networks, serving as a locus for reshaping place identities, and acting as a hub for alumni civic behaviors. Finally, I illustrate how a Bronx River environmental group influences NYTimes coverage of the Bronx River and how environmental users on Twitter function as an “issue public.” I make three primary contributions to the literature. First, I take a novel theoretical approach to analyzing positive youth development and center my analysis of PYD outcomes around the intersections of place and social identity. Second, I blend agenda setting and social representations approaches and employ a not-yet-often-used computational method for understanding how the media portrays the Bronx River. Third, drawing from Black and Latine geographies, I highlight the agency that Black and Latine youth have in rescripting the Bronx and how placemaking through environmental stewardship facilitates this process.