Place, Activism, and Development Politics in the Southwest Georgia United Empowerment Zone

Abstract

This essay presents the results of an ethnographic study of place and development politics in the Southwest Georgia United Empowerment Zone (SWGAUEZ). The zone was established as part of a 1993 federal program passed by Congress under the Clinton Administration, which guarantees some $40 million in block grants to selected impoverished communities. The analysis presented here focuses on how minority organizations from Westside, a low-income, African American neighborhood, constructed place meanings as part of their efforts to obtain federal funds for local projects. Ultimately, Westside's "place frames" promoted visions of development dissimilar to those of the zone's administration. The cultural dissonance created by these divergent senses of place culminated in a discrimination lawsuit and on-site assessment by the Office of the Inspector General. The essay reveals how conflicting geographic imaginations intensified longstanding ethnic and class-based conflicts in the zone. It thereby underscores the cultural-geographic underpinnings of development politics by showing how place impacted the implementation of this large-scale federal rural development program.