Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Sociology

Major Professor

Tyler Wall

Committee Members

Tyler Wall, Bill McClanahan, Stephanie Bohon, Judah Schept

Abstract

Theoretically grounded in the racial capitalism and carceral geographies literatures, this dissertation is a multi-method case study about the complex relationship between carcerality, gentrification, and stadium led development in the city of Inglewood, California. Quantitatively, I leverage open-source data to identify pockets of redevelopment in the city, to draw empirical associations between capital investment and arrests, and ultimately to show how gentrification—an urban process tied to racial capitalism—is impossible without cops. Qualitatively, I rely on local media sources and prison case study research to draw indirect parallels between rural prison-led development and urban stadium-led development and to show how both are propped up by the same pernicious rationalities of racial capitalism. Specifically, I show how stadiums and prisons are foundationally premised on relationships of exploitation and extraction that rely on the supply and demand of racial categorization. I show how both types of development are touted as solutions to political and economic crises within their respective contexts. I show how stadiums and prisons are organized around the extraction of time and ultimately argue that they both represent direct manifestations of anti-state-statist governance under neoliberal racial capitalism. I maintain that stadiums and prisons are two sides of the same racial capitalism coin.

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