LEADER 03015oam 2200409z- 450 001 9910158997403321 005 20230906203136.0 010 $a9781613762325 010 $a1613762321 035 $a(CKB)3710000001018633 035 $a(BIP)013312791 035 $a(VLeBooks)9781613762325 035 $a(Perlego)3286987 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000001018633 100 $a20220314d2013 uy | 101 0 $aeng 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 00$aThe Lowell Experiment $ePublic History in a Postindustrial City 210 $cUniversity of Massachusetts Press 215 $a1 online resource (320 p.) $cill 311 08$a9781558495470 311 08$a1558495479 330 8 $aIn the early nineteenth century, Lowell, Massachusetts, was widely studied and emulated as a model for capitalist industrial development. One of the first cities in the United States to experience the ravages of deindustrialization, it was also among the first places in the world to turn to its own industrial and ethnic history as a tool for reinventing itself in the emerging postindustrial economy. The Lowell Experiment explores how history and culture have been used to remake Lowell and how historians have played a crucial yet ambiguous role in that process. The book focuses on Lowell National Historical Park, the flagship project of Lowell's new cultural economy. When it was created in 1978, the park broke new ground with its sweeping reinterpretations of labor, immigrant, and women's history. It served as a test site for the ideas of practitioners in the new field of public history--a field that links the work of professionally trained historians with many different kinds of projects in the public realm. The Lowell Experiment takes an anthropological approach to public history in Lowell, showing it as a complex cultural performance shaped by local memory, the imperatives of economic redevelopment, and tourist rituals--all serving to locate the park's audiences and workers more securely within a changing and uncertain new economy characterized by growing inequalities and new exclusions. The paradoxical dual role of Lowell's public historians as both interpreters of and contributors to that new economy raises important questions about the challenges and limitations facing academically trained scholars in contemporary American culture. As a long-standing and well-known example of culture-led re-development, Lowell offers an outstanding site for exploring questions of concern to those in the fields of public and urban history, urban planning, and tourism studies. 610 $aUrban anthropology 610 $aUrban renewal 610 $aMassachusetts 610 $aSocial science 610 $aPolitical science 610 $aHistory 676 $a307.3/41609744/4 700 $aStanton$b Cathy$01433011 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910158997403321 996 $aThe Lowell Experiment$94363200 997 $aUNINA