ABSTRACT

Working-class history museums face immense challenges in trying to reconcile being socially progressive and class-oriented while also maintaining relevance and success in gentrifying areas. Museums are embedded within political economic structures of power, and thus face considerable limitations in their efforts to act as meaningful sites of political or ideological contestation. This article examines Manhattan’s Tenement Museum as a case study to explore the inherent tensions that exist in the representation of working-class heritage in a capitalist, gentrifying city. Synthesising research collected from extensive fieldwork between 2009 and 2017, as well as public records and published media, ethnographic analyses of museum space and exhibitions are performed in an effort to understand how the museum constructs and disseminates working-class history. Although the museum is careful to emphasise the socio-political agency of the people it represents, it largely downplays the Lower East Side’s activist, labour-oriented past and present. In order to more fully delve into questions of economic power and cultural production, the political economy of communication is used as an analytic lens to explore questions of identity politics and cultural struggle, urban sustainability, and finally, the precarious labour of the museum’s own workers.

摘要

工人阶级历史博物馆在努力协调社会进步和阶级导向，同时在高档化领域保持相关性和成功方面面临巨大挑战。博物馆嵌入在权力的政治经济结构中，因此在作为有意义的政治或意识形态争论场所的努力中面临着相当大的限制。本文将曼哈顿的公寓博物馆作为案例研究，以探讨在资本主义、高档化的城市中工人阶级遗产的表现中存在的内在张力。综合研究从 2009 年至 2017 年间广泛的实地调查以及公共记录和出版媒体中收集的研究成果，博物馆空间和展览的民族志分析旨在了解博物馆如何构建和传播工人阶级的历史。尽管博物馆谨慎地强调了它所代表的人们的社会政治能动性，但它在很大程度上淡化了下东区过去和现在以劳工为导向的激进主义。为了更全面地深入探讨经济权力和文化生产的问题，以传播的政治经济学为分析视角，探讨身份政治和文化斗争、城市可持续性以及博物馆自身工人的不稳定劳动等问题。 .