Keep Culture, Lose the Reductionism: Exploring Contemporary Cultural Spaces as Sites of Power Maintenance and Resistance

Abstract

In this article, we argue for the importance of investigating cultural spaces in connection to social inequalities. Within cultural spaces, culture in both material and nonmaterial forms is used in ways that bolster privilege, provide means for people and groups to navigate inequalities, and offers avenues for contesting inequalities. We critically examine some of the past and present ways that culture and inequalities have been studied together. We identify three trends that have arisen from the current scholarship on culture and inequality in the United States: space and place, embodiment, and performativity. In addition to examining understudied contemporary cultural spaces, the articles in this special issue contribute to and expand on the identified trends of studying cultural spaces as sites of inequality maintenance and resistance.