The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Unlike direct monopoly rent, the buying, selling, and leasing may not change who owns the land itself; you’re trading on proximity or some other relationship. Every time you buy a souvenir on vacation, you’re trading on indirect monopoly rent.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
What we need are more unions, and those unions must be ideologically grounded in the belief that workers should democratically control a peaceful, human-centered economy.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
To truly read as “authentic” according to internet studies scholar Crystal Abidin, influencers have to “actively juxtapose this stripped-down version of themselves against the median and normative self-presentations of glamour, to continually create and assign value to new markers—faults and flaws, failures and fiascos—to affirm the veracity of the
... See moreDavid A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Whereas authenticity peddling relies on the predictably unique, memes of place use very common symbols in unpredictable ways.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Authenticity somehow implies both fragility and eternity—something that has lasted a long time but may be endangered by modern forces. The authenticity of a place and its people are deeply intertwined not only because people make up the culture of a place but because the very notion of authenticity is predicated on the choices we make as free indiv
... See moreDavid A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Even better if you can develop your resistant identity (“everything around me is fake and trivial”) into a project identity (“I will move to Albany and make a new community worthy of my conformity”).
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Authenticity collapses when something purported to be genuine is proved to be fake, expectations are not met, or we are not sufficiently convinced that what we are looking at or experiencing comports with our ongoing identity projects.
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Such a thing is also existential because it affirms the existence of yourself as you are and who you wish to become (e.g., a Hoosier turned New York City fashionista). Unlike objective or constructive authenticity, “existential experience involves personal or intersubjective feelings activated by the liminal process of tourist activities.”
David A. Banks • The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America
Dilution of authenticity through the commodification of a place’s culture is just one of the many problems with making money through authenticity peddling.