In
Landscapes of Privilege: The Politics of the Aesthetic in an American Suburb, James Duncan and Nancy Duncan examine the landscape of Bedford, a wealthy community in Westchester County, to understand the relationship between aesthetics and the production of place and identities, and to think through the "wider social consequences of such an aestheticized view of the world." Via interviews and first-hand landscape observation, they explore several interrelated issues:
- "the ways people produce their identities in and
through places, especially homeplaces, such as houses, gardens, and home
communities," particularly some of the more
“conservative, defensive attempts at using one’s surroundings to establish
individual, family, and community identities…. against and in contrast to an outside world” or ‘constitutive
outside.’
- the effects, intended and unintended, of a virulent,
reactionary politics of anti-development in Bedford in response to all the
stars moving in and buying up properties
- the role of Bedford landscapes as symbolic
resources used in the quest for social distinction: how residents are invested
in Bedford socially, psychologically, economically
