Paper short abstract:

In analyzing a successful public library renovation that included a private cafe, I turn from the public/private dichotomy to scholarship on branding. I argue that the public sector can appropriate techniques developed by the for-profit, commercial sector -- not to erode but to enhance a commons.

Paper long abstract:

A public library in a small midwestern American city was recently renovated, controversially featuring a café run by a local chain. Some worried that a for-profit entity in the public space was anathema and made the library look like a commercial bookstore. But the renovation has greatly promoted the public mission of the library: it is full of patrons of a diverse mix of ages, sizes, race/ethnicity and socio-economic status, from graduate students and moms of preschool children to clients of the homeless shelter down the road. How is it that an upscale cafe within the library space did not produce the usual exclusionary effects of privatization?

The discussion around the privatization of public goods and services usually takes the entry of private business interests to be a sign of dispossession, to be countered by efforts to re-common and decommodify them. Here, I turn from an analysis focused on the public/private dichotomy to scholarship on branding to attend to another phenomenon: the ways the public sector can appropriate techniques developed by the for-profit, commercial sector not to erode but to enhance a commons. I argue this library has adapted commercial techniques that reduce the appearance of impersonal commodity-exchange relations, from simulating personalized interactions to designing spaces conducive to human comfort and conviviality, but do this without the restricting, silencing and exclusionary effects of commercial "brand regimentation." It is now a less impersonal space with new affordances for diverse forms of social interaction, discussion, contemplation, and community support.