Date of Award

Spring 4-21-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Sociology

First Advisor

Celso Villegas

Second Advisor

Austin Johnson

Third Advisor

Lisa Liebowitz

Abstract

Like many low-income racially diverse urban neighborhoods, Philadelphia’s Kensington is caught between historic disinvestment and oncoming gentrification. The Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT) is a relatively new organization that aims to redevelop the neighborhood in a way that overcomes market forces and sustains the community. Through philanthropic means, the KCT acquires, redevelops, and rents commercial and mixed-use properties. The KCT is unique, however, in that its assets are perpetually held outside the private market. Instead of business or even philanthropic actors, the KCT’s properties are governed by a neighborhood democracy. As a result, the KCT directly addresses community needs like affordability, third spaces, climate resilience, food security, and more. However, to enable this radical practice in community control, the KCT staff and community governance members must interact with more mundane and even harmful systems. Drawing on two months of ethnographic research in the KCT office, this thesis investigates how the KCT structures these interactions to enable neighborhood transformation. Where critical theories typically assess classed interactions through rational interest analysis, I take a cultural approach that sees how material conditions affect, but do not determine, social interactions. Following Alexander (2006) and Villegas (2024), this thesis centers the way shared cultural backgrounds may be augmented to account for material conditions in ways that enable alternative kinds of solidarity. From this perspective, I show that the KCT’s moral boundaries and social structures are not simply situated or strategic responses to material problems. I find that the KCT institutionalizes compelling reformulations of dominant ideas about justice, augmenting (or refracting) traditional organization structures and interactions to build out a democratic stewardship-based economic system. I go on to show how individuals at the KCT identify with the discourse of restorative economics to authentically cultivate democratic deliberation and pursue viable economic partnerships. Ultimately, these organizational actors are responsible for the creative effort that actually moves the KCT through the world. Taken as a whole, this thesis speaks to the non-rational side of system transformation, emphasizing the way moral codes, stories, and performance are crucial for the pursuit of radical justice.

Rights Statement

All rights reserved. This copy is provided to the Kenyon Community solely for individual academic use. For any other use, please contact the copyright holder for permission.

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