Made in Brooklyn: Artists, Hipsters, Makers, and Gentrification

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. From the publisher --- Made in Brooklyn provides a belated critique of the Maker Movement: from its origins in the nineteenth century to its impact on labor and its entanglement in the neoliberal economic model of the tech industry. This critique is rooted in a case study of one neighborhood in Brooklyn, where artists occupy former factory buildings as makers. Although the Maker Movement promises to revitalize the city and its dying industrial infrastructure by remaking these areas as centers of small-scale production, it often falls short of its utopian ideals. Through her analysis of the Maker Movement, the author addresses broader questions around the nature of artistic work after the internet, as well as what the term 'hipster' means in the context of youth culture, gentrification, labor, and the influence of the internet. Part history, part ethnography, this book is an attempt to provide a unified analysis of how the tech industry has infiltrated artistic practice and urban space.

I used to go to a local farmer's market all the time (I am the granddaughter and niece of farmers) - now I do not as it is full of what we jokingly call "Those Entitled Hipsters with their $5 vegan donuts and $500 baby carriages with built-in iPhone docks-". It is not a compliment, to say the least as they act whiny and entitled. If you read the preface you can skip the rest of the book. I am all for artists and their artistic impression on everything from art to bicycles to coffee to dreadlocks on white girls, to eggs from your free-range backyard chickens ... I could go all the way to Z for zippers that were made in the loft you now inhabit. BUT ... This book comes off as whiny and entitled and annoying and I just want to tell the makers to get a life and DEAL WITH IT.

Sigh --- I could not finish it as I was getting angry at said makers/hipsters. Great if it was a thesis (the writer is a professor) but not as a book for the general public.