Abstract
Social preservation is a bundle of ethics and practices rooted in the desire of some people to live near old-timers, whom they associate with “authentic” community. To preserve authentic community, social preservationists, who tend to be highly educated and residentially mobile, work to limit old-timers’ displacement by gentrification. However, they do not consider all original residents authentic. They work to preserve those they believe embody three claims to authentic community: independence, tradition, and a close relationship to place. Underlining their attraction to these characteristics are resistance to the evolution of neighborhoods and towns, and the notion that certain groups have a greater claim to authentic community than others. These beliefs, and, secondarily, local institutions and boosters, influence their preservation of certain groups. While the quest for the authentic is typically viewed as affirming the authenticity of its seekers, social preservationists measure the authenticity of others’ communities against their own in authenticity. That is, they are committed to virtuous marginality, which exists when people associate authenticity with, and highly value, characteristics they do not share, and consequently, out of a desire to preserve the authentic, come to regard their distance from it – their marginality – as virtuous. This article reveals the consequences of definitions of authenticity, and more generally of ideology, by demonstrating how they shape preservationists’ lives, particularly their experience of community.
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Notes
On social preservationists see Brown-Saracino (2004). Claims of authenticity are those of the informants, not of the author.
See Brown-Saracino (2004).
On the power of community ideology, see Anderson 1991, Hunter 1975, and Ryle and Robinson 2006. Importantly, I depart from Ryle and Robinson by showing that it is not merely education level or class that shapes assessment of community vitality, as social preservationists share many demographic traits with other gentrifiers, but have different views of community.
Unless otherwise noted, all demographic data are from U.S. Census 2000.
These are the names of the research sites. However, I refer to all informants by pseudonym and sometimes disguise identifying characteristics. For instance, I do not name the college an informant attended.
See Griswold (1987) on cultural objects.
This is not to suggest that all gentrifiers are white. Rather, it reflects the selection of sites in which most newcomers are white. Future work might explore social preservation among other racial groups.
Data were generated by comparing gentifiers’ occupational status with that of their parents. Drawing on others’ work on the topic, I measured occupational status according to education requirements associated with a position, as well as the estimated income bracket associated with the position. On occupational status see Sorkin (1971), Duncan (1961), Warren et al. (2002). Because of the small sample size, these findings may not be generalizable to a larger population. See Brown-Saracino (2006).
On association of such traits with certain groups and not others, see di Leonardo (1998: 94), Davila (2001:216), Roy (2002). Elites are not the only to hold such views; workers view “whites (as middle class people) [who] are less communal than blacks” (Lamont 2000: 124), and emphasize the “poorer quality of their interpersonal relationships” (ibid: 147).
This is not to suggest that markets and products are not involved in their quest, or that it is devoid of self-interest. While preservationists may unintentionally benefit financially from their efforts (as inadvertent conduits for reinvestment), their immediate rewards are affirmation of a moral identity, and preservation of the authenticity they value.
See Allen (1984) on gentrifiers as “resident tourists.”
However, we can imagine social preservationists worrying about other processes: a factory closure, suburbanization, a hurricane, even downscaling. As with historic preservation, the impetus for social preservation may change.
On reaction to change and historic preservation see Lowenthal (1999: 394–395) and Francaviglia (2000:68). The interview schedule included the question, “If you could freeze your neighborhood or town in a particular moment, which moment would you choose?” Social preservationists spoke of the present state of community, or the recent past, while nearly all other gentrifiers and old-timers referred either to an historic period or to the future.
See also Erikson (1978: 187).
Contra those who argue that the myth of rugged individualism weakens community (Putnam 2000: 24), preservationists associate individuals’ independence with community autonomy, and thus with strong ties.
Note that they “saved” the community from “rowdy” Appalachians and African-American “gang-bangers.”
See Warren (1970) on “community autonomy.”
Appreciation for old-timers’ independence is coupled with assessment of the tenuous nature of their livelihoods. Preservationists recognize that old-timers are dependent on broad economic factors. This is the basis for their concerns about gentrification: that old-timers’ stores will fail in the face of chains, or that rising property taxes will close farms. The continuation of such practices in the face of broad changes enhances old-timers’ seeming self-determination.
Women’s old-timer status is often derived through association with men’s labor, or through their ethnic identity. For instance, the wife of a Portuguese fisherman or a Swedish deli owner is as much an “old-timer” as her husband.
This appreciation for artists may be a twenty-first-century adaptation of appreciation for artisans (Bellah et al. 1985: 35).
On appreciation for fishermen see Breen and Kelly (1996: 19, 32). The artist–preservationist who worries about the displacement of struggling artists does not consider himself an old-timer, nor does he see himself as threatened by gentrification. In this sense, social preservation depends on the assumption that gentrification does not personally endanger one’s self.
Most Chicago preservationists work outside of the neighborhood in other parts of the city or surrounding suburbs. Some Dresden preservationists telecommute or commute one to three hours for work in either Portland or Boston.
In this, they borrow from the venerable Jeffersonian romanticization of the rural and its farmers (Schmitt 1990).
In contrast, an Argyle pioneer hopes Argyle Street will “improve” and “surpass” Chicago’s tourist-oriented Chinatown.
Fine notes that some folk artists sacrifice their authenticity by successfully marketing products (2004: 226).
In 2004, media attended to the death of David Lion Gardiner, whom The New York Times referred to as a member of “the endangered species High WASP” (Trebay 2004). Provincetown preservationists do not view WASPs as endangered, instead working to preserve the Portuguese working class. This indicates that the selection process is place-based.
From Wordsworth’s poem, “Resolution and Independence.” See Wordsworth 2000: 261–263.
See also Parsons (1951).
See Griswold and Wright (2004: 1444).
See Warner’s Yankee City series (1959) for a discussion of the impact of local power holders on community identity.
Old-timer’s length of residence varies by site. Dresden preservationists admire families associated with the town’s settlement, while in Argyle they turn to Vietnamese residents who came to the U.S. in the 1970s.
Indeed, preservationists have, on average, lived in 3.53 locales and other gentrifiers have lived in 3.67 (Brown-Saracino forthcoming).
Embedded in appreciation for family is the belief that gentrifiers threaten family tradition.
However, membership in such a “traditional” family is not always enough to ensure old-timer status. For instance, social preservationists do not consider some gay Portuguese Provincetown residents to be old-timers, likely because they do not regard them as independent from newcomers’ own networks, or as “traditional” as their heterosexual counterparts.
See di Leonardo (1998: 80).
See Griswold and Wright (2004).
While professionals “engage in complicated networks of intimate relationships, [they] are not often tied to a particular place” (Bellah et al. 1985:186). This encourages preservationists’ appreciation for old-timers’ place-based community.
This demonstrates the occasional, albeit atypical, confluence of social and historic preservation. A member of the Provincetown historic preservation committee was a social preservationist, as was a Dresden Conservation Commission member. Otherwise, few informants were committed to both social and historic or landscape preservation.
On Andersonville’s history see Lane (2003).
See Rado (2002).
Streetscape Memo (2002).
See Hunter (1974: 194).
On this notion that people and place lend each other meaning see Maine, a Peopled Landscape: Salt Documentary Photography, 1978 to 1995 by the Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies (French 1995).
See Fischer on the influence of “between-group contact” for local culture (1995: 545).
In 2000, assigning meaning to the term quite divergent from my own, the LA Weekly referred to Ralph Nader’s “virtuous marginality” (see http://laweekly.com/generaly/features/endorsements/5977). On social distance, see Cantwell’s (1996: 365) discussion of the patron’s “formal and respectful distance” from “the folk,” and of embarrassment about one’s social privilege.
Data was gathered on informants’ personal and professional networks, as well as about their “sense of community.”
On identity subcultures see Fischer (1995).
Again, I depart from Ryle and Robinson (2006) by showing that it is not merely education level or social class that shapes assessment of community vitality, as social preservationists share many demographic traits with other gentrifiers but diverge in their assessment of community.
However, it is notable that appreciation for independence, tradition, and relationship to place is constant across the urban and rural sites, perhaps in part because preservationists are themselves so transient. See Brown-Saracino (2006) on how place character shapes social preservationists’ practices, rather than their ideology.
On colloquial neighborhoods see Hunter (1974).
See Brown-Saracino (forthcoming) on social preservation’s successes and failures.
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Acknowledgments
For comments on the article, the author thanks Jean Beaman, Henry Binford, David Grazian, Gary Alan Fine, Wendy Griswold, Geoff Harkness, Albert Hunter, Lyn Macgregor, Lida Maxwell, Terence McDonnell, Melinda Milligan, Mary Pattillo, Krista Paulsen, Mikaela Rabinowitz, Mathew Reed, and the Editors and reviewers of Theory and Society. I am also grateful for the feedback from participants in the 2004 Midwest Sociological Society Conference, the 2004 American Sociological Association Conference, and members of the Northwestern University Culture and Urban Workshops. Financial support from the Northwestern University Graduate School, Northwestern Department of Sociology, and the Dispute Resolution Research Center of the Kellogg School of Management aided the research. I am indebted to my informants for their participation.
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Brown-Saracino, J. Virtuous marginality: Social preservationists and the selection of the old-timer. Theor Soc 36, 437–468 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9041-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9041-1