In Anderson’s piece on the Cosmopolitan Canopy, he introduces the idea of folk ethnography and the power and implications of ephemeral place making. In many ways, millennial mindsets are dominated by the tenets of the cosmo canopy. In the ever growing urban metropolis it is hard to find moments of community that involve heterogeneous mixes of people. Racial, class and social divides seem to dissipate within the cosmo canopy and though there is an understanding that it is ephemeral, it is still important to understanding how folk ethnography can operate as an agent of mutual societal exposure and acceptance. In a way, the concept of the Cosmopolitan canopy is to yield a kind of social cocoon. How? Well, a cocoon is an enclosed area in which transformation and growth happens. The expectation is that a caterpillar goes in and comes out a butterfly. The same is true of cosmo canopies. Participants go in and engage in what is expected to be a positive, inclusive experience (one that has the power to bypass and exist despite the myriad of socio-economic and socio-cultural hindrances inherent in society), most of which is not visible to those outside the canopy. After a period of time, the participants come out butterflies, momentarily enriched by the experience.

The material that binds the social cocoon of the cosmo canopy together is civility. The process tha takes place within the social cocoon is folk ethnography. Participants enter what Anderson considers a “neutral space”, a place with no apparent owner. However, in a way I want to challenge that notion of a neutral space. I think of Bowdoin College when I think of the cosmo canopy. Bowdoin in theory wants to operate like an extended cosmo canopy. Bowdoin prides intellectual fearlessness and champions the common good over all else. Whether it succeeds in this mission or not is something I am curious to know.The two mottos of our school challenge us as students to conduct responsible folk ethnography and work towards building an inclusive community. In my opinion Bowdoin can’t necessarily succeed in being a cosmo canopy because the time spent here is too long. The cosmo canopy depends on its fleeting and ephemeral nature to yield best results.

As optimistic as the cosmo canopy is to alleviating some of society’s issues, roadblocks persist. In hunter’s piece on black nightlife we see the ways in which black bodies can derive their meaning and advance their place in social situation despite the connotations of the color of their skin. In a similar sense, the Spot (nightclub) acts as destination in which a kind of Cosmo canopy can be experimented in. Social capital (clout) is leveraged in these spaces and can be used as a means towards upward mobility. The concepts addressed in both of these pieces deal with the ways social capital, social interactions and engagement with other social groups can act as a way of temporarily suspending society’s greater issues. The participants, drawn together by unspoken codes of civility and “neutrality” , use social environments as the even playing field to evaluate and test the validity of their perceptions

Immigration trends and immigrant communities in America have taken on different on different forms. The three main waves of immigration all involved different groups and people and reacted to national and world phenomena. As America’s immigration changed and different groups moved in, the process of place making has also taken different forms. For some communities place making consisted of staying steadfast in cultural practices and being weary of assimilatory practices. In these readings, “Staying Vietnamese” and “Illegality and Spaces of Sanctuary” we see the ways in which communities of the newer waves of immigration attempt to make sense of changing identities. Ruiz’s piece deals with place making through the lens of illegality. It deals with issues of citizenship and how to some cultures that practice goes beyond documentation and nationality. To the residents of South Central LA, place making takes on the form of community gardens, and deals with how the physical transformation and re-appropriation of space deemed undesirable can be symbolic of the people who are performing the place making. To put in simply, the space becomes a symbol of the struggle of those trying to derive meaning and culture from it.

In my question, I pondered of where resistance identities would play into this process. If we think of the process of place making as an extension of identity politics then violence and  discrimination against the physical space can extend to be an attack on identity. When the land was razed and subsequently bulldozed, the subtle implications were that its cultivators lacked the necessary legal claims to the land, and thus lacked legal claims to express their culture and “citizenship”. The implications and cultural benefit of creating a space reminiscent of their home country were attacked, with the attack of the physical space. In many ways, the issues that these residents faced, stemmed from the illegality. Because in many ways their community was a minority (not necessarily in numbers but more in access to capital and cultural markets), attacks and eradication of culture can be understood in a Darwinian sense. Cultural practices of minority communities that are not lucrative or economically profitable are unrecognizable and thus justifiably “othered”.

On the flip side, place making in the Vietnamese communities of orange county took on a different look. The Vietnamese community culture is highly visible and recognizable to everyone in and around the neighborhood because of recognizable commercial businesses. In that community, place making has been relatively simple compared to their counterparts on the east coast in Boston. While in many ways the Boston community has the elements and ability to form distinct Vietnamese space, the process has been hindered by the lack of actual physical space. However, two distinct road blocks that Boston communities have is the lack of gaining a monopoly on the capital of that area and the lack of having a monopoly on the physical space in Boston (both in competition with other Asian communities, namely Chinatown).

In conclusion, place making plays a huge role in identity politics because it is influenced and deemed recognizable by a number of other factors, namely economic ones. Profitability and marketability play bigger roles in determining how culture is received in a given area, rather than individual,independent acts of the residents themselves