Abstract

A deteriorated back alley zone behind Granville, Ohio's central business district is socially productive particularly in terms of casual workplace identities. I argue that such place making and identity formation processes are generally understandable in terms of Neil Leach's theoretical notions of "belonging," and specifically comprehensible by means of an application of Michel de Certeau's spatial rhetoric of synecdoche. The analysis of synecdoche as a mode of social-spatial "making do" at these sites involves architectonic aspects of "tiling" and enclosure, similar to those in other vernacular contexts in North America, and globally. Leach's frame of belonging proves to be useful overall, and synecdoche here becomes a precise tool for assessing physical, corporeal, and social relations in this process of micro-scale place making. These insights into the social productivity of a particular urban waste space contribute to other recent applications of de Certeau's spatial rhetorics by Schweizer and Castello.