THERE GOES THE GAYBORHOOD?
BUY THIS BOOK: Amazon | Indie Bound | Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology Series), 2014
As our society increasingly accepts gays and lesbians into the mainstream, are “gayborhoods” destined to disappear?
Gay neighborhoods, like the legendary Castro District in San Francisco and New York’s Greenwich Village, have long provided sexual minorities with safe havens in an often unsafe world. Exploring the intimate relationship between sexuality and the city, this cutting-edge book reveals how gayborhoods, like the cities that surround them, are organic and continually evolving places.
There Goes the Gayborhood? was awarded an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Robert Park award for Best Book from the Community and Urban Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.
There Goes the Gayborhood? was selected for three Author Meets Critics sessions:
American Sociological Association (2015)
Association of American Geographers (2015)
Canadian Association of Geographers (2015)
ENDORSEMENTS
“There Goes the Gayborhood? is an extraordinarily researched and considered study of how we understand neighborhoods, communities, and cities in the post-gay era. Despite the increasing tolerance and support of gay culture in today’s society, Ghaziani makes a clear and cogent case that the gayborhood remains an important source of identity, social capital, and solidarity among sexual minorities.”
—Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, University of Southern California
Author of The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City
“Through the lens of gayborhoods, Amin Ghaziani offers a provocative and insightful new analysis of the gay experience. He combines historical documentation, popular media accounts, and empirical data to tell a compelling story of how gayborhoods shaped LGBT and urban life in America and considers what might be next for these enclaves in a post-gay society.”
—Gary J. Gates, Williams Institute, University of California, Los Angeles
Coauthor of The Gay and Lesbian Atlas
“What happens to cities when gay life moves out of the closet and into the streets? In this important book, Amin Ghaziani examines the cultural politics and political economy of the gayborhood, charting its emergence as a safe space in a hostile environment and its evolving role in the gentrifying metropolis. There Goes the Gayborhood? is original, timely, and provocative. It’s destined to spark a heated debate.”
—Eric Klinenberg, New York University
Author of Going Solo and Heat Wave
“As gayness moves from the closet to the mainstream, the social and spatial structure of the gay community is inevitably changing. Social transformations are always expressed in the urban landscape, and gay neighborhoods are no exception. In his superb new book, Amin Ghaziani offers a nuanced and perceptive guide to the changing nature of gay life in contemporary urban America. As a former resident of San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood during its heyday, I read it with great interest and much appreciation for the power of Ghaziani’s sociological imagination.”
—Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University
Author of Climbing Mount Laurel and American Apartheid
“Marshaling census data, historical records, and voices of gayborhood denizens, Ghaziani tells the complex story of queer geographies in the United States. In doing so, he eloquently documents how gayborhoods — their compositions, meanings, and functions — have evolved along with larger cultural, gendered, economic, and sexual changes.”
—CJ Pascoe, University of Oregon
Author of Dude You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
“Gayborhoods may come and go, but identities continue to inform processes of urbanization. This is a lively and informative read that contributes to contemporary theorizing on sexuality and space. Ghaziani deftly parses through demographic information and sociological narratives to clarify the histories and futures of sexual communities in the era of the post-gay.”
—Jasbir K. Puar, Rutgers University
Author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
“Examining the declining centrality of iconic urban gayborhoods in the wake of dramatic gains in social acceptance of gays and lesbians, Ghaziani nimbly escapes the twin pitfalls of lamenting liberationist losses or celebrating assimilationist victories. This sensitive and sensible intervention into “post-gay” discourse on the shifting social geography of sex and the city makes welcome contributions to both queer and urban studies.”
—Judith Stacey, New York University
Author of Unhitched: Love, Marriage and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China
“There Goes the Gayborhood? contributes to the important and growing literature on sexuality, moving past questions about individual identity and social-movement activism to address broader questions about daily life, social interaction, and the spaces in which people live.”
—Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University
Author of Small-Town America, Remaking the Heartland, and Meaning and Moral Order
REVIEWS
“[T]he rise of post-gay culture has introduced a new turmoil in gay neighborhoods…Same-sex couples reported living in 93 percent of all counties in the United States in 2010, prompting Ghaziani to conclude that, ‘gays, in other words, really are everywhere.’ [He] doesn’t think that this has wiped gayborhoods off the map—hence the question mark in his book’s title…Ghaziani argues that the current ‘de-gaying’ of these iconic gayborhoods results more from gays and lesbians feeling safe outside of them than from straight people pushing gay people out. But he acknowledges that both gentrification and tourism have transformed gayborhoods…[His] most interesting findings document what is happening beyond the gayborhood, in the new places to which gay men and women are relocating…It’s the sort of contradiction that Ghaziani argues lies at the heart of contemporary gay life. The fact that gay families live in both conservative and liberal areas across the country is evidence ‘that we are post-gay,’ he writes. But the fact that gay families in conservative states tend to cluster…suggests that many gay men and women still seek safety in numbers.”
—The New Yorker (Elizabeth Greenspan)
“Ghaziani offers passionate and refreshing insights on a politically charged issue. Taking the ‘gayborhood’ as his subject, Ghaziani analyzes the phenomenon of ‘gay ghettos’ using rich statistical data, historical analysis, a comprehensive review of news reports, and in-depth interviews with gays and heterosexuals. The result is a panoramic view of both the dimensions and cultural evolution of the gay neighborhood, and a response to the titular question: are gayborhoods and their once rich cultural vibrancy in decline? Ghaziani’s answers refuse easy scapegoats or facile conclusions, and suggest that the cultural evolution of gayborhoods need not entail their demise…The findings are not to be missed.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In an attempt to understand a contemporary, hot-button issue facing iconic gay neighborhoods in flux, Ghaziani mines the roots of ‘gayborhoods’ to understand where and why they began and the challenges they face. As homosexuality gains wider societal acceptance, are the ‘gay ghettos,’ once considered bastions of organized solidarity, sexual freedom, and safety from anti-gay bigotry and violence, feeling the pinch? In a book rich with demographical statistics of same-sex-couple households, useful charts and personal interviews, Ghaziani delivers an unbiased perspective carefully weighing the consequences and the benefits of conformity for formerly homogenous gayborhoods countrywide…Encompassing more than just the diminishing homogeneity of gay ghettos, Ghaziani’s important work also demonstrates an appreciation for how the provocative past, present and future of gay culture continues to evoke impassioned rhetoric and opinion.”
—Kirkus
“A fascinating, rich view that is supported by up-to-date statistics.”
—Library Journal (Jessica Spears)
“”Ghaziani believes gayborhoods won’t so much disappear as morph into something different: smaller clusters of gay residents gathering together in neighborhoods all over the city…The momentum of dispersal may prove more powerful than the lure of nostalgia in an era of increasing tolerance and a climate of legal equality. But Ghaziani isn’t ready to concede. He proclaims his confidence that gay neighborhoods have a future in American cities, even if that future looks much different from the recent past. Whether or not he is right, he is echoing sentiments that have been expressed by a long series of minority groups as they have moved away from the ‘old neighborhood’ and into a new reality of assimilation in the past century and a half of American urban life.”
—Governing (Alan Ehrenhalt)
“Be careful, as they say, what you wish for. A new book, There Goes the Gayborhood?,…charts the apparent decline of so-called gay villages such as the Castro in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York, a decline, it’s suggested, which has come from the very success of the gay movement in being fully accepted into mainstream life. Marriage, adoption, a revolution in public attitudes and sheer visibility have meant that there is simply no longer any need for the solidarity which came from clustering together in particular urban areas.”
–Standpoint (Peter Whittle)
“In There Goes the Gayborhood?,…Amin Ghaziani vivisects the transformation of these communities, which he labels ‘gayborhoods,’ as well as the emergence of gay enclaves in other urban precincts, suburbs, and small towns across America…While some LGBT residents are moving out of the gayborhoods, Ghaziani argues that a distinct, place-based gay identity continues to evolve. It’s a nuanced and complex tale—a tale of neighborhood changes and cultural shifts, an identity in flux—and Ghaziani does a nice job of telling it.”
—American Prospect (David L. Kirp)
“Ghaziani has a great subject…Can a gay identity exist without some kind of spatial correlative—the bars that bring people together, the book stores that reflect the histories that inform it?…Yes, there is a movement away from established gay neighbourhoods—but that movement is often directed toward laying the foundations of new gay neighbourhoods nearby…The gaybourhood has expanded because the contemporary gay identity has expanded. But while it is a new scene out there, the narrative is an old one. Those in sexual minorities, as with those in the sexual majority, still want only the freedom to love and be loved in their own ways, to be true to their hearts in whatever fashion that assumes—to be, in effect, authentically themselves. To find fulfillment in that aim is, indeed, to discover the end of the rainbow.”
—Literary Review of Canada (John Lownsbrough)
“Because of ‘post-gay’ neoliberalism and its concomitant gradual assimilation of gays and lesbians into cultural norms, the shouty ‘We’re here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It!’ is being supplanted by the whispery apologia ‘I may be gay but I’m ethnically straight.’ Maybe Dorothy doesn’t need Oz any more…[But] Ghaziani argues for the gaybourhood’s longevity as an idea of safe space, and I agree. We are still not quite out of Kansas.”
—Times Higher Education (Sally R. Munt)
“In ‘There Goes the Gayborhood?’ Amin Ghaziani weighs the question of whether gays are becoming more assimilated into general neighborhoods, or whether ‘gayborhoods’ will survive…Ghaziani concludes that gayborhoods are changing, yet will fulfill a need for some time. Gay acceptance is not universal, safe havens remain necessary and, as Ghaziani points out, similar people, whether ethnically or culturally, tend to stay together.”
—The Seattle Times (John B. Saul)
“Ghaziani is actually one of the best sociologists we have working in our field. Years of diligent research undergird this commentary. For every voice he evokes from his arsenal of notes, dozens more lurk silent save for the statistics: quantitative data in sharp tables and graphs suggest a tectonic shift in the geography and demography of our gayborhoods. This is a work to be trusted…[and] a timely book, one well-designed for lackeys and laymen alike. If you’re looking to gift a good read to a smart friend, Ghaziani is a great way to go.”
—Out In Jersey magazine (C. Todd White)
“[T]he use of a properly placed question mark can serve as a gentle reminder to readers that although an argument may seem straightforward, its intricate details create more questions than the author could ever hope to answer. Amin Ghaziani’s There Goes the Gayborhood? is an exhaustive and impressive insider’s look into the historical roles and current construction of gayborhoods from an insider’s perspective. The book distances itself from broad and supposedly essential narratives that mark the gayborhood as a thing of the past rather than as a continual social and sexual location of the future…[H]is argument has a ripple effect on the ways that people currently view the construction of the modern day metropolis and also what truly makes and defines a city’s proverbial heart…Ghaziani’s prose is a journey worth taking.”
—Lambda Literary (John Erickson)
“Ghaziani has produced a unique monograph…The author makes use of a variety of tools–personal interviews, census data, and surveys, among them–to explore what th[e] decentralization [of the gayborhood] means as part of a larger cultural shift [toward assimilation and acceptance].”
—Choice (Erin Pappas)
“Ghaziani adopts a wide-reaching, diachronic perspective on the rise of gay neighbourhoods in the USA, one informed by the analysis of an impressive indeed overwhelming range of statistical data…In the age of same-sex marriages, homophobia as well as conventional notions of masculinity are outmoded, Ghaziani emphasises, hence the need to consider gay identity and its unique cultures in terms of global mobility and the new demographic trends to which it has given rise…In this highly topical well researched work, Ghaziani contributes a broad, cross-disciplinary investigation as well as an in-depth treatment of the future of [the] gaybourhood in urban America, reflecting authoritatively on the new ‘cultural archipelagos’ of gay enclaves and cisgender identity.”
–American, British and Canadian Studies (Adriana Neagu)
“Make no mistake: the future of gayborhoods is a topic of central importance to LGBTQ identities, politics, and social life…There Goes the Gayborhood is an ambitious book and a valuable resource for scholars in sexualities and LGBTQ studies, urban and cultural sociology, and the general public as well. It starts an important conversation about what’s happening to gay neighborhoods across the country. Its clear prose and empirical rigor make it deserving of a wide readership in and beyond sociology.”
—Gender & Society (James Joseph Dean)
“First comes love, then comes gay marriage, then comes a straight couple with a baby carriage. In cities across America, local residents and outside observers have become acutely aware that dense, visible, distinct gay neighborhoods seem to be disappearing from the 21st-century urban landscape. Are gay neighborhoods changing? ‘Of course they are…Every neighborhood will change at some point,’ writes Amin Ghaziani in There Goes the Gayborhood?, his breezy, thoughtful…new book. But why is it happening, and should anyone care?…Ghaziani sees an explanation in the emergence of a ‘post-gay’ mentality…[He] is right that culture matters, and it will never show up in economic studies.”
– The Gay and Lesbian Review (Christopher Capozzola)
“Neighborhoods, like patterns of discrimination, have their moral careers…What then, is happening to the gayborhood? As sociologists are apt to say, it’s complicated. But it’s complicated in interesting ways. Openly LGBTQ people do live in more places and are less concentrated than they were before…Like the decreasing importance of citizenship in an increasingly globalized world, there seems to be something less and less necessary about geographical belonging. And yet, the declining significance of place can often be deceptive…Ghaziani reminds us how even as LGBTQ people slowly move into the mainstream, place can matter in new ways.”
– Public Books (Iddo Tavory)
“In There Goes the Gayborhood?, American sociologist Amin Ghaziani takes up the question of whether or not the age of the United States gayborhood is over…[He] is responding to a series of American newspaper reports declaring the gayborhood’s demise…The question mark in Ghaziani’s title, however, is significant. Rather than finding gayborhoods in decline, what he finds is a process of change: in the meanings of sexuality and in the meanings of urban spaces…A great strength in Ghaziani’s book is his handling of [such] questions of change in gay life and urban space. For him, these changes are not some defining end-point to previous identities so much as they are ongoing shifts in always fluid entities.”
– Australian Review of Public Affairs (Scott McKinnon)
“Gayborhood is an excellent resource…[The book] presents an intriguing answer to its question. The gayborhood is not simply ‘disappearing,’ but it is transforming and changing. Working with this complex process rather than lamenting a time past is an interesting way to think about queerness and queer identity in a world that is also fluid and changing.”
– Journal of Homosexuality (Joe Marchia)
“The year 1978 held many contradictions for gay rights in the United States. The city of San Francisco, for instance, passed one of the country’s first ordinances prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, public accommodations, and employment in the private sector. Yet, later that year, Harvey Milk – the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California – was murdered. That same year, during his tenure at the University of Chicago, a relatively unknown sociologist (William Julius Wilson) published his groundbreaking study The Declining Significance of Race (1978). In that book, he argued that race had become secondary to socioeconomic status in determining an African American’s life chances. There Goes the Gayborhood? can be best understood through the historical lens of the contradictions and diversities occurring within gay America in 1978 and beyond, as well as through the intellectual lens developed by Wilson in 1978 and beyond (1987). To see the relevance of the latter, one need only swap sexual orientation for race. In terms of the former, Mitchell Duneier and his colleagues note that ‘…good ethnography can turn into great social history’ (2014, pg. 2); and indeed that’s what Ghaziani has accomplished.”
—Social Forces (Juan Battle)
“[There Goes the Gayborhood?] takes up the important question of whether or not the disappearance of predominantly gay neighborhoods indicates new urban problems or new urban possibilities. Drawing on a combination of archival, interview and ethnographic data, Ghaziani explores the rise, fall, and relative importance of establishing, sustaining and maintaining predominantly gay urban neighborhoods…Once invisible areas of the city, urban gay neighborhoods have become featured in many city maps and tourism ephemera as places to see, eat, party, and understand the city writ large. Ghaziani powerfully builds from this contemporary reality to reveal the historical, political, and economic consequences of the heightened visibility of LGBT citizens and the neighborhoods in which they predominate.”
—Metropolitics (Marcus Anthony Hunter)
“Drawing on an impressive array of media sources, census counts, opinion polls, interviews and ethnographic observations, Ghaziani develops a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of social change related to gay-dominated areas within metropolitan cities. The arguments in the book are oriented around one particular paradox: the perceived decline of ‘the gayborhood’ in US cities and the emergence of a post-gay world occurred primarily because of the erosion of homophobia. How do gay people keep together, Ghaziani asks, when they no longer see the need to live in the same place for safety or solidarity? … Ghaziani writes in an engaging, inclusive style, and it is easy to see why his book has drawn such widespread media attention. This is done without loss of clarity or academic rigour, and is particularly welcome in a sub-discipline where language all-too-often becomes obtuse and impenetrable.”
–Sociology (Mark McCormack)
“[T]his is an excellent book with well-structured arguments and empirics. It is clear that the author cares about the faith of these neighbourhoods and their communities. Furthermore, it makes effective use of a broad range of literature and secondary methods such as historical accounts, institutional analysis, expert interviews, photographs and mapping … Ghaziani has produced a highly relevant study on a subject which is relatively understudied in mainstream urban sociology, geography and demography. Compared with class, ethnicity and life course, there is shockingly little work on the role of sexuality in understanding the changes, meanings and ‘effects’ of neighbourhoods and in residential mobility. As societal acceptance is growing, urban scholars can no longer be content with the odd gaybourhood case study or with simply casting gays as typical gentrifiers. For this reason and more, There Goes the Gayborhood? comes highly recommended to the readers of this journal.”
—Urban Studies (Wouter van Gent)
“The centrality of gay neighborhoods—colloquially ‘gayborhoods’—in LGBT community life has shifted over recent decades. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that gayborhoods are dying and will continue to diminish, not only as sites of queer residential concentration but also in their role within the LGBT community more broadly. Amin Ghaziani takes on these contentions within There Goes the Gayborhood? and evaluates the merits of such claims while considering the nature and role of gay neighborhoods in twenty-first century North America. Importantly, Ghaziani does not fall into the trap of over-romanticizing gayborhoods and their impact on LGBT people as a community. In this respect, Ghaziani deftly navigates these debates while reminding us that gayborhoods, like all neighborhoods, are dynamic components of cities and their role in the generation and maintenance of community must be reimagined rather than clinging to static notions about the sitedness of community within geographic confines.”
– City & Community (Brian C. Kelly)
“Scholarship on gay and lesbian space is largely dominated by economists who focus on economic rationales for gay and lesbian residential choices such as city amenities and disposable income. In contrast, Ghaziani uses a sociological lens to consider the influence of larger cultural and political trends on gayborhoods, a needed addition to the literature…There Goes the Gayborhood? is a well-researched, timely study.”
– American Journal of Sociology (Melinda Kane)
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