A01=Kevin Wehr
Author_Kevin Wehr
Category=JBSD
Category=JHB
Category=QDTS
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
new urban hipster
Social theory
Sociology
Product details
- ISBN 9780761847939
- Weight: 220g
- Dimensions: 155 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 28 Sep 2009
- Publisher: University Press of America
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Hermes on Two Wheels shows the dynamic world of the bicycle messenger through a sociological lens, based on a five-year participant observation study. Beginning with the experiences of messengers themselves and moving to describe the structural settings of those experiences, the research shows how messengers work within a political-economic system that devalues semi-skilled labor and strips people of emotional fulfillment. The voluntary risk-taking of messengers becomes a means of achieving such emotional fulfillment as well as making a living, while their stylistic expressions pay dividends in cultural scrip rather than money. Through their work, messengers help to reproduce and maintain the structures of society while also constructing a vibrant, rebellious, politicized subculture that has come to represent the new urban hipster, an image continually under threat of co-optation.
Kevin Wehr is associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the California State University, Sacramento, where he specializes in environmental sociology, political sociology, social theory, culture, and criminology. He received his Ph.D. in sociology in 2002 and his M.S. in 1998 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He completed his B.A. in 1994 at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
