Privileging Place - by Meaghan Stiman

About the Book

"Over the past several decades and increasingly since the beginning of the pandemic, second homeowners have left a distinctive mark across both rural and urban America. As wealthy elites reallocate capital into housing investments other than their primary residence, they extend the breadth of their influence to places as different as the backwoods of northern Maine and the cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill. Across these varied geographies, the purchase of second homes has become a social problem, placing pressure on housing markets, igniting political tensions, and putting strain on local community dynamics. While this movement of capital may be in part motivated by financial returns, this alone cannot fully explain what motivates second homeowners, nor does it capture the depth of their influence. Privileging Place examines how place-identity-which is to say, a felt identification with a particular kind of place-leads many affluent people to shift a portion of their capital and their lives to a new place and to exert an influence on that place in a particular way. Drawing on interviews with over sixty second homeowners as well as community observations from two years of field research in Rangeley, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts, Meaghan Stiman looks at the ways in which place-identity motivates the movements of a particular subset of second homeowners, namely, the upper-middle class. Belonging to the top 20% of American income earners, these second-home buyers are predominantly white and tend to concentrate their wealth in suburbs and other affluent, resource-rich areas. In Privileging Place, Stiman shows that, for the upper-middle class, second home ownership is a way to promote an identity for themselves through the place where they buy their second home (whether rural or urban). But because these projects are second homes, developed on the side while still holding onto the valued resources of their suburban primary residences, Stiman argues that such place-identity projects rely on further deepening inequalities in urban and rural places. To the second homeowners, these are not places to work, go to school, or contribute to community life, but are places to imagine a version of themselves as urban or rural people and to imprint their version of urban or rural life onto the community where they live part-time. By tracing the way upper-middle class values and practices unfold between secondary city and country homes and their suburban hometowns, this book offers a detailed look into the spatial concentration and diffusion of white, upper-middle class privileges in the United States"--

Book Synopsis

How second homeowners strategically leverage their privilege across multiple spaces

In recent decades, Americans have purchased second homes at unprecedented rates. In Privileging Place, Meaghan Stiman examines the experiences of predominantly upper-middle-class suburbanites who bought second homes in the city or the country. Drawing on interviews with more than sixty owners of second homes and ethnographic data collected over the course of two years in Rangeley, Maine, and Boston, Massachusetts, Stiman uncovers the motivations of these homeowners and analyzes the local consequences of their actions. By doing so, she traces the contours of privilege across communities in the twenty-first century.

Stiman argues that, for the upper-middle-class residents of suburbia who bought urban or rural second homes, the purchase functioned as a way to balance a desire for access to material resources in suburban communities with a longing for a more meaningful connection to place in the city or the country. The tension between these two contradictory aims explains why homeowners bought second homes, how they engaged with the communities around them, and why they ultimately remained in their suburban hometowns. The second home is a place-identity project--a way to gain a sense of place identity they don't find in their hometowns while still holding on to hometown resources. Stiman's account offers a cautionary tale of the layers of privilege within and across geographies in the twenty-first century.

Review Quotes

"A good addition to place-making and gentrification literature."-- "Choice"

About the Author

Meaghan L. Stiman is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.