![]() ![]() Following an ethnographic exploration of salsa clubs, I argue that salsa mediates subtle forms of territoriality. In this paper, I complicate notions of salsa as strictly a unifying force by arguing that the meanings ascribed to salsa music and the way these meanings are expressed through the body within clubs in the Triangle area (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) of North Carolina also creates divisions among actors of the salsa and broader Latin music scene. Salsa music and dance is considered by practitioners to be a unifier-a global phenomenon that brings people from diverse backgrounds together in the same space for mutual enjoyment. The notion that salsa music has/knows neither race nor color is commonly held by salsa musicians, dancers, and avid listeners. ![]() RTP thus created a blueprint for subsequent development strategies-later promoted by Florida, among other scholars and consultants-that made arts, education, and other cultural institutions central to the marketing of a city’s “brand” or identity. The essay argues that local boosters emphasized the area’s cultural opportunities and intellectual climate as major quality-of-life considerations not only for high-tech companies, but the scientists and engineers that they hoped to employ. In the 1950s, a powerful coalition of academics, businesspeople, and politicians launched a plan to move the state away from its traditional reliance on low-wage industries by founding a research park between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, believing that scientific firms would value the park’s proximity to several nearby colleges and universities. It aims to historicize urban theorist Richard Florida’s influential formulation of the “creative class” by focusing on the emergence of a high-tech economy in North Carolina’s Research Triangle metropolitan area. Historic Williamsburg, Virginia Washington, DC and Atlanta are all approximately five hours away by car.This article is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History. Located in the hilly, forested Piedmont region of North Carolina, Durham is only three hours from the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky mountains to the west and clean, spacious beaches to the east. Durham averages 230 days of sunshine and less than seven inches of snow a year. The area's four distinct yet mild seasons make it possible to enjoy many of these activities year-round. ![]() In addition, white-water canoeing, hiking, camping, horseback riding, and racquetball can be found within a 20-mile radius of the city. Duke University maintains a championship golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools, running trails, hiking paths, and a faculty club, all available to the resident staff. Other competitive sports popular in the Triangle include soccer, lacrosse, tennis, track and field, golf, ice hockey, and swimming. The Carolina Hurricanes, NHL hockey's 2006 Stanley Cup champions, play in Raleigh's RBC Center. In addition to college football and some of the best basketball anywhere, Durham is home to the Durham Bulls, a Triple-A minor league baseball team for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Three rival NCAA schools make this area a year-round haven for sports fans. Area attractions include the highly acclaimed American Dance Festival, touring Broadway shows, outstanding art exhibits, libraries, concerts in the park, and performances by renowned symphonies, opera, and ballet companies. The downtown Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) has become a national model for community arts programs. The Triangle's range of cultural attractions rivals that found in much larger, and more costly, cities. This mix of research, industry and teaching institutions makes for an active intellectual, cultural, and recreational life in Durham. In addition, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is eleven miles away, North Carolina State University is twenty miles away in Raleigh, and North Carolina Central University is in Durham itself. The Park houses the national laboratories of Glaxo Wellcome Inc., the National Humanities Center, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). In the heart of the Triangle, nearly ten miles from Duke, is Research Triangle Park (RTP), one of the oldest and most successful high-technology research parks in the country.
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