ABSTRACT
In his pioneering 1970s book The Tourist, Dean McCannell writes, “The industrial epoch has biased sociology in several ways. Our research is concentrated on work, not leisure, and on the working class, not the middle class.”1 A perception of what constitutes “real” work, formed during the industrial period, persists stubbornly among social scientists, privileging blue-collar manual labor as the proper focus of serious study. But leisure activities and middle-class consumption also imply processes of work and social production. With the hollowing out of the old industrial core, service provision becomes a major source of urban employment. The educated professionals who constitute the elite sectors of the postindustrial economy demand a distinctive amenity mix in the city, raising the importance of what Zukin calls the “symbolic economy.”2 In Chicago, culture and entertainment are now core
enterprises, in terms of both exportable cultural products and local enter tainment scenes.3 But the requirements for such production remain poorly understood.
