Beautiful Wasteland
The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier
Rebecca J. Kinney
Rebecca J. Kinney reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. She tackles key questions about the future of postindustrial America, and shows how the narratives of Detroit’s history are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.
Rebecca J. Kinney's sophisticated and compelling study demonstrates the centrality of race-making to contemporary narratives of urban decline and revitalization.
David M. P. Freund, University of Maryland
According to popular media and scholarship, Detroit, the once-vibrant city that crumbled with the departure of the auto industry, is where dreams can be reborn. It is a place that, like America itself, is gritty and determined. It has faced the worst kind of adversity, and supposedly now it’s back. But what does this narrative of “new Detroit” leave out? Beautiful Wasteland reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. They’re not. As Rebecca J. Kinney shows, the narratives of Detroit’s rise, decline, and potential to rise again are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness.
By remapping the narratives of contemporary Detroit through an extension of America’s frontier mythology, Kinney analyzes a cross-section of twentieth and twenty-first century cultural locations—an Internet forum, ruin photography, advertising, documentary film, and print and online media. She illuminates how the stories we tell about Detroit as a frontier of possibility enable the erasure of white privilege and systemic racism. By situating Detroit as a “beautiful wasteland,” both desirable and distressed, this shows how the narrative of ruin and possibility form a mutually constituted relationship: the city is possible precisely because of its perceived ruin.
Beautiful Wasteland tackles the key questions about the future of postindustrial America. As cities around the country reckon with their own postindustrial landscapes, Rebecca Kinney cautions that development that elides considerations of race and class will only continue to replicate uneven access to the city for the poor, working class, and people of color.
Awards
Transdisciplinary Book Award from the Institute for Humanities Research
$25.00 paper ISBN 978-0-8166-9757-1
$87.50 cloth ISBN 978-0-8166-9756-4
240 pages, 9 b&w photos, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 2016
Rebecca J. Kinney, who grew up in metropolitan Detroit, is assistant professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies and Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University.
Rebecca J. Kinney's sophisticated and compelling study demonstrates the centrality of race-making to contemporary narratives of urban decline and revitalization.
David M. P. Freund, University of Maryland
It’s part personal memoir, part reporting, part academic dissection, drawing on life history, pop culture, photojournalism, architecture, TV news, and more.
Detroit Metro Times
While modest in length and scope, Beautiful Wasteland provides a fascinating analysis of the cultural narratives that underpin both public policy and our everyday depictions of postindustrial cities.
The Michigan Historical Review
This is a welcome addition to studies in race and political economy.
Katherine B. Hankins, Georgia State University
In Beautiful Wasteland Rebecca Kinney offers a sweeping cultural analysis of the images and symbolic landscapes that have made and remade our imaginary of the city of Detroit.
Jessa M. Loomis, University of Kentucky
Beautiful Wasteland is a superb analysis of the role of popular culture in the production of Detroit as a “postindustrial frontier”.
Sara Safransky, Vanderbilt University
Beautiful Wasteland adds greatly to our understanding of why nostalgia is such a central part of how white working and middle class Americans construct their sense of self and the world.
Patrick Vitale, Eastern Connecticut State University
Kinney’s book is a valuable contribution to the growing body of research on Detroit in that it makes visible the banal ways in which racism occurs through a cultural lens.
Urban Geography
Kinney’s insistence that neoliberal market strategies cannot resolve structural inequities raises this succinct contribution to the critique of ‘ruin porn’ above the fray.
Indiana Magazine of History
Crucially woven into this analysis is Kinney’s sensitivity to the persistence of race in narrative tropes, and the significance of what is unsaid and what is forgotten, as much as what is said and remembered.
Environment & Urbanization
Historical and cultural geographers plus scholars with an interest in the US Midwest, manufacturing history, or urban history will likely find this a welcome addition to their shelves - or night stands: the book was a compelling read and difficult to put down.
Historical Geography
Contents
Introduction: Building a Beautiful Wasteland
1. It’s Turned into a Race Thing: White Innocence and the Old Neighborhood
2. Picturing Ruin and Possibility: The Rise of the Postindustrial Frontier
3. Fanning the Embers: Branding Detroit as a Phoenix Rising
4. Flickers of the American Dream: Filming Possibility in Decline
5. Feeding Detroit’s Rise: Provisions for Urban Pioneers
Conclusion: The Strait: A Tale of Two Cities
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About This Book
Related Publications
Related News & Events
BGSU scholar Rebecca Kinney dissects the myth of Detroit’s death & resurrection
Michigan Radio: Book aims to reframe outsider narratives of Detroit
Detroit Metro Times: 3 books about Detroit for the bookworm in your life
BGSU scholar Rebecca Kinney dissects the myth of Detroit’s death & resurrection
Rebecca Kinney only realized she should write about her hometown of Detroit when she was living to the West Coast.
Michigan Radio: Book aims to reframe outsider narratives of Detroit
How do we talk about Detroit? In the 80's and 90's, the focus was on crime and urban decay. Detroit was the "Murder City." Today, the narrative is one of possibility and resurgence.
Detroit Metro Times: 3 books about Detroit for the bookworm in your life
It's part personal memoir, part reporting, part academic dissection, drawing on life history, pop culture, photojournalism, architecture, TV news, and more.
BGSU News: Kinney book looks at Detroit through lens of popular culture
Detroit, once a mecca for those looking for a good job and a better life, is now seen by some as what Dr. Rebecca J. Kinney calls a “beautiful wasteland.” A wasteland because of the perception of its postindustrial devastation, and beautiful because of its potential to rise like a phoenix from its ashes to reclaim its place among the country’s great cities. But who will this gleaming new city be for?