Practicing Community: Class Culture and Power in an Urban Neighborhood [Hardcover]

Rhoda H. Halperin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1998

Cincinnati's East End river community has been home to generations of working-class people. This racially mixed community has roots that reach back as far as seven generations. But the community is vulnerable. Developers bulldoze "raggedy" but affordable housing to build upscale condos, even as East Enders fight to preserve the community by participating in urban development planning controlled by powerful outsiders.

This book portrays how East Enders practice the preservation of community. Drawing on more than six years of anthropological research and advocacy in the East End, Rhoda Halperin argues for redefining community not merely as a place, but as a set of culturally embedded and class-marked practices that give priority to caring for children and the elderly, procuring livelihood, and providing support for family, friends, and neighbors. These practices create the structures of community within the larger urban power structure.

Halperin uses different genres to weave the voices of East Enders throughout the book. Poems and narratives offer poignant insights into the daily struggles against impersonal market forces that work against the struggle for livelihood. This firsthand account questions commonly held assumptions about working-class people. In a fresh way, it reveals the cultural construction of marginality, from the viewpoints of both "real East Enders" and the urban power structure.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press; 1st edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292731183
• ISBN-13: 978-0292731189
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,567,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an anthropolgical book for the layman too., March 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Practicing Community: Class Culture and Power in an Urban Neighborhood (Hardcover)

Dr. Halperin's work on the East End of Cincinnati,Ohio is an easy read for everyone,you do not have to be a Phd.to appreciate this book.The author obviously lived this book and knew not only the neighborhood but the East Enders themselves on a very personal level,only then could she write about this community and the changes it has gone through in the last decade with such knowledge and insight.This should be a must read for anyone undergoing changes in their life or their community.Thank you Dr.Halperin for a book that everyone can understand and learn from.

3.0 out of 5 stars Practicing Community: Class Culture and Power in an Urban Neighborhood Practicing Community: Class Culture and Power in an Urban, January 19, 2011

By 

Dennis Camp "Dennis Camp" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Practicing Community: Class Culture and Power in an Urban Neighborhood (Hardcover)

The book is a interesting read but is less than factual of the events. I was on the RAC and lived in the East End as well as heavily involved in the process with the community council. Dr. Halperin has written this history from a slanted bias personal view point not from a documentary or historical or journalistic point of view. Dr. Halperin wrote this book more from a bias stand point not from a historical view. Rhoda lets her own feelings and political views skew the events and facts of what happened during the East End redevelopment process. Dr. Halperin over emphasizes parts of the community while leaving out other major parts who wanted the area to remain a fabric of income people.

It makes me wonder what Dr. Halperin was teaching the students during this time period as she use the people of the East End and the redevelopment for the studies. This book is interesting but is slanted so far it should be listed as Fiction. In the end the city paid little attention to the EEAC, the RAC and did what they had wanted to do all along. The worst case has happened and the EEAC no longer is a cross section of the people and the city of Cincinnati has allowed high rise development in areas that were supposed to me low rise housing for people of all incomes.

The EEAC under Ms. Burns did accomplish some major goals of subsidized housing for low income people of the East End. This allowed many people who would have been displaced a place to stay and live in the East End. I did not read much about the people who did accomplish some of the fabric of the community. A nice book just keep in mind it lacks many of the facts that tell the whole story of the East End.