Sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in the 1960s to mark the displacement of working-class residents in London neighborhoods by the professional classes. The Death and Life of Gentrification traces how the word has far outgrown Glass鈥檚 meaning, becoming a socially charged metaphor for cultural appropriation, upscaling, and the loss of authenticity.
In this lively and insightful book, Japonica Brown-Saracino traces how a concept originally intended to describe the brick-and-mortar transformation of neighborhoods has come to characterize transformations that have little to do with cities. She describes how journalists, artists, filmmakers, novelists, and academics use gentrification as a symbolic device to mourn how everyday pleasures and forms of self-expression鈥攆rom music to marijuana, kale, and tattoos鈥攅ntered the domain of the elite. She weighs the implications of turning to gentrification as a tool to tell stories, entertain audiences, and communicate political messages. Relying on vivid examples, the book reveals how the term today expresses widespread ambivalence about rising economic inequality and unease with a variety of forms of social change. This pathbreaking book forces us to think about whether the wide-ranging way we use gentrification dilutes its meaning and stymies efforts to identify and resist urban displacement.
Drawing on everything from film and television to novels and art, The Death and Life of Gentrification sheds critical light on the changing meaning of gentrification in contemporary life. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in gentrification and urban dynamics, as well as for readers curious about attitudes about growing income inequality and the evolution and circulation of ideas.
Japonica Brown-Saracino is a regular commentator for major news organizations such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Atlantic and is the award-winning author of A Neighborhood that Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity and How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities. She is professor of sociology and women’s, gender, and sexualities studies at Boston University, where she serves as faculty fellow at the Initiative on Cities.
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“A brilliant and necessary account of the word ‘gentrification.’ In this smart, nuanced, and engaging book, Brown-Saracino masterfully weaves together scholarship, cultural objects, and narrative to reveal how it has come to mean so much and so little all at once. Readers will never use the word again without reconsidering its power, complexity, and ambiguity.”—Jackelyn Hwang, Stanford University
“Brown-Saracino bravely takes us on a personal journey through the past half century of social, cultural, and economic change, showing that gentrification is not just an urban problem but an existential anxiety about losing the connection between community, identity, and place.”—Sharon Zukin, author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places
“This superb book addresses the critical question of what gentrification even means today now that it is mainstream and used in reference to seemingly quite different processes, practices, and events. For Japonica Brown-Saracino, it is a communication device that has new life beyond its literal meaning, made possible through its ongoing association with the urban and change. This is one of the most important books to come out in gentrification studies for some time and will no doubt be a landmark work.”—Loretta Lees, coauthor of Planetary Gentrification
“Brown-Saracino expands our understanding of the term ‘gentrification’ and the social transformations it describes. Her gravitas and authority will move our thinking forward.”—Mignon R. Moore, author of Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women
“The Death and Life of Gentrification is a timely, necessary, and magnificent history of how the idea of gentrification became mainstream. Brown-Saracino takes us from the halls of academic discourse to the front pages of The New York Times, from gentrification-as-self-improvement to gentrification-as-a-just-so-story about the state of everything around us. Filled with important messages and things to learn, this book is destined to become a classic.”—Clayton Childress, author of Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel
