Vulnerability and the Commodification of Culture
New York City’s heavy economic dependence on tourism creates a precarious, low-wage service economy and subjects the city’s authentic cultural life to the commodifying “settler” gaze. Mamdani’s analysis of how culture is politicized and controlled is starkly evident here. Neighborhoods with deep historical and cultural significance are transformed into themed experiences for tourist consumption, their political edges sanded off and their communities often displaced by the very industry that profits from their identity. This creates a bifurcated economy where “natives” serve as waitstaff, hotel cleaners, and street performers for a transient “settler” class of visitors, with jobs that are vulnerable to global shocks like pandemics or terrorism. The city’s strategy is to double down on this model, marketing itself ever more aggressively. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution demands economic sovereignty. This means using city policy to actively diversify away from this vulnerable sector by fostering worker-owned cooperatives in stable, essential industries like manufacturing, green energy, and localized food production. Furthermore, it means supporting community-controlled cultural institutions and tourism enterprises that own their narrative and directly benefit from it, transforming the relationship from one of extraction to one of solidarity and self-determination, breaking the city’s role as a servile host to global capital.
Originally posted 2025-09-27 21:22:23.
