Sponsored by the Urban Humanities Working Group.

Sharon Zukin, Professor of Sociology Brooklyn College and City University of New York Graduate Center, presents a talk entitled "'Is There Really a New Economy?' A Sociologist Tries to Understand New York's Innovation Complex."

For the past four years, I have been exploring the "emplacement" of cultural forms and economic norms associated with the "new" economy in New York City. This economy is powered by an infrastructure of digital technology and inspired by "innovation and entrepreneurship" and related tropes. Because the formation of an "innovation complex" depends on social, cultural, and political processes, and is inherently spatial, I describe the city's new economy as a series of nested spaces where digital products are produced, occupational cultures are formed, and various kinds of local and global financial capital are combined, all within a contentious patchwork of land-use interests. The talk will introduce the "innovation complex" and discuss how I did the research for the book.