Alessandro Gerosa

My first book, the Hipster Economy (UCL Press), is freely available in Open Access from the publisher’s webpage.

Access the book here: The Hipster Economy – UCL Press

For all the book-related media or academic request, please contact me by email at alessandro[at]unimi.it or on Twitter (see on the left).

Praises for the Hipster Economy

‘The term “hipster” usually evokes frivolity, while the concept of “authenticity” has been studied so extensively it’s getting hard to find a novel use for it. In this lovely new book, Gerosa has given hipsterism the serious analysis it deserves. Through clear, unforced writing, he convincingly reveals the importance of a distinct form of hipster aesthetics, one based on authentic experience, for today’s consumption-based economy. Gerosa has successfully enlivened the conversations around authenticity and started new ones around late capitalism’s regimes of accumulation. This book is a fine achievement.’ Richard E. Ocejo, CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College‘

The Hipster Economy is a very welcome addition to sociological discussions of authenticity and consumer culture. Ethnographic vignettes of “crafty capitalism” and passionate “taste dealers” enliven a theoretically rich argument that hipsterism should be treated not as a subculture, but as an aesthetic regime typifying contemporary life. Using the “hipster” as a lens, Gerosa provides a masterful tour of post-Fordist changes to modes of capitalism, patterns of urban development, and the material practices and subjective experiences of work, while charting the long-term development and contemporary expression of authenticity as a master narrative in consumer culture.’ Jennifer Smith Maguire, Sheffield Hallam University

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, one researcher/writer investigates bagels (Goldfield, 2024: p. 6), while another highlights cocktails (Shteyngart, 2024: p. 6). The magazine, that could be said to embody ‘hip’—“fashionable, up-to-date; stylish, sophisticated; cool” (OED)—confirms the veracity and universality of Alessandro Gerosa’s thesis. The Hipster Economy posits a consumer phenomenon in scholarly terms and The New Yorker confirms it in the marketplace. D Wood, The Journal of Consumer Culture

In and of itself then, ‘The Hipster Economy’ succeeds as a thorough analysis of hipster culture as an aesthetic regime of consumption concerned with authenticity’. Hate Meditations