And There Were Jazz Clubs...: Navigating Community Change with Consumption Lifelines

Abstract

This dissertation combines an assemblage theory ontology of urban sociology with the concept of Bauman's 'liquid modernity' (2000, 2012). It subsequently incorporates the nascent "liquid" constructs of liquid retail, liquid legitimacy, and liquid community to analyze consumers, community, and retailscapes in a violent and impoverished inner city area that has experienced constant and dramatic change. Through this lens, ethnographic fieldwork reveals a construct called consumption lifelines, which explains how consumers and communities use market-facing resources to find and create relative stability in the midst of turbulence, whether they choose to enter, stay in or leave a highly territorialized community with contested boundaries. The study adds complexity to Bauman's concept of liquidity and the construct of urban assemblages, and it has implications for other inner city communities that are similarly affected by changing times and challenging circumstances.