{"id":11054,"date":"2012-06-11T10:00:24","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T17:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingvancouver.ca\/?p=11054"},"modified":"2013-01-21T07:10:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T15:10:31","slug":"on-bias-critique-and-civic-duty-an-interview-with-an-unabashedly-subjective-gentrification-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2012\/06\/11\/on-bias-critique-and-civic-duty-an-interview-with-an-unabashedly-subjective-gentrification-researcher\/","title":{"rendered":"On Bias, Critique, and Civic Duty: An Interview with an \u201cUnabashedly Subjective\u201d Gentrification Researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Tom Slater, senior lecturer of human geography at the University of Edinburgh. Photo courtesy of Sara Slater, 2008.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

[Editor’s Note: Former Vancouver reporter Christine McLaren is\u00a0traveling\u00a0around the world as the resident blogger for the\u00a0BMW Guggenheim Lab<\/a>, a mobile think tank investigating solutions to urban problems. In October, 2011, the project wrapped up its three-month run in New York City and i currently in Berlin. This story was originally published on Lab|log at\u00a0bmwguggenheimlab.org<\/a>. \u00a9 2012 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Used by permission.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Why study gentrification?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question I\u2019ve long wanted to put to a researcher, in much the same way that I\u2019m often compelled to ask other journalists why they write about what they write about.<\/p>\n

Is it because they have a goal they hope to reach at the end\u2014an agenda, if you will? Is studying gentrification like studying, say, a disease, where the goal is eventually to contribute to its alleviation? Or is it simply out of an anthropological curiosity to understand the world better, without necessarily feeling the need to see it change?<\/p>\n

And if it is indeed the former, does that mean that there is a tangible light at the end of the tunnel that they\u2019re reaching toward? I mean, if they wanted to change something, but didn\u2019t believe that a final answer lies somewhere just short of our current grasp . . . why would they even bother?<\/p>\n

And so I put the question to the one researcher I was fairly certain would give me a straight, unfiltered answer\u2014a researcher so firm in his opinions about gentrification, who wastes so little time on academic debates about whether gentrification is good or bad, that he seemed positively delighted by my recent description of him as \u201cunabashedly subjective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Slater can describe in perfect detail the day he decided that his role as an academic was also the role of an activist.<\/p>\n

It was a bitterly cold March day in 2001 in Toronto, Canada, where he\u2019d recently arrived from the U.K. to conduct graduate fieldwork on gentrification. He was sipping jasmine tea in the clean and tidy but tiny \u201cbachelorette\u201d apartment (two rooms: one serving as sleeping, living, and cooking space, and the other a bathroom) of a Tibetan refugee family of five in South Parkdale, one of the last central-city neighborhoods clinging to a gossamer thread of affordability at the time.<\/p>\n

The plaster on the walls was cracking, and the whole building smelled damp. There was no fire escape, it was freezing cold in the winter, and none of the tenants had leases. But one of the family members was nonetheless telling Slater of their desperate struggle to hold on to the apartment as long as they could. Where else would they go?<\/p>\n

Her landlord was upping the rent by illegally large leaps, negotiating as much money out of her as her family\u2019s tiny budget could possibly afford and threatening her with immediate eviction if she sought legal services, she told Slater with tears streaming down her face.<\/p>\n

After he listened to the story\u2014what most social scientists would call \u201cdata\u201d\u2014he got up and prepared to leave. The woman pulled out a stack of letters from her landlord as proof of the nightmare she\u2019d just recounted, and asked Slater politely: Was there anything he could do to help?<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the sorts of things that university research methods classes don\u2019t prepare you for. I had been told that to be a social scientist you come up with a set of interview questions based on what you want to do, go interview someone, and then analyze the data that you get. It was not that typical experience,\u201d Slater told me.<\/p>\n

Almost all the research he\u2019d read up to that point about gentrification in Toronto had described a middle-class move to the city center in the pursuit of \u201cplaces [that] offer difference and freedom, privacy and fantasy, possibilities for carnival\u201d and of diversity, \u201cthe place of our meeting with the other,\u201d as it was put in Jon Caulfield\u2019s \u201c\u2018Gentrification\u2019 and Desire.\u201d But as he wiped tears off his face in the tram on his way back home that day, Slater thought how differently the story looked from the other side. Not from the perspective of the gentrifiers, but rather that of the gentrified.<\/p>\n

As he puts it more blatantly in the opening chapter of his upcoming book Fighting Gentrification, he realized that \u201ca different picture of gentrification emerges if one takes the trouble to talk to those who do not stand to profit from the rising costs of land and real estate.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he made himself a promise. \u201cI felt that I had a civic duty to be critical in the work that I was doing, and to present a story that captured the predicament of the people living at the bottom of the class structure. So that became, if you like, my mission,\u201d Slater said.<\/p>\n

Over a decade later, and now senior lecturer of human geography at the University of Edinburgh, Slater has held true to his promise to such an extent that his work has, at times, come under immense critique.<\/p>\n

It has been called biased, rhetorical, and judgmental. One academic even went so far as to write that he was critiquing Slater\u2019s work \u201cfor those who may otherwise be seduced into seeing Slater as the Luke Skywalker of gentrification, wielding his light sabre on behalf of the true faith against Darth Vader and the evil empire of neo-liberal urban policy,\u201d when he was really, \u201cthe Mikado of gentrification research, seeking to burnish his own critical credentials and punish those who dare to question the emperor\u2019s theoretical and political edicts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important for social scientists not to shy away from this stuff. There is a kind of tradition in scientific study of being detached and objective in the way that we do things. There are many things that are good about that tradition, but I think when you\u2019re dealing with people\u2019s lives, when you\u2019re close to people and they\u2019re responding to what life does to them, I think that this objectivity goes out the window,\u201d Slater told me when I asked him about this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s up to the social scientist to analyze the data and present the story which gives justice to the injustice that people are going through. But those agendas must not drive the inquiry to the point where you become very narrow. If I found, for example, in that neighborhood, that the empancipatory story was true, that gentrification was actually a positive force that was bringing people together and there actually was this rosy story that I had read, then I would have reported that. But I didn\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you try to do is uncover causes, to show effects, and to propose solutions, and the duty for a social scientist is to do those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

So if that\u2019s the duty he subscribes to, what solutions are out there to be proposed, I asked. And if the solutions are out there, why aren\u2019t they being implemented or talked about?<\/p>\n

He laughed with what I interpreted as a slight weariness, and took a deep breath.<\/p>\n

There are things that can be done in the short term to ease the pain of gentrification, to ease the pain of displacement, he told me. And surprisingly not many of them have to do with property development. Instead, he pointed to rent controls and living-wage campaigns, for instance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a huge amount of people living in cities who are struggling to make ends meet, they\u2019re struggling every day to make rent, and this is something that\u2019s not just because rents are high, it\u2019s because their wages are low,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you think about it, a city\u2019s housing market is an incredibly competitive thing. People who have the least means to compete, their plight would be improved if they were paid higher wages.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the long-term struggle, he said\u2014or, as he put it, \u201cthe big elephant in the room\u201d\u2014is more than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to have a big debate generally about capitalist urbanization, and I think we\u2019re not having that debate at the moment,\u201d he said, recognizing that saying such things often prompts his critics to respond by pegging him as a \u201ccrazy socialist.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you open any academic journal of housing studies, he said, you see debates about what housing policies might improve cities and not displace that many people. You see debates about the creative class.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, for me, yes, they\u2019re important, but we need to raise bigger questions. To address gentrification, you have to address the institutional arrangements that make it possible, and by this I mean who owns land and how does land ownership happen, and who has all the power in terms of the cost of housing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And that, he said, comes down to one major, elephantine shift in mentality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to think about housing as a question of social justice, not as a commodity.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Christine McLaren<\/strong> is a freelance journalist who investigates solutions to urban problems. She is currently traveling as the resident blogger for the BMW Guggenheim Lab<\/a>, a mobile urban think tank investigating urban solutions in nine cities around the world. Her writing and research explores how the shape of our cities impacts the lives and behavior of those living in them and how shifting social, environmental, and economic climates are changing our relationship with the urban fabric. Based in Vancouver, Canada, she has written for publications such as\u00a0Spacing,\u00a0Zoomer,\u00a0BC Business,\u00a0Unlimited, and Momentum Magazines and reported for numerous print, online, and television news outlets. She was also the lead researcher for award-winning Canadian journalist and New York Lab Team member Charles Montgomery\u2019s upcoming book\u00a0Happy City, and conducted research for National Geographic Emerging Explorer Alexandra Cousteau\u2018s upcoming book,\u00a0This Blue Planet.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Editor’s Note: Former Vancouver reporter Christine McLaren is\u00a0traveling\u00a0around the world as the resident blogger for the\u00a0BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile think tank investigating solutions to urban problems. In October, 2011, the project wrapped up its three-month run in New York City and i currently in Berlin. This story was originally published on Lab|log at\u00a0bmwguggenheimlab.org. \u00a9Continue reading “On Bias, Critique, and Civic Duty: An Interview with an \u201cUnabashedly Subjective\u201d Gentrification Researcher”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6040,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11232],"tags":[6212,1266,367,792,4147,6213,814,8891,6208,8892,398,8896,2808,6207,8889,1105,489,8898,8893,490,3369,890,8894,5536,8890,6209,6210,6206,6216,8895,137,1817,8897,214],"class_list":["post-11054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-alexandra-cousteau","tag-berlin","tag-bmw-guggenheim-lab","tag-canada","tag-charles-montgomery","tag-christine-mclaren","tag-editor","tag-emperor","tag-freelance-journalist","tag-gentrification-researcher","tag-indepth-features","tag-jon-caulfield","tag-journalist","tag-lead-researcher","tag-legal-services","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-lab","tag-one-of-the-family-members","tag-real-estate","tag-reporter","tag-researcher","tag-sara-slater","tag-senior-lecturer","tag-social-scientist","tag-tank-investigating-solutions","tag-tank-investigating-urban-solutions","tag-team-member","tag-the-solomon-r-guggenheim-museum","tag-tom-slater","tag-toronto","tag-united-kingdom","tag-university-of-edinburgh","tag-vancouver-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Bias, Critique, and Civic Duty: An Interview with an \u201cUnabashedly Subjective\u201d Gentrification Researcher - Spacing Vancouver<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2012\/06\/11\/on-bias-critique-and-civic-duty-an-interview-with-an-unabashedly-subjective-gentrification-researcher\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Bias, Critique, and Civic Duty: An Interview with an \u201cUnabashedly Subjective\u201d Gentrification Researcher - Spacing Vancouver\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[Editor’s Note: Former Vancouver reporter Christine McLaren is\u00a0traveling\u00a0around the world as the resident blogger for the\u00a0BMW Guggenheim Lab, a mobile think tank investigating solutions to urban problems. 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