Black Lives and Spatial Matters is a call to reconsider the epistemic violence that is committed when scholars, policymakers, and the general public continue to frame Black precarity as just another racial, cultural, or ethnic conflict that can be solved solely through legal, political, or economic means. Jodi Rios argues that the historical and material production of blackness-as-risk is foundational to the historical and material construction of our society and certainly foundational to the construction and experience of metropolitan space. She also considers how an ethics of lived blackness-living fully and visibly in the face of forces intended to dehumanize and erase-can create a powerful counter point to blackness-as-risk.

Using a transdisciplinary methodology, Black Lives and Spatial Matters studies cultural, institutional, and spatial politics of race in North St. Louis County, Missouri, as a set of practices that are intimately connected to each other and to global histories of race and race-making. As such, the book adds important insight into the racialization of metropolitan space and people in the United States. The arguments presented in this book draw from fifteen years of engaged research in North St. Louis County and rely on multiple disciplinary perspectives and local knowledge in order to study relationships between interconnected practices and phenomena.

About the Author

Jodi Rios is a scholar, designer, and educator whose work is located at the intersection of physical, social, and political space.

Reviews

Rios has written a compelling, theoretically sophisticated analysis of predatory policing and the Ferguson protest movement that erupted in the wake of the 2014 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown... Rios concludes with a brilliant assessment of the queer and trans women who led the Ferguson movement and their relationship with the Black Lives Matter movement.

* Choice *

This text is well suited for introductory and graduate-level work in cultural and urban anthropology and would well serve scholars and thinkers with grounding in studies of the carceral state, critical race studies, and human geograpy.

* American Anthropologist *

Overall, in Black Lives and Spatial Matters, Rios has crafted a significant contribution to urban and suburban studies, geography, and broader literatures on Blackness, race, and space. [O]ne of Rios's most meaningful scholarly contributions is to show how intimate knowledge of urban planning and policy are key to unpacking everyday oppression as well as the roots of radical resistance.

* Urban Geography *

Black Lives and Spatial Matters performs with grace and exacting rigor the skills of audience that planners and civic leaders must develop more fully if we are to participate directly in urgent social challenges of our day. Black Lives and Spatial Matters thus lands on our doorsteps at an opportune moment. It offers a troubling review of epistemic violence and a hopeful performance of freedom and audience skills and introduces us to the Black Lives Matters leaders of North St. Louis County.

* Journal of American Planning Association *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501750465
Author Jodi Rios
Format Hardback
Page Count 294
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 27mm