Main Questions Revisited for the Umpteenth Time

I'm trying to come up with reasonable chapter outlines so I can begin moving toward a realistic research and writing schedule. After drawing up some extremely basic outlines, I'm realizing how utterly confused and unfocused I am. Which is a good thing. Which means I'm doing well by laying out these plans now before I'm, as Phil Collins would say, "in too deep."

Let's work backwards...

1) As my previous post suggests, I came to this topic because of my work at the Tenement Museum and my interest in how history was being used as a catalyst for gentrification. The fundamental question I raise from this (in relationship to my dissertation, at least) is: what makes people so interested in this impoverished, crumbling neighborhood...so interested, in fact, that they want to actually live there?

2) Next question is: and why did they even want to VISIT there? What's the attraction of this neighborhood? Well, for gentrifiers, there are obvious and easy answers to these questions in economic terms. People move to cheap neighborhoods because they're cheaper. People also moved to the Lower East Side because of its proximity to main cultural, financial, and infrastructural arteries of the city -- bridges, roads, NYU, Wall Street, the WTC, the "East Village." But they also moved there for non-practical reasons, for reasons that, in fact, defy a lot of practicality....

3) Some of those reasons are:
-- artists live there and artists bring a certain cache to a neighorhood by making it seem cutting edge, but safe. Artists also perform or display their art in these neighborhoods because they're less expensive and close to home. So those who don't live there may go to these neighborhoods simply to partake in the "culture" of it.
-- There's also what Karen Halnon calls "poverty chic." There's something about poverty that gives those who are familiar with it an edge, a streak of rebelliousness, of having looked into the mouth of hell and then having lived to tell about it. People visited the LES of ten years ago because it made them seem cool and unperturbed by "difference." They learned authenticity. They discovered new cultures and became more cosmopolitan because they experienced the dangers of the city
-- Some people, surely, were looking for bargains, as this was once the bargain capital of NYC.
-- The history of radicalism, of one's ancestors, of struggle, of an authentic past before one became suburban and American is also there.

4) All of the reasons I've mentioned above for why people visited and ultimately settled on the LES to gentrify it in the past 10-15 years have a history to them. None of these impulses are novel; they have deep roots in the growth of New York City, the rise of the middle-class, the birth of modern America, and the evolution of American "culture," both high and low.

I choose to trace these to the late 19th century and early 20th century and I characterize the practice of visiting the LES (but not living there) as "slumming." From this, I guess I can identify some main questions, but I think I'll even regroup them further after I write them down here:

1) WHO were the slummers?
2) WHAT attracted them to the slums at first? What did they read, see, experience in their own lives that made them want to go to the LES when they could have just as well avoided it? How did they get these sources?
3) Once they went to the LES, what was their experience? Were LES residents ready for these interlopers to see them? What did slummers say about their experiences? What did they write about their visits?
4) What was the larger meaning of slumming? This becomes a cultural phenomenon, but why?

Moving on, here are my hypotheses:

1) I believe the pattern of gentrification today can be seen almost step by step in the way people slummed the LES a hundred years ago. First, there are reports of the dangers, the titillation of wrongdoing, the "Otherness" of the immigrant residents. Then there are those who seek it out. Some do it for reform purposes, but I'm not interested in that unless their reports stimulate visitation that's NOT for reform purposes. But there are many who go just to see what the fuss is about, to see the dissipation, to witness "how the other half lives." These are folks on the cutting edge of fashion and they go for the same reasons we all like to be on the cutting edge -- because it gives us one up on our peers, because it becomes a badge of conquest, of knowledge, of experience.

After this first wave of slumming, there are those who see the slums as a treasure trove of knowledge about the American identity. These are people like Lincoln Steffens and Hutchins Hapgood -- and maybe even George Bellows, but certainly others -- who believe that more needs to be written and reported about the place NOT for reform, but rather to tell us more about how we can be better Americans. These people see the LES not as a sight of dissipation, but rather as a place where people are authentic and meaningful. This is a wave of writing and art that suggests the LES has lessons for us, not just dangerous thrills. Even so, this is a patently bourgeois mentality.

Then, finally, we have those who have access to the original vision, the writings of the bohemians, the reports of the first wave of cool people -- and they want to do the same thing. But this is a filtered down version, of course, because the residents of the LES are ready to package themselves in full now. Now the LES is in popular guidebooks It's on bus tours. It's got famous restaurants and shops to visit on the tour. It's now a bit pricier and maybe disappointing. As Dean McCannell might say, there's no "back region" anymore. Everything is a marked front region and access to authenticity is far more hidden.

2) This process is a process by which places become "attractions" and attractions of this sort are relatively new in American society in this period, so it's worth note.

3) The novelty of the "attraction" is also related to leisure and class, so one might argue, as I will, that the visitation of attractions is a way of performing one's class status -- and that class is clearly lodged in the middle.

4) This is also a story of culture and consumerism growing up together in America. Most texts (I should cite some) that try to identify an American culture tend to agree that it is as related to consumption as anything else.