A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries) - Softcover

Brown-Saracino, Japonica

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226076636 ISBN 13: 9780226076638

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

Newcomers to older neighborhoods are usually perceived as destructive, tearing down everything that made the place special and attractive. But as A Neighborhood That Never Changes demonstrates, many gentrifiers seek to preserve the authentic local flavor of their new homes, rather than ruthlessly remake them. Drawing on ethnographic research in four distinct communities—the Chicago neighborhoods of Andersonville and Argyle and the New England towns of Provincetown and Dresden—Japonica Brown-Saracino paints a colorful portrait of how residents new and old, from wealthy gay homeowners to Portuguese fishermen, think about gentrification.

The new breed of gentrifiers, Brown-Saracino finds, exhibits an acute self-consciousness about their role in the process and works to minimize gentrification’s risks for certain longtime residents. In an era of rapid change, they cherish the unique and fragile, whether a dilapidated house, a two-hundred-year-old landscape, or the presence of people deeply rooted in the place they live. Contesting many long-standing assumptions about gentrification, Brown-Saracino’s absorbing study reveals the unexpected ways beliefs about authenticity, place, and change play out in the social, political, and economic lives of very different neighborhoods.

About this title

About the Author:

Japonica Brown-Saracino is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston University.

Review:

"Fronted by a thorough survey of the literature, this immensely readable case study is clearly informed by theory without being clouded with jargon" - Choice Reviews

Winner, 2011 Urban Affairs Association Best Book Award

"This is fascinating stuff.  Brown-Saracino's ethnography is rich and evocative, and her analyses are even-handed and thoughtful.  She has written a wonderful, highly readable, timely, and important book." - J. Passaro, American Anthropologist

"A timely and original contribution... Brown-Saracino's book develops an empirically informed and politically non-judgmental picture of the motivations and lives of new residents in the previously deprived spaces of metropolitan neighbourhoods and rural retreats." - R. Atkinson, Cultural Sociology

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0226076636
• ISBN 13: 9780226076638
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352