Can the "City on the Make" Slow Down for Archaeology?: Remarks from Chicago

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Slow Archaeology + Fast Capitalism: Hard Lessons and Future Strategies from Urban Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Nelson Algren (1951) famously titled Chicago the "city on the make”: an urban center self-servingly and frenetically driven by its hustlers. In cities like Chicago, a similar ethos can propel construction projects, often at the expense of cultural resources and archaeological research. Archaeologists calling for their discipline to “slow down” pitch themselves as holding ethical standpoints contrary to fast capitalist projects. But as an academic discipline, archaeology is likewise entangled with neoliberal capitalist models, and pushes its practitioners to hustle for grants, publications, and positions in an increasingly contingent labor market. Add this to the rapid demolition of heritage sites in cities and we need to ask: what are the stakes for slowing urban archaeology down? This paper considers two archaeological and construction projects in Chicago—the Obama Presidential Center and the Mecca Flats—to consider whether and how archaeology can slow down in Chicago.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Slow Archaeology + Fast Capitalism: Hard Lessons and Future Strategies from Urban Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 736