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Summary:

"Over the past several decades and increasingly since the beginning of the pandemic, second homeowners have left a distinctive mark across both rural and urban America. As wealthy elites reallocate capital into housing investments other than their primary residence, they extend the breadth of their influence to places as different as the backwoods of northern Maine and the cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill. Across these varied geographies, the purchase of second homes has become a social problem, placing pressure on housing markets, igniting political tensions, and putting strain on local community dynamics. While this movement of capital may be in part motivated by financial returns, this alone cannot fully explain what motivates second homeowners, nor does it capture the depth of their influence. Privileging Place examines how place-identity-which is to say, a felt identification with a particular kind of place-leads many affluent people to shift a portion of their capital and their lives to a new place and to exert an influence on that place in a particular way. Drawing on interviews with over sixty second homeowners as well as community observations from two years of field research in Rangeley, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts, Meaghan Stiman looks at the ways in which place-identity motivates the movements of a particular subset of second homeowners, namely, the upper-middle class. Belonging to the top 20% of American income earners, these second-home buyers are predominantly white and tend to concentrate their wealth in suburbs and other affluent, resource-rich areas. In Privileging Place, Stiman shows that, for the upper-middle class, second home ownership is a way to promote an identity for themselves through the place where they buy their second home (whether rural or urban). But because these projects are second homes, developed on the side while still holding onto the valued resources of their suburban primary residences, Stiman argues that such place-identity projects rely on further deepening inequalities in urban and rural places. To the second homeowners, these are not places to work, go to school, or contribute to community life, but are places to imagine a version of themselves as urban or rural people and to imprint their version of urban or rural life onto the community where they live part-time. By tracing the way upper-middle class values and practices unfold between secondary city and country homes and their suburban hometowns, this book offers a detailed look into the spatial concentration and diffusion of white, upper-middle class privileges in the United States"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Suburbs and Everywhere in Between
• 1. Ennui
• 2. A Land of Opportunity
• Part II: The Country
• 3. The Way Life Should Be
• 4. My Vacationland
• 5. Open for Business
• Part III: The City
• 6. City Mouse
• 7. A Brahmin Ethos
• 8. High-End Blight
• Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Appendix A. Tables
• Appendix B. Methods

• Notes
• References
• Index

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Author/Creator:

Stiman, Meaghan, 1988- , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Privileging place: how second homeowners transform communities and themselves [by Stiman, M.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Privileging place [by Stiman, M.] (Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2024] — ISBN 9780691239965; LCCN 2023040206)

Subjects:

Place attachment — United States

Second homes — United States

Middle class white people — Housing — United States

Upper class — Housing — United States

COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023 — United States — Influence

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on: Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on June 13, 2024).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 222 pages)

Call Numbers:

BF353.5.P56 S75 2024eb

ISBNs:

9780691239972 (electronic book)
0691239975 (electronic book)
9780691239965 (paperback) [Invalid]
9780691240787 (hardcover) [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2023040207

OCLC Numbers:

1399572533