Revitalizing Chinatown Into a Heterotopia A Geosemiotic Analysis of Shop Signs in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown
نویسنده
چکیده
With the changing immigrant population and rising real-estate prices in downtown Washington, D.C., the number of Chinese residents and businesses in its Chinatown has declined in recent years. Meanwhile, non-Chinese stores and restaurants have marched into this thriving neighborhood. Foreseeing the threat of Chinatown’s disappearance from the urban landscape, leaders of the local Chinese community have devised and administered a mandate for all businesses, Chinese and nonChinese, in the area to carry Chinese shop signs. To understand how this mandate has reconstructed Chinatown’s semiotic landscape, this article employs the theoretical framework of geosemiotics and the (post-)structuralist conception of the sign. Through an analysis of shop signs in their material contexts, it is argued that the local community’s preservation effort has inadvertently rendered Chinatown into a heterotopia, where heterogeneous spaces are juxtaposed into one place.
منابع مشابه
Chinatown by Numbers: Defining an ethnic space by empirical linguistic landscape
This article explores the potential of the LL to evaluate ethnically-defined spaces. Focusing on the area referred to as ‘Chinatown’ in central Liverpool, it examines the relationships between space, representation, and identity. Interviews with actors and passers-by indicate that the location and definition of Chinatown are interpreted inconsistently. As the article argues, however, the LL con...
متن کاملAn Imagined Geography: Ideology, Urban Space, and Protest in the Creation of Barcelona's Chinatown, c.18351936
Henri Lefebvre famously seized upon the duality of the modern city: how for some it is a space of play and liberation, and for others a centre for power and repression. This article explores this duality through an analysis of the changing historical geography of Barcelona’s Raval district, an inner-city working-class community and the birthplace of Catalan industrialization. From the 1920s onw...
متن کاملThe Economic Impact of Commensal Rodents on Small Businesses in Manhattanâ•Žs Chinatown: trends and possible causes
متن کامل
Using community-based participatory research to design and initiate a study on immigrant worker health and safety in San Francisco's Chinatown restaurants.
BACKGROUND Restaurant workers have among the highest rates of work-related illness and injury in the US, but little is known about the working conditions and occupational health status of Chinese immigrant restaurant workers. METHODS Community-based participatory research (CBPR) was employed to study restaurant working conditions and worker health in San Francisco's Chinatown. A community/aca...
متن کامل