Department or Program
Sociology
Abstract
On the night of October 25th, 2023, eighteen people lost their lives across two separate locations in Lewiston, Maine: Just-In-Time Recreation (JIT) and Schemengees Bar and Grille, in what is the tenth-worst mass shooting in the history of the United States of America. Nineteen days after the shooting, the Maine Resiliency Center (MRC) opened its doors to serve a community in need. More than two years later, that night continues to impact people and places. As scholars investigate the impacts mass shootings have on communities, there remains little research that tries to understand the role the sites of the violence themselves play in the post-shooting resilience-building process. Partnering with the Maine Resiliency Center, this project combines the principles of Community-Engaged Research (CER) and the ethnographic tradition to explore how the community at Just-In-Time Recreation came back to the bowling center and the meaning they find in this shared place. Grounded in a constructivist understanding of place, this thesis explores how the community reconstructed and reoriented itself to JIT and how these new relationships serve as influential factors in rebuilding community and fostering resilience. Months of mixed-methods fieldwork have shown that JIT underwent an intentional rebuilding, both physical and symbolic, to create a place that could memorialize the tragedy of October 25th and, in doing so, bring the community back together. Individuals returned to the site, often together, influenced by their previous attachments to JIT. These attachments were only strengthened in the wake of the shooting, both to the larger JIT community and to the place itself. In doing so, these socio-spatial attachments became influential in the resilience-building process. This thesis highlights how these processes influenced how the site of a mass shooting became the center of a community.
Level of Access
Restricted: Embargoed [Open Access After Expiration]
First Advisor
Kane, Emily
Date of Graduation
5-2026
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Recommended Citation
Zuckerberg, Nathaniel D., "How the Site of a Mass Shooting Became the Center of a Community: Exploring the Socio-Spatial Reconstruction of Just-In-Time Recreation in the Wake of the Lewiston, Maine, 2023 Shooting" (2026). Honors Theses. 519.
https://scarab.bates.edu/honorstheses/519
Number of Pages
98
Components of Thesis
1 pdf file
Community Engagement
1