Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Anthropology

Reader 1

Lara Deeb

Reader 2

Joanne Nucho

Abstract

Shakedown is a traveling community that emerged during the counterculture movements in the US during the 1960s in relation to the musical group the Grateful Dead. Nearly six decades later, the close-knit, intergenerational community continues to follow the music. The community consists of vendors who sell their goods in shakedown to acquire funds for tickets to these shows and to support their travels. In this thesis, I use ethnographic methods to examine how the forms of sociality in shakedown reflect the community’s stated values and result in specific ideals and practices that shape a continually evolving group identity. First, I argue that shakedown functions as a kinship structure of chosen family, actualized through the practice of a moral economy and subcultural notions of belonging. I then draw on concepts of subcultural characteristics, exchange, and capital, to contend that the values and practices in shakedown further constitute the community as a subculture that is differentiated from the greater US while still upholding certain principals of this dominant society. Using theories of generations, I finally argue that the intergenerational relationships in shakedown generate social change and sustain the community’s values and practices. Throughout the thesis, I demonstrate the impact of subcultural community relations on an individual's beliefs, attitudes, and practices–both through an individual and a generational scale.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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