Harvard Square : A Love Story by Catherine J. Turco (2023, Hardcover) online kaufen

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Product Identifiers

PublisherColumbia University Press

ISBN-100231209282

ISBN-139780231209281

eBay Product ID (ePID)2328289826

Product Key Features

Book TitleHarvard Square : a Love Story

Number of Pages344 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicUrban & Regional, Social History, United States / State & Local / New England (Ct, mA, Me, NH, Ri, VT), Sociology / Urban

Publication Year2023

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science, Business & Economics, History

AuthorCatherine J. Turco

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.1 in

Item Weight25.5 Oz

Item Length0.9 in

Item Width0.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2022-021031

ReviewsTurco uses the example of Harvard Square, a neighborhood she knows well and loves dearly, to examine the role of marketplaces in our lives. She shows how we develop affective ties to these dynamic markets, and then deplore the changes that market forces bring about. This book raises important questions about the tensions between markets and communities, and the extent to which we both crave and resist change., I highly recommend this book for its important substantive focus, wealth of historical data, and insightful discussion of the factors that make street-level markets unique., This book is an intellectual and emotional revelation about why street-level marketplaces--the places where people dine and shop, meet others, and feel part of the scene--mean so much to them and why this 'love story' is inherently fraught. It is original and insightful about both markets and people., You will simply fall in love with how Turco draws you in and how she guides you to appreciate the paradox that markets are both source for, and threat to, what is sacred and intimate in our lives., This is the book you should judge by its cover. For you will simply fall in love with how Turco draws you in and how she guides you to appreciate the paradox that markets are both source for, and threat to, what is sacred and intimate in our lives., We are upset when market forces threaten the things we think are sacred. Turco hammers the point home: "That which gives us a sense of ontological security also takes it away. Who wouldn't get upset by that?", Turco brings a novelist's subtle sense of character, place, and pacing to an incisive, truly new consideration of a universal, though often invisible, fact of life: how we relate to where we live. And, on a deeper level, how we relate to change. A twenty-first-century Jane Jacobs, Turco's intellect, compassion, and commitment come through each page., A lovely, well-told story that will change how you think about markets, marketplaces, and perhaps even your own shopping., Turco's history will forever change my daily commute of walking through Harvard Square. She provides amazing insight into the changes that have happened and will continue to happen, and clarifies that those who observe that the Square is changing are repeating an observation that has existed for centuries., Turco takes a deep dive into what it is that makes a Main Street or community center special to its denizens. Her historically informed account will certainly resonate with those with fond memories of the Square's past iterations., Turco brings a novelist's subtle sense of character, place, and pacing to an incisive, truly new consideration of a universal, though often invisible, fact of life: how we relate to where we live. And, on a deeper level, how we relate to change. A twenty-first century Jane Jacobs, Turco's intellect, compassion, and commitment come through each page., Harvard Square is an emotionally gripping historical ethnography, powerfully connected to both the archive and to the lived experience of our attachments to a real street-level market and the people within it., This is what Turco calls a 'crazy love' for the local marketplace -- a feeling so strong it can stir a socialist. And her project is to understand its power.

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal307.342097444

Table Of ContentAuthor's Note Introduction Prologue: Sacred Sundays 1. A Love Story Told from the Street Level Part 1: A Lot of the Same, A Lot of Change 2. Not What It Used to Be 3. The Times They Are (Always) A-Changin' 4. A Tricky Relationship Part 2: Crazy Love 5. Crazy Love 6. Everybody Get Together 7. Forever Young 8. Outside Agitators 9. Whose Square? The Battle for Control 10. Pulling Away 11. Different Markets, Different Perspectives Conclusion 12. Our Markets, Ourselves 13. Reclaiming the Street Level: COVID-19 and Beyond Acknowledgments Notes Index

Synopsis"Harvard Square isn't what it used to be." Spend any time there, and you're bound to hear that lament. Yet people have been saying the very same thing for well over a century. So what does it really mean that Harvard Square--or any other beloved Main Street or downtown--"isn't what it used to be"? Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime denizen of Harvard Square, set out to answer this question after she started to wonder about her own complicated feelings concerning the changing Square. Diving into Harvard Square's past and present, Turco explores why we love our local marketplaces and why we so often struggle with changes in them. Along the way, she introduces readers to a compelling set of characters, including the early twentieth-century businessmen who bonded over scotch and cigars to found the Harvard Square Business Association; a feisty, frugal landlady who became one of the Square's most powerful property owners in the mid-1900s; a neighborhood group calling itself the Harvard Square Defense Fund that fought real estate developers throughout the 1980s and '90s; and a local businesswoman who, in recent years, strove to keep her shop afloat amid personal tragedy, the rise of Amazon, and a globalizing property market that sent her rent soaring. Harvard Square tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns. Offering a new and powerful lens that exposes the stability and instability, the security and insecurity, markets provide, Turco transforms how we think about our cherished local marketplaces and markets in general. We come to see that our relationship with the markets in our lives is, and has always been, about our relationship with ourselves and one another, how we come together and how we come apart., Diving into Harvard Square's past and present, Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime Harvard Square denizen, tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns.

LC Classification NumberHT177.C27T87 2022