In academic and public discourse, safety is often equated with policing and state control. However, research consistently demonstrates the limitations of these associations, especially in their impact on diverse and marginalized communities. LGBTQ people and communities, for instance, regularly encounter violence both from the state and civilians, resulting in a pervasive atmosphere of violence. In response, spaces such as lesbian bars and LGBTQ events have emerged as homeplaces—environments dedicated to safety, resistance, and community-building, free from law enforcement presence. These spaces offer an opportunity to explore alternative approaches to safety, grounded in relational community building rather than control. This study employs ethnographic methods to unpack these alternative visions and resulting practices, drawing on the perspectives of employees, organizers, performers, and regular attendees at lesbian bars and LGBTQ pop-up events throughout Southern California. Through participant observations, interviews, and analyses of social media and other relevant documents, this research address three primary goals: (1) to explore how safety is understood by frequent participants in lesbian bars and LGBTQ events; (2) to examine the tensions between these conceptualizations of safety and the omnipresence of the state; and (3) to analyze how safety is practiced in response to these tensions. The findings reveal a significant gap between the conceptualization of safety, which I term “relational safety,” and its practical application. Relational safety, as envisioned by participants, emphasizes relationship-building, solidarity, and an active awareness of power dynamics—an approach that contrasts sharply with punitive, control-based models. Yet, implementing these ideals proves challenging as these spaces are hooked by capitalistic profit motives and constrained in a vast legal netting, which limit the possibility of fully realizing relational safety and shifts the focus from internal solidarity to accommodating external demands. This tension creates a dynamic interplay: on one hand, practices of securitization that mirrors punitive state approaches, and on the other, experimental forms of community care and coöperism grounded in the development of relationality. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, considering how they inform the transformation of everyday safety at both the local and structural levels more broadly.

My primary research question is: how do people in positions of power or with extensive resources at their disposal use information to control socially "deviant" groups and shape the physical geography of the city? I present four case studies that reconstruct the process of knowledge creation and the role of knowledge collection in both force and management in the areas of gang injunctions, broken windows/order maintenance policing, zoning, and development. The first three case studies focus on the Los Angeles neighborhood of Cadillac-Corning. I explore how housing development and school enrollment created the neighborhood's boundaries in the 1960s. I address the puzzle of why how this small neighborhood came to be exceptional compared to the rest of the area in which it sits in terms of housing, demographics, stigmatization, and disproportionate policing. I also use historical documents and interviews I return to the 1980s during the emergence of Los Angeles City's first gang injunction in Cadillac-Corning, a landmark policy that spread to the rest of the city and nation. I analyze where the gang injunction protocol and prohibitions come from; for what purposes was the original injunction created; and how the gang injunction shaped racial and spatial criminalization and the broken windows theory. The third case study follows community groups predominately composed of West Los Angeles homeowners and business owners as they cooperate with and challenge the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. I use ethnography to describe how community groups appropriate the broken windows theory espoused by the LAPD and LA City Attorney's Office in attempts to shape the physical appearance and behavior of residents in the La Cienega Heights (formerly Cadillac-Corning) neighborhood. Conflict occurs in community policing partnerships when educated, wealthy and politically powerful civilians challenge police tactics of controlling deviant others.

My project goes beyond a neighborhood study. The policies and practices developed in Cadillac-Corning spread to the rest of the city, state, and nation. Lastly, I seek to use my research to actively disrupt the current modes of knowledge production that rest upon accepted arguments about disorder, race, and deviance. I engage in research with social justice organizers in Inglewood, California according to a model that complicates dominant conceptions of methodology, expertise, and subject matter.

This dissertation presents an 18-month ethnographic study of The Satanic Temple’s Sober Faction, a non-theistic recovery community that challenges dominant narratives of addiction, recovery, and stigma. Drawing on in-depth interviews, field observations, digital ethnography, and content analysis, this research critically examines the intersection of Satanism, addiction recovery, and social justice. The first chapter interrogates the relationship between stigma and recovery capital, introducing the novel concept of Satanic Recovery. This framework explores how individuals within Sober Faction transform stigma into recovery capital through radical acceptance, a principle grounded in the tenets of The Satanic Temple. By embracing an identity often marginalized by mainstream recovery spaces, members cultivate resilience and self-empowerment, illustrating how stigmatized relationships can serve as sources of strength rather than barriers to recovery. The second chapter expands traditional understandings of addiction and recovery by incorporating harm reduction and controlled use. Rather than adhering to the rigid abstinence-based models prevalent in dominant recovery paradigms, Sober Faction fosters a more fluid and individualized approach. Through this reframing, recovery is conceptualized as an ongoing process of self-determination, aligning with broader harm reduction principles that prioritize agency and autonomy over moralistic conceptions of sobriety. The third chapter examines Sober Faction as a social structure that facilitates identity renegotiation away from the label of “addict.” By fostering a supportive, nonjudgmental community, members are able to redefine themselves outside of the pathology of addiction. This shift challenges the moral and punitive frameworks embedded in mainstream recovery models, offering an alternative space where individuals can construct identities based on self-acceptance rather than shame. By resisting hegemonic narratives that pathologize addiction and stigmatize non-traditional spiritual identities, Sober Faction not only provides a recovery model rooted in autonomy and self-empowerment but also contributes to broader discourses on equity and liberation. Finally, policy implications and future research directions are discussed, emphasizing the need for more inclusive and flexible recovery frameworks that challenge dominant ideological constraints.

While civil gang injunctions are not a new legal tool, they have been operating quietly in city landscapes for over 3 decades. While they have existed and been used across the country not much is known about the wide-reaching effects and impacts civil gang injunctions have on communities of color. Using Echo Park, Los Angeles as a case study, this paper takes a closer look at the details of this most recent injunctions against the backdrop of the dark history of civil gang injunctions. By highlighting the specific ways in which civil and legal codes are used simultaneously, we see the ways in which penal and civil codes create another physical liminal space for men of color in the City of Los Angeles. Examining the interplay between these codes, provides insight into how the injunction’s prohibitions create a place of hypervisibility, but also, an erasure of the lived experiences of its subjects.