Posts Tagged ‘slums’

This June, with three friends, I road-tripped down to Bonnaroo. The annual music festival in Manchester, Tennessee brings together hundreds of top-notch musicians and tens of thousands of fans for four days of music. It as an amazing weekend full of sights and sounds. One of the most fascinating, and least appreciated, aspects was the pulsing society which forms in a matter of hours on an otherwise empty farm outside Nashville. Otensibly camping to hear great music, more than 70,000 strangers pitch tents and mine coolers as neighbors. This is a tent society.

I was reminded of this experience last week while visiting Yosemite National Park. In climbing circles, Yosemite is a sort of Mecca and Camp 4 is something of a shrine. Since World War II, Camp 4 has been the center of rock climbing in North America; climbing greats like Yvon Chouinard and Ron Kauk have pitched tents and made history. This, too, is a tent society.

There are others – dozens of music festivals, Everest Base Camp and more that others have probably experienced. Though I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist, studying these tent societies from that point of view would be great.

What are the norms that develop? How? Do they differ from each other or “concrete societies”? Are there lasting effects on those involved which get translated back home? What type of productive work is done? How is it divided?

Part of the inspiration comes from a book in which the author, Robert Neuwirth, lived in four different squatter cities around the world and reported on the realities facing the 1 billion humans without property rights. Shadow Cities is an eye-opening account of a world which is often misrepresented in popular media.

Tent Societies would be a similar story of another method of living.

This June, with three friends, I road-tripped down to Bonnaroo. The annual music festival in Manchester, Tennessee brings together hundreds of top-notch musicians and tens of thousands of fans for four days of music. It as an amazing weekend full of sights and sounds. One of the most fascinating, and least appreciated, aspects was the pulsing society which forms in a matter of hours on an otherwise empty farm outside Nashville. Otensibly camping to hear great music, more than 70,000 strangers pitch tents and mine coolers as neighbors. This is a tent society.

I was reminded of this experience last week while visiting Yosemite National Park. In climbing circles, Yosemite is a sort of Mecca and Camp 4 is something of a shrine. Since World War II, Camp 4 has been the center of rock climbing in North America; climbing greats like Yvon Chouinard and Ron Kauk have pitched tents and made history. This, too, is a tent society.

There are others – dozens of music festivals, Everest Base Camp and more that others have probably experienced. Though I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist, studying these tent societies from that point of view would be great.

What are the norms that develop? How? Do they differ from each other or “concrete societies”? Are there lasting effects on those involved which get translated back home? What type of productive work is done? How is it divided?

Part of the inspiration comes from a book in which the author, Robert Neuwirth, lived in four different squatter cities around the world and reported on the realities facing the 1 billion humans without property rights. Shadow Cities is an eye-opening account of a world which is often misrepresented in popular media.

Tent Societies would be a similar story of another method of living.

This June, with three friends, I road-tripped down to Bonnaroo. The annual music festival in Manchester, Tennessee brings together hundreds of top-notch musicians and tens of thousands of fans for four days of music. It as an amazing weekend full of sights and sounds. One of the most fascinating, and least appreciated, aspects was the pulsing society which forms in a matter of hours on an otherwise empty farm outside Nashville. Otensibly camping to hear great music, more than 70,000 strangers pitch tents and mine coolers as neighbors. This is a tent society.

I was reminded of this experience last week while visiting Yosemite National Park. In climbing circles, Yosemite is a sort of Mecca and Camp 4 is something of a shrine. Since World War II, Camp 4 has been the center of rock climbing in North America; climbing greats like Yvon Chouinard and Ron Kauk have pitched tents and made history. This, too, is a tent society.

There are others – dozens of music festivals, Everest Base Camp and more that others have probably experienced. Though I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist, studying these tent societies from that point of view would be great.

What are the norms that develop? How? Do they differ from each other or “concrete societies”? Are there lasting effects on those involved which get translated back home? What type of productive work is done? How is it divided?

Part of the inspiration comes from a book in which the author, Robert Neuwirth, lived in four different squatter cities around the world and reported on the realities facing the 1 billion humans without property rights. Shadow Cities is an eye-opening account of a world which is often misrepresented in popular media.

Tent Societies would be a similar story of another method of living.