The story is common by now: wealthier folks move into a working-class, lower-income area, raising tensions between them, and the existing residents. The newcomers, who are well-educated professionals, build and renovate homes, open businesses like art galleries and boutiques, and start forming helpful social networks among themselves. The old-timers, folks left behind by deindustrialization, continue their struggle to find affordable, adequate housing and good jobs, go to stores with limited selections, and rely on weak social networks to make ends meet. Basic gentrification, right? Not when it's a rural setting a day's drive from the nearest major city. In her new book, Dividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American Dream, Jennifer Sherman explains what happens in rural places when an economy of extraction and land-based industries gets replaced by one of services. Her case is Paradise Valley, an area on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Its timber industry, with good jobs in logging and sawmills, had disappeared by the 1980s. Local efforts then shifted the region to an amenity-based tourism economy. The natural setting became more valuable as a place for outdoor activities like hiking, skiing, and camping than as a place for wood processing. New residents, mostly retirees and second homeowners from the state's urbanized west side, started moving there in the 1990s and early 2000s, while the number of weekend visitors increased. By the 2010s, as high-speed Internet became widely available, more working-age amenity migrants from large cities began moving to Paradise Valley permanently. They have come in search of a rural idyll of nature and community, "a lost Eden, of a past perfection" (p. 2), and either telecommute, bringing their jobs with them, or find new careers. Here is where Sherman's story really unfolds. Her aim is to show the human costs of the successful commodification of a rural utopia through an analysis of the social class divides that have emerged and inequality that has increased in Paradise Valley. These divides are economic, yes, but Sherman digs deeper to reveal their noneconomic nature. Forms of symbolic capital—social, cultural, human, and moral—play integral roles in shaping the opportunities and choices for people in Paradise Valley and serve as the mechanisms for how inequality gets reproduced there. While newcomers face challenges upon moving to the area, like career sacrifices, fewer options for essential services like childcare, and new responsibilities of rural daily life, they are able to tap their economic and symbolic resources to address them and live quite comfortably and happily. Existing residents, or "old-timers," however, either lack the economic, social, cultural, human, and social capital to make a meaningful difference in their outcomes and life chances or possess versions of these resources that have no currency in the current economy and local context. Sherman introduces the concept of "class blindness," or how social class inequalities go unacknowledged by people with privilege, to explain how these in-migrants fail to recognize the struggles of old-timers as results of structural disadvantages. Instead, newcomers see them as lacking a work ethic or moral virtue and focus their energies on charity to help people in need. Old-timers react with frustration and hostility, directed at newcomers, themselves, others in their community like them, and even the government. Feeling disempowered and without agency in their own homes, the social cohesion they once had erodes even further. Dividing Paradise is a wonderful, fine-grained community study in a type of place that does not receive nearly enough scholarly attention. I'll raise two points that I hope will inspire future scholars conducting research in rural communities. First, Sherman focuses much of the analysis of Paradise Valley's old-timers on what they have lost and how they have struggled amid economic restructuring and gentrification, framed around the idea of resilience. It's rather common to examine working-class and low-income groups in these ways. We learn what they have lost and how they are surviving (that is, how they are being resilient). But resilience among the underprivileged is a foregone conclusion—when confronted with harsh structural conditions, people with few resources have to be resilient, or else. A focus on resilience could also lead to inaction from people in positions of power—if underprivileged people are resilient, then there is no need to change anything. The details are certainly important, but what other lenses could we use to make sense of the rural poor and working class? What sort of local agency in the face of change do they show, for instance, and what forms of resistance to structural forces do we see them pursue? Answering these questions would really further our understanding of how these groups experience structural conditions and changes to their communities. Second, Sherman's sample of newcomers and old-timers is almost entirely White (95% and 85%, respectively), which makes sense given the population. She centers social class in her analysis, which also makes sense for a book about gentrification and inequality, and does not explicitly examine race or racialization. The book is not weakened by these missing elements. But gentrification scholars are (finally) starting to make race more central in their studies and in ways that go beyond demographic shifts and inter- and intra-racial conflicts and tensions. If all space—urban, suburban, rural—is racialized, then what role does race play in a spatial process like gentrification? Cases of White newcomers moving to majority-White communities are not exceptions to this question. Sherman notes that an all-White environment mostly insulates her participants from having to discuss racial issues at all (p. 34), which reinforces their racially privileged structural positions. At the same time, readers can easily tease out different White identities from the data presented (such as the more progressive, cosmopolitan White newcomers and conservative, working-class old timers) and the ways different expressions of Whiteness and racial ideologies get inscribed on and shape space. Sherman mentions how "whiteness itself is not monolithic" and "the meaning of 'whiteness' changes according to social context and reference groups" (p. 10). It would be fascinating to theorize race further and learn more about how it operates in rural places undergoing economic transformations, both those that are gentrifying and those that are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse through immigration. Dividing Paradise has provided an excellent analysis about an understudied type of place, and a fine starting point for pushing scholarship on rural community change forward. The author declares no conflicts of interest.

The 21st century rise of culturally omnivorous tastes and classifications proffers a new dilemma for how markets create attachments and achieve trust for global consumers. Consumer entities must be both globally circulatable and offer a sense of localized authenticity without compromising either. Drawing from research on market trust and attachment, this article introduces the concept of mobile trust regimes to account for how sets of actors and repertoires attempt to address this tension. Through two case studies from gastronomic industries—food halls and natural wine—we investigate the devices of mobility used to facilitate the global circulation of the local. These include standardized aesthetic and affective templates communicated through physical décor, recurrent narratives, and social media curation. We argue that the concept of mobile trust regimes helps clarify two key issues in contemporary consumer culture: tensions between homogenization and heterogenization and how the symbolic value of omnivorous tastes becomes institutionalized and even banal.

Gentrification is controversial mainly because of the potential displacement of existing low-income groups. Many gentrifiers therefore grapple with the moral implications of their role in this process. Based on three years of fieldwork and 46 interviews in a small city, this paper explains how gentrifiers construct the moral frames they use to identify and justify both themselves and gentrification as morally good, and how their moral ideas shape their behaviors. It argues that their own sense of community is the social source for their moral frame of opportunity, which they use to assign value to actors and actions based on whether they help realize the city’s potential to revitalize, reduce poverty, and prevent displacement. This framing leads them either to support actors and actions behind “conditional gentrification” (i.e., gentrification they control) or oppose those who are against it. This paper shows how groups base justifications for morally questionable behavior on community, with strong implications for exacerbating inequalities.

Much of the research on residents’ responses to urban development projects focuses on their self-interests, specifically economic position or quality of life. We know comparatively little about how social and cultural factors help influence and explain these behaviors, especially under conditions of gentrification. Based on an analysis of people’s reactions toward a development project in Newburgh, New York, an impoverished small city experiencing gentrification, this article reveals the importance of framing for understanding how and why groups support and oppose controversial projects. Although residents largely vary in their stance along lines of social class and race/ethnicity, their perspectives are intertwined with their perceptions of the city either as a place of mistreatment and a collective memory of local injustices (supporters), or as a place of opportunity and a local identity as place entrepreneurs (opponents). This article reveals new explanations for the complex dynamics behind residents’ reactions to urban growth initiatives.

To introduce this symposium in City & Community on “Small Cities,” we discuss the absence of “small-ness” in empirical and theoretical analysis in urban sociology, explore the importance of scaling down urban analyses to this level, and present three important lines of inquiry that the following articles explore and that further the research agenda on small urban contexts. With a few notable exceptions, small cities, or cities that remained small at a time of rapid urbanization, have struggled to come into focus from the very moment urban sociology took hold in the United States. Since the time of the Chicago School, and especially Louis Wirth’s (1938) classic formulation of “urbanism as a way of life” thriving under ecological conditions of size, density, and heterogeneity, scholars have mainly focused on large cities, making them the yardstick for the urban/non urban divide. Small cities, on the other hand, were thought to lack in—or to even represent an antagonism to—the kinds of urbanity unfolding in the big cities that commanded and continue to command the overwhelming share of research attention. We argue that urban scholars step back from uncritical acceptance of large size as the arbiter of urbanity, and focus on how urban processes—for example globalization and immigration, intranational migratory patterns (i.e., gentrification and return migration), inequality, and technological innovation—are distinctly localized across a variety of regions and different-sized city settlements. These processes, we argue, that occur are having a range of impacts in cities of all sizes and types. The presumed lack of city-ness in small cities has unnecessarily narrowed the field of urban studies, constricting our understanding of diverse modes of urbanity. A renewed attention to small cities as empirical foci and the notion of scale as a significant component of urban theorizing can both put a much-needed spotlight on a variety of important urban topics (e.g., inequality, immigration, and political activity) as they exist in oft-ignored places and expand and sharpen our concepts and theories for explaining them.

stereotypes highlight our social tendency in the United States to individualize social problems like class inequality rather than view them for the structural issues they are. This is a poignant argument in the contemporary moment when our failure to see social structure has led us deeper into a politics of scapegoating and blame, rather than toward the building of much-needed class solidarity. In her conclusion, Lan briefly but wisely connects our problem of individualization to things like Brexit and the ascendance of Donald Trump to the U. S. presidency. Raising Global Families has many strengths, and its weaknesses do not appear until the very end. Throughout the book the author expands on several concepts, yet in the end there is a dearth of significant theory work. The transnational shift in perspective offered up in Raising Global Families seems significant enough to have produced more macro-level theoretical insights, especially as Lan is working in a more intersectional and transnational framework than many of the scholars who developed the concepts she uses (e.g., Pugh, Lareau). But the book never quite goes there. At times it feels as though the Lareau findings intrude on the experiences of Lan’s respondents. Through the rear-view mirror of family studies, Lareau’s categories of concerted cultivation and accomplishment of natural growth look flat and simplistic against the depth and complexity of Raising Global Families and other recent studies of gender, migration, and the family. We can understand why Lan pins her analysis to Lareau’s seminal framework, but I can’t help thinking she should have given herself more credit and taken things further. Why not do more than problematize concepts by going for the critical takedown of Lareau’s original thesis, especially as it pertains to race and ethnicity?

Deriving pleasure and meaning from one's job is especially potent in the cultural industries, where workers routinely sacrifice monetary rewards, stability, and tidier careers for the nonmonetary benefits of self-expression, autonomy, and contribution to the greater good. Cultural labor markets are consequently characterized by the continual churning of its workforce; the lure of "cool" employment attracts an oversupply of aspirants while precariousness and routinized work lead to short careers. This article draws on qualitative data to further conceptualize the appeal and limits of nonmonetary rewards over time. Why do workers stay in precarious "cool" jobs? More specifically, how do workers stay committed to their jobs and perform the requisite deep acting for their roles? Through qualitative research on two sets of workers - music industry personnel and craft cocktail bartenders - this article examines patterns in these workers' "experiential careers." We identify three strategies cultural workers use to re-enchant their work lives: (1) deep engagement, (2) boundary work, and (3) changing jobs. In doing so, we show how the experiential careers of cultural workers resemble more of a cycle of enchantment than a linear path to exiting the field.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewPalaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. By Eric Klinenberg. New York: Penguin Random House, 2018. Pp. 277. $28.00.Richard E. OcejoRichard E. OcejoJohn Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 125, Number 2September 2019 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/704770 Views: 565Total views on this site For permission to reuse a book review printed in the American Journal of Sociology, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

As large cities become unaffordable, some people in the urban middle class are moving to small cities but risk replicating gentrification and its harms. Based on a qualitative research project on Newburgh, a small city north of New York City, this paper examines the narratives that middle-class urbanites construct to make sense of this migration, their new urban environment, and their place within it. These narratives describe their decision to move (migration) and their everyday lives in the city (settlement). Most importantly, their narratives are shaped by their social positions as both displaced residents and gentrifiers and as both consumers and producers of space. But despite being self-aware gentrifiers, their settlement narratives lack reflections on their own displacement from New York City, and instead emphasize how they try to mitigate gentrification's harms. The paper concludes with a discussion of what makes gentrifiers in small cities distinct from those in large ones.

Gentrification is one among many issues in small cities that urban research has yet to adequately address. As many large cities are becoming unaffordable for even the middle class, some of these residents with assets are leaving them and bypassing suburbs for smaller cities, becoming gentrifiers in these places. However, we know very little about the perspectives and actions of such gentrifiers in their new urban environment. This study analyzes how middle-class gentrifiers to Newburgh, a small city north of New York City, make sense of its physical and political landscape for the purpose of development. Their narratives frame the city as a place with great "opportunity" to develop, criticize existing policies and political leaders, and cast themselves as the actors who should be spearheading these efforts. This article contributes to the urban literature by examining the factors behind how small-city gentrifiers uniquely conceptualize, take advantage of, and challenge existing conditions for development.

Urban ethnography has produced some of the most influential and memorable studies in sociology since the discipline's founding. Showcasing the ideas, analysis, and perspectives of experts in the method conducting research on a wide array of social phenomena in a variety of city contexts, this volume provides a look at the legacies of urban ethnography's methodological traditions and some of the challenges its practitioners face today.