The Public Library as Resistive Space in the Neoliberal City

• In Event: 243 - Regular Session. Community and a Sense of Belonging

Abstract

With reduced hours, decaying infrastructure, and precariously positioned staff, local public libraries provide much needed services in cities ravaged by inequality and slashed safety nets. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research of a small public library in a diverse and gentrifying neighborhood in Queens, New York. I show that this library serves a site of the moral underground, where middle class people bend rules to help out the poor, including immigrants. The provision of services and resources, often exceeding all formal expectations of what libraries do, position it firmly as an example of a real utopia, providing an alternative to capitalism. Although they do not completely undermine the resistive potential of the public library, hegemonic ideologies that emphasize immigrant assimilation and self-help are present, which is consistent with the history of US public libraries as institutions of social control of immigrants and the poor. I conclude by discussing the potential of public libraries as research sites and nodes of resistance.

Author

• Sofya Aptekar, University of Massachusetts-Boston