"Barrio Business/Barrio Dreams: Selling Culture in the Neoliberal City" with Arlene Davila, Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at NYU

This presentation will draw from a larger examination of the place of culture in the execution of and resistance to neoliberal strategies. A look at the simultaneous gentrification and Latinization of East Harlem, a.k.a. El Barrio or Spanish Harlem and foreground privatization and consumption, exposing how neoliberal policies become implicated with people's ethnic and class identities and aspirations in multiple and contradictory ways. As such they prompt questions about the intersection of culture, ethnicity, class and consumption in the neoliberal city, while underscoring that so-called race neutral policies are never devoid of racial and ethnic considerations.