Geoff Moss

After publishing journal articles on the Sociology of Work and Organizations, Education, and Crime, I discovered my greatest sociological passion--the study of cities and communities. I have written about urban artistic communities, both past and present, and have utilized the historic constructs of "bourgeois" and "bohemian" to compare and contrast such communities. My book, Artistic Enclaves in the Post-Industrial City: The Case of Lawrenceville Pittsburgh (Springer, 2017), maintains that Lawrenceville's struggling artists have integrated bourgeois and bohemian practices and values to build a sustainable artistic enclave. I have also studied artistic community life in Philadelphia with the help of Sociology doctoral students Rachel Wildfeuer and Keith McIntosh. We published our joint book on Fishtown/Kensington's artistic community with Springer. Our thesis is that Fishtown/Kensington artists have created an "Artistic Bohemian Lifestyle community" that maintains a significant degree of consistency with the traditional bohemian lifestyle, but that is not animated by the anti-bourgeois attitudes that have been foundational to bohemian community life. My most recent book, Barista in the City, published by Rutledge, was coauthored with Keith McIntosh and Ewa Protasiuk, and maintains that due to gentrification and the forces of class/race/gender, living an alternative subcultural life has become increasingly difficult in Philadelphia, and in cities more generally.