Resisting Criminalization through Moses House: An Engaged Ethnography

Neoliberal restructuring of the state has had destructive effects on families and children living in urban poverty, compelling them to adapt to the loss of social welfare and demolition of the public sphere by submitting to new forms of surveillance and disciplining of their individual behavior. A carceral-welfare state apparatus now confines and controls the bodies of expendable laborers in urban spaces, containing their threat to the neoliberal socioeconomic order through criminalization and workfare assistance, resulting in a new symbiosis of prison and ghetto. The resulting structures of punishment, police surveillance, and criminalization primarily surround African Americans living in high poverty and low income urban neighborhoods. Criminalization intrudes into the everyday lives of African American youth as well, pushing them out of school and into the criminal (in)justice system at an early age. This process may appear natural and inevitable to those experiencing it, but it is really the result of political, economic, historical, and social forces, including institutional discourses, public policies, and investment in law enforcement at the expense of community development and social welfare. This dissertation presents the results of five years of engaged ethnographic collaborative research with African American youth while I was volunteer director of Moses House, a community youth arts organization based in Sulphur Springs, a high poverty neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Grassroots nonprofit organizations such as Moses House are often created and guided by dedicated community leaders, but social marginalization can prevent them from securing resources and labor necessary to sustain an organization. Engaged anthropologists can use forms of community engagement to leverage university resources, social networks, and student service-learning to assist grassroots organizations, in the process learning firsthand about the political, economic, and social forces that produce and reproduce the injustices against which such organizations and their communities struggle. As a doctoral student in an applied anthropology graduate program, I was able to assist the organization in revitalizing itself and applying for IRS nonprofit status, as well as to advocate for the very existence and viability of the organization itself in opposition to a variety of antagonistic forces. Through the process of doing social activism on behalf of the organization, I was able to establish solidarity with people in the community who were socially networked through Moses House. As an outsider to a community rightfully suspicious of outsiders, especially ones who are white, gaining the confidence of residents was a prerequisite for doing engaged research that intended to explore how African American youth living in a high poverty neighborhood experience marginalization and criminalization, and how they can communicate their experiences through their own production of creative media. In a variety of mentoring, advocating, and parenting roles, I was able to build empathic, trustful relationships and observe how various policies, procedures, practices, and institutional discourses are criminalizing African American youth in nearly all aspects of their everyday lives. Accompanying Moses House youth through various educational, recreational, and governmental agencies and institutions, I learned with them not only how they were being seriously harmed by the policies of the carceral-assistential state, but also how they were able at times to resist or avoid the system to their own advantage. Using critical dialogue while in conversation with Moses House youth, I nurtured an ongoing analysis of their everyday reality in order to reveal what is criminalizing them and constraining their agency, in the process collaboratively constructing transformative activities, practices, and educational programs that were based on the youths\u27 own aspirations toward social justice, personal success, and community betterment. In establishing social justice based approaches to improving community well-being, grassroots organizations such as Moses House can be understood as spaces that foster and support critical dialogue, social activism, and cultural production and as sites of collective struggle against racism, poverty, and criminalization. University-community engagement can shed light on these social problems, provide research and analysis that is not only rigorous but meaningful and relevant to the community, offer technical assistance for nonprofit leadership, management, and fund development, as well as assist in designing and implementing community-based alternatives and solutions to community-identified problems

Political Pedagogy and Art Education With Youth in a Street Situation in Salvador, Brazil: An Ethnographic Evaluation of the Street Education Program of Projeto Axé

Projeto Axé is a non-governmental organization that carries out political-pedagogical work and art education for children and adolescents living in a street situation in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. I conducted an exploratory ethnographic study with Projeto Axé\u27s Street Education program in order to observe its day-to-day activities and to conduct a utilization-focused program evaluation (Patton 1997) of its pedagogical praxis. This thesis will describe how ethnographic fieldwork methods are interwoven with the political-pedagogical approaches of Projeto Axé\u27s Street Education program and explain how street educators attempt to construct citizenship with participants in the Street Education program. Findings are based on an analysis of data collected during three months of fieldwork, during which I observed the day-to-day activities of the Street Education program and formally interviewed seven street educators. Projeto Axé\u27s street educators employ ethnographic fieldwork methods in order to more holistically understand the everyday lives of street youth, as well as the dynamics of street culture that emerge in the particular urban spaces frequented by street youth. The result is an anthropological understanding that serves as the foundation for street education activities, through which street youth are provoked to think critically about their everyday reality in order to transform it (Freire 1970). The construction of citizenship through Street Education is based on the pedagogy of desire (Carvalho 2000), a psychological-sociocultural theory of learning developed by the organization specifically for working with youth living in a street situation. Street education and the construction of citizenship begin and happen with the desire of street youth. The content of street education is not fixed or predetermined, but emerges out of a particular street youth\u27s desires, needs, and dialogues with street educators. I conclude that, combined with Freireian-inspired political pedagogy and the pedagogy of desire, the use of ethnographic fieldwork methods by street educators is crucial for Projeto Axé\u27s attempts at realizing radical transformations in the lives of street youth. Furthermore, Projeto Axé\u27s anthropological approaches to the social and political inclusion of street youth increase the adaptability of its street pedagogy to the local socio-cultural realities emergent in other urban spaces