Urban Mascots and Poverty Fetishism

Abstract

Downtown Los Angeles is undergoing a transformation from concentrated disadvantage to vibrant city center. Using ethnographic research conducted in the gentrifying Historic Core of Los Angeles, I find that the presence of some original residents is encouraged as they help create the gritty and risky atmosphere valued by the new urbanites moving to the area who equate poverty with authenticity in a form of poverty fetishism. I focus here on a subsection of the low-income downtown population, who I call "urban mascots," whose value lies in their ability to embody stereotypical attributes of poverty. I create a typology of urban mascots based on the type of interactions they are willing to have with those seeking experiences with urban poverty. In the end, I argue that urban mascots provide the new gentrifying residents with a cast of nonthreatening and charismatic characters who represent for them a consumable authentic urban experience.

Unfolding Authenticity within Retail Transformation in Novosibirsk, Russia

“…The massive blurring of distinctions makes the marks of authenticity valuable -familyowned shops, ethnic restaurants, and old buildings -and the demand for these marks makes them an expensive commodity, which symbolically and economically forces people who create authentic spaces with their own hands to leave their usual places of residence (Zukin, 2010). Some researchers define this process as gentrification (Benz, 2015;Guimarães, 2021), but they differ in their conclusions about the driving force of this process. For example, the study "Unfolding authenticity within retail gentrification in Mouraria, Lisbon" examines the process of retail gentrification in the historic district of Lisbon.…”

Socio-spatial legibility, discipline, and gentrification through favela upgrading in Rio de Janeiro

“…While slums continue to experience prejudice, marginality, and forced removals, the current intervention paradigm is couched within a lexicon of state-led urban integration, development, and modernization (Conde and Magalhães 2004;Blanco and Kobayachi 2009). Such trends -along with growing "poverty fetishism", where wealthier classes associate poverty with a nostalgic notion of authenticity (Benz 2016)reveal the extent to which slums are becoming politically, socially, and economically attractive, a dynamic which opens up new opportunities for market revaluation and re-branding (Cummings 2015;Lees, Shin and López-Morales 2015).…”