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The Relationships Industry: Money and Love

G.K. Peatling winter2017

The business of relationships Has there ever been a society as obsessed as modern English-speaking Western societies are by “relationships,” “love,” and “families” as conventionally defined? Cultural production is dominated by the subject, not just in the popular genres of

The Item

October 18, 2023

An Editor Has His Say: What is The Straddler?

From The Archives

winter2017

A House Is Not a Home: Dreaming about Property in America

When asked what her dreams are, Star (Sasha Lane), the displaced, teenage protagonist of Andrea Arnold’s 2016 feature, American Honey, tells a sympathetic trucker that she wants to get her own place—a trailer where she can raise a family. Always just out of reach, the imagined home propels her forward as she travels between towns selling magazine subscriptions, at one point accepting cash in exchange for a sexual encounter with an oil worker. Set on the open road, the film repeatedly depicts the homes of Star’s potential customers—lavish mansions whose inhabitants thoughtlessly discard jewelry amongst piles of presents or happily offer cash to watch the spunky teenager drink tequila. Honey is Arnold’s inaugural portrait of American culture, a bold, dreamy declaration that, regardless
BY    Alison Kozberg
June 3, 2025
winter2017

From the Editors

When political economist and social reformer Henry George died in 1897, his funeral was attended by thousands who proceeded from Grand Central Palace in Manhattan to Brooklyn City Hall on their way to Green-Wood Cemetery, his final resting place.

BY    Editor
February 21, 2023

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