Gym Shoes Case Study

Ralph argues that gym shoes symbolize historical consciousness for two previous generations of Divine Aces by “resonating with two district aspects of the Divine Ace legacy: the first is the civil rights era; the second is related to the heyday of heroin trafficking” (671). They induce nostalgia for the past and provide cues for the identities that Red and Otis, the former gang leaders still seem to cherish and cling to. Gym shoes are inseparable from their identities as the leaders of either a community oriented gang during the civil rights movement, or centrally organized one in the head of the heroin market in 1980s. Simultaneously, Ralph observes that “in relation to discourses of longing invoked by Mr. Ottis and Red, refashioning gym shoes …show more content…
Overall, although sneakers are reminiscent of the past identities for two older generations and represent the period of transforming social and economic realities for the new one, object in those two cases serves to contribute to the formation and maintenance of the identities, both past and present. By expanding the past to the present identity, the bench also turned out to be playing an important role in the identity construction of my interviewees. An international student from Turkey, Elif explains her preference for sitting on the bench in terms of the tradition from back home.We can see how the respondent simultaneously reenacts and maintains her previous identity by pursuing old practices with the help of the bench. Another interviewee, Aki, who has lived in several African countries mentions the sunlight as the reason for resorting to the bench. It is important to recognize how the bench as well as the hybrid collective of non-human actors around the bench such as the sunlight and fresh air serve as reminiscent of the past,