LITM Extra - Interview with Sharon Zukin [excerpt]

Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture

This is a patrons-only episode. To hear the full interview, and many more episodes like it, go to Patreon.com/LoveMessagePod.

In this patrons-only episode Jeremy and Tim talk about New York City in the 1970s with writer and academic Sharon Zukin. Sharon is a Professor of Sociology, teaching at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of books including Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World, and Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.

In this interview, Jeremy and Tim ask Sharon both about her research and her experiences as a public sector worker in New York City in the 1970s. They discuss changing patterns of cooperative housing and loft living in downtown Manhattan, the social and economic circulation within and between these various neighbourhoods, and the problems loft living presented. They also talk about the visual art scenes of the East Village and Soho, the pursuit of professional art careers within these spaces, the role of gender and race in how these opportunities were presented, and the incorporation of the avant-garde into the American establishment.

Tim, Jeremy and Sharon also discuss the work of David Harvey, Richard Nixon, suburbia, and scrutinise why the 1970s came to be so widely understood as a crisis decade.

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley.