Anthropology students Sidsel Filipsen & Jonas Bruun Nielsen share some observations they’ve made studying gentrification in New York and Bushwick in particular.
When doing anthropological research on gentrification in Bushwick one quickly finds out, that it is not a thing easily done – especially when you’re not even from this country. We came from Copenhagen having seen what we believed to be gentrification in our own city, but as expected, things move a lot faster in New York. That is probably why gentrification has much more of a place in people’s minds over here. Telling people in Denmark what were going to study all we got was “gentrifi-what?” But in Bushwick everyone seems to have an opinion about the topic – whether they think it’s good, bad, neutral or natural. What has surprised us more is that no one really seems to agree on what gentrification actually is.
“Gentrification is just natural. It’s just part of how life works – it’s good and it’s bad.” – Anonymous Bushwickian
