Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Closer To The Edge: New York City and the Triumph of Risk

Arena, Joseph Andrew
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397785231

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
“Closer to the Edge: New York City and the Triumph of Risk” explores the historical construction of “the culture of risk.” The dissertation posits the culture of risk as an alternative to neoliberal frameworks of American society in the contemporary period. The work begins in 1973, with the city already unraveling from structural economic decline alongside racial and class polarization, a graphic example of the failures of mid-century “high-modernist” planning. It then moves to the city’s 1975 brush with bankruptcy, which became a starting point for New York’s elite to reimagine the city’s economic future. Financiers, with the cooperation of political leaders and the city’s labor movement, created an urban economy based on the most speculative kinds of deregulated financial capitalism. The city’s leadership deliberately risked social disintegration by using funds from public health, safety, and welfare to attract and retain global capital. The dissertation examines the historical impact of these policies on the city’s role as a financial center, its real estate market, and on the lives of the very poor. The city that was created by taking these risks radiated its influence outward to the nation as a whole through capital markets, intellectual discourse, cultural production, and new activist movements that arose in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. By 1992, the resulting belief in business/government risk-taking as a social good or as a necessity had become the dominant ethos of both New York City’s politics and of the United States as a whole. As recent events such as the 2008 financial crisis have demonstrated, the influence of the culture of risk endures to the present day.
Kevin Boyle (Committee Chair)
Paula Baker (Committee Co-Chair)
David Steigerwald (Committee Member)
383 p.
American History; History
New York City;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Arena, J. A. (2014). Closer To The Edge: New York City and the Triumph of Risk [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397785231

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Arena, Joseph. Closer To The Edge: New York City and the Triumph of Risk. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397785231.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Arena, Joseph. "Closer To The Edge: New York City and the Triumph of Risk." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1397785231

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1397785231
1,627
© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.