Questioning work, making a scene: Bohemian life on the Lower East Side of New York City.
Item
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Title
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Questioning work, making a scene: Bohemian life on the Lower East Side of New York City.
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Identifier
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AAI3245052
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identifier
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3245052
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Creator
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Halasz, Judith Rachel.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Stanley Aronowitz
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Social Structure and Development | American Studies | Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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Bohemia, the ill-defined collection of unconventional, self-marginalized social types, is often treated as a cultural phenomenon in which labor and politics are secondary at best. Yet, bohemians inflect their self-marginalization and unconventionality with a distinct ethos, which surfaces in their questioning of the workaday world, its imperatives and rewards. Bohemians typically limit their time and commitment to paid work to the minimum necessary for subsistence in order to pursue self-determined, regenerative, often unpaid, artistic, intellectual and/or political activities. This study problematizes the assumption that paid work is morally or ethically valuable, even a human right, typical of most labor studies and examines why bohemians willfully marginalize themselves from traditional paid work and careers, at what cost, and what this suggests about labor.;Using historical and ethnographic methods, this study examines the Beats, the 1960s counterculture and social movements, the 1970s-early 1980s underground and subsequent developments in bohemian life on the Lower East Side of New York City, a neighborhood with a rich bohemian history. For historical comparison, the seminal generation of mid-19th century Parisian bohemians is also considered. This study analyzes the historical conditions under which each generation emerged, flourished, and declined; how bohemians have reinterpreted the modern calculus of labor, time and productivity; their distinct ethos of labor and activity; how they make ends meet; their tenuous relationship with capital and its imperatives; the cultural scenes and political and social interventions they have created; and their symbolic significance and influence on mainstream culture.;Bohemians foreground the contradictions within the institution and practice of paid work consonant with philosophical and political economic critiques of labor, production, consumption and ideologies of work. Bohemians demonstrate that while paid work is typically critical to subsistence, it also seems to be an irrationally privileged activity given its tendency to stratify and subsume. However, the necessity of work tends to militate against widespread criticism or organization against the political economic basis of inequality. In this context, the bohemian way of life emerges as a practical criticism of the workaday world, highlighting the compromises inherent in one of the central institutions of modern life.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.