abstract

Outline of a Practice of Theory: Everyday Land, Labor and
(Social)Capital in a Public Recreation Center

Public recreation centers are boring to look at, smelly to be in,  overdetermined, puritanical, masculinist and expensive to maintain.
What's more, most programs cost money, which leaves us wondering
exactly what makes them public to begin with. Many centers are also
immensely popular places for young people and young adults to
socialize after school and on Saturday afternoons, often a rec center
is an everyday stop for young people on their ways home from school.
In early 2009, 11 public recreation centers in Columbus, Ohio closed for "lack of funds." This project has been under way for as long, not only to find

ways of advocating for public space, but also to investigate what
everyday lives are produced in a recreation center. My operating

assumptions are that we're missing effective modes of introducing the
value of these facilities into political machines, and that that has
more to do with the shift from Reformist to Neo-Liberal
styles of urban governmentality than it has to do with any budget
crisis.
My work is presented as a critical introduction to a series of
original short stories and interviews inspired by extensive fieldwork,

organizing efforts, conversations with public officials and many hours spent in select centers.  The inversion of Bourdieu's title speaks more to my impatience with disciplinary canon than it does to my gown's theoretical underpinnings. I draw more inspiration from Donna Haraway and Kathleen Stewart, both of whom embrace storytelling in their critical theoretical work to produce a "contact zone for analysis" (Stewart, 2008).