In her book Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City, sociologist Nicole Marwell explains: “Sociologists who study organizations sometimes use the term ‘field’ to describe a set of organizations linked together as competitors and collaborators within a social space devoted to a particular type of action — such as a market for certain products, the pursuit of urban development, or the realm of electoral politics. Agreements struck among the organizations that compose a field set the bounds on what kinds of organizational and individual action are possible.” Attempting to delineate and define the “field” of research that The Loisaida Center is allowing me access to this summer has proven much more difficult than I had originally hoped. Cultural centers are not a rarity in New York City, nor are specifically Latino cultural centers, for that matter. The difficulty in defining the field stems from the wide breadth that “cultural preservation” covers.
If you were looking into organizations with similar missions as Loisaida Inc., you would note that El Museo del Barrio shares an interest in preserving latinx culture in a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood; however, their methods are far more focused on historical documentation of culture, rather than contemporary cultural events; or that The Clemente Center shares an incredibly similar mission of preserving latinx culture in New York City, with an additional similarity in their residency program, but that its current board members have put forward an initiative to reduce the latinx identity of the center in favor of expanding its scope; or that ABC No Rio has paralleled interests in the cross-pollination of art and activism, but that the collective doesn’t promote advocacy for any particular cultural identity; or that The Lower East Side Ecology Center shares an interest in Environmental Justice in urban spaces, but is not focused on neighborhood culture; or, lastly, that The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces shares a goal of documenting and archiving the history of activism in the Lower East Side and the East Village, but is not as invested in the ethnic identities of these activist groups.
To complicate things even further, Loisaida Inc. is technically listed as a service organization rather than an advocacy organization, although their work and mission is a combination of both, placing them in the field of hundreds of other service organizations such as The Puerto Rican Family Institute, despite the vast differences in the services they provide. As self-described, The Loisaida Center serves as the junction between preservation and innovation, looking forward toward the future of the neighborhood as well as remembering and acknowledging its rich cultural past. In this way, its entire existence serves as a means of rupturing the bounds in which cultural centers have traditionally operated.
Furthermore, while their mission dictates the way that they engage and collaborate with other organizations, as well as artists, The Loisaida Center is notoriously flexible, and the span of their current programming covers an art installation honoring the legendary dome building of CHARAS on the Lower East Side; a future collaboration with The Abrons Arts Center that will connect children of lower income families, interest in electronic music and music production, with the tools and education to pursue that interest; as well an upcoming circus social workshop that teaches young adults and kids juggling, equilibrium, and acrobatics.
In many ways, it does not feel as though this organization is defined by the rules and bounds of the field of cultural centers; rather, budgeting, legislation, and neighborhood politics seem to dominate as the challenges to the lengths this organization aims to reach. As to how one might rupture those restraints, I’m not sure anyone knows other than little by little, meeting by meeting, and grant by grant.
It’s definitely true that “field” can be difficult to determine when it comes to multi-disciplinary and multi-functional community centers like The Loisaida Center, which, as you point out, defines itself by the broad term “culture” more than anything else. Yet, as you also point out, other cultural organizations are pretty spare in their service and advocacy offerings, while The Loisaida Center is partly driven by these concerns. And it’s still not a service organization either! In many ways, I think the “field” in which The Loisaida Center is working is one of community self-determination and anti-colonial activism for those connected or sympathetic to the struggles experienced by the Puerto Rican diaspora. There are other organizations that do this (like the PRCC — you should read Kate’s posts!), but not many. And The Loisaida Center is uniquely responsive to its community in a way that can make it seem as if it has multiple personalities. Where Marwell is helpful here, though, is in thinking about that “particular type of action” around which a coalition builds its political power. And, for you, I think that action has something to do with preservation of community gardens. So maybe we can think about what The Loisaida Center’s role as an actor in determining the political discourse around community garden preservation might be?