Places of Privileged Consumption Practices: Spatial Capital, the Dot–Com Habitus, and San Francisco's Internet Boom

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Centner

Drawing from interviews and fieldwork with former dot–com workers in San Francisco, this article examines how their spatialized consumption practices formed exclusionary places of privilege during the city's millennial boom of internet companies. I focus especially on the personalized deployment of uneven social power in situations where space is at stake. After considering how this group differed from a history of other urban newcomers, I develop a framework for addressing their spatial effects as gentrification involving privileged consumption practices that surpass residential encroachments. I argue there is an exertion of spatial capital that represents the misrecognition of territorial claims, enabling this cohort to literally take place. I show this through several consumption practices that convert to and from economic, cultural, and social capital. A concluding discussion reflects on the usefulness of this case and framework for reinvigorating key urban–sociological analytics while confronting influential but unsociological characterizations of contemporary city life.

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Theresa McCulla

In 1965, Frederick (Fritz) Maytag III began a decades-long revitalization of Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, California. This was an unexpected venture from an unlikely brewer; for generations, Maytag's family had run the Maytag Washing Machine Company in Iowa and he had no training in brewing. Yet Maytag's career at Anchor initiated a phenomenal wave of growth in the American brewing industry that came to be known as the microbrewing—now “craft beer”—revolution. To understand Maytag's path, this article draws on original oral histories and artifacts that Maytag donated to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History via the American Brewing History Initiative, a project to document the history of brewing in the United States. The objects and reflections that Maytag shared with the museum revealed a surprising link between the birth of microbrewing and the strategies and culture of mass manufacturing. Even if the hallmarks of microbrewing—a small-scale, artisan approach to making beer—began as a backlash against the mass-produced system of large breweries, they relied on Maytag's early, intimate connections to the assembly-line world of the Maytag Company and the alchemy of intellectual curiosity, socioeconomic privilege, and risk tolerance with which his history equipped him.


1960 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
William M. Bennett

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigino Bruni ◽  
Robert Sugden

It is a truism that a market economy cannot function without trust. We must be able to rely on other people to respect our property rights, and on our trading partners to keep their promises. The theory of economics is incomplete unless it can explain why economic agents often trust one another, and why that trust is often repaid. There is a long history of work in economics and philosophy which tries to explain the kinds of reasoning that people use when they engage in practices of trust: this work develops theories of trust. A related tradition in economics, sociology and political science investigates the kinds of social institution that reproduce whatever habits, dispositions or modes of reasoning are involved in acts of trust: this work develops theories of social capital. A recurring question in these literatures is whether a society which organizes its economic life through markets is capable of reproducing the trust on which those markets depend. In this paper, we look at these themes in relation to the writings of three eighteenth-century philosopher-economists: David Hume, Adam Smith, and Antonio Genovesi.


BMC Nutrition ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Milagro Escobar ◽  
Andrea DeCastro Mendez ◽  
Maria Romero Encinas ◽  
Sofia Villagomez ◽  
Janet M. Wojcicki

Abstract Background Food insecurity impacts nearly one-in-four Latinx households in the United States and has been exacerbated by the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We examined the impact of COVID-19 on household and child food security in three preexisting, longitudinal, Latinx urban cohorts in the San Francisco Bay Area (N = 375 households, 1875 individuals). Households were initially recruited during pregnancy and postpartum at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG) and UCSF Benioff prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. For this COVID-19 sub-study, participants responded to a 15-min telephonic interview. Participants answered 18 questions from the US Food Security Food Module (US HFSSM) and questions on types of food consumption, housing and employment status, and history of COVID-19 infection as per community or hospital-based testing. Food security and insecurity levels were compared with prior year metrics. Results We found low levels of household food security in Latinx families (by cohort: 29.2%; 34.2%; 60.0%) and child food security (56.9%, 54.1%, 78.0%) with differences between cohorts explained by self-reported levels of education and employment status. Food security levels were much lower than those reported previously in two cohorts where data had been recorded from prior years. Reported history of COVID-19 infection in households was 4.8% (95% Confidence Interval (CI); 1.5–14.3%); 7.2% (95%CI, 3.6–13.9%) and 3.5% (95%CI, 1.7–7.2%) by cohort and was associated with food insecurity in the two larger cohorts (p = 0.03; p = 0.01 respectively). Conclusions Latinx families in the Bay Area with children are experiencing a sharp rise in food insecurity levels during the COVID-19 epidemic. Food insecurity, similar to other indices of poverty, is associated with increased risk for COVID-19 infection. Comprehensive interventions are needed to address food insecurity in Latinx populations and further studies are needed to better assess independent associations between household food insecurity, poor nutritional health and risk of COVID-19 infection.


1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin Toy

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-269
Author(s):  
Camila Pérez ◽  
Giuseppina Marsico

Indigenous territorial claims are a long-standing concern in the history of Latin America. Land and nature have profound meaning in indigenous thinking, which is neither totally understood nor legitimized by the rest of society. This article is aimed at shedding light on this matter by examining the meanings at stake in the territorial claims of the Mapuche people. The Mapuche are an indigenous group in Chile, who are striving to recover their ancestral land. This analysis will be based on the concept of Umwelt, coined by von Uexküll to refer to the way in which species interpret their world in connection with the meaning-making process. Considering the applications of Umwelt to the human being, the significance assigned to land and nature by the Mapuche people emerges as a system of meaning that persists over time and promotes interdependence between people and the environment. On the other hand, the territorial claim of the Mapuche movement challenges the fragmentation between individuals and their space, echoing proposals from human geography that emphasize the role of people in the constitution of places.


Comma ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2019 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Gelfand

Seventy-five years ago (1945), the United Nations (UN) was founded in San Francisco by 50 nations. There, a small archives unit served to assemble the first records of the organization; this was the first iteration of today’s Archives and Records Management Section (ARMS). Throughout its history, the fortunes of the UN Archives have waxed and waned, while its role has continuously evolved. Trying to carve out a place for itself within the largest international organization in the world, its physical and administrative structures have undergone profound changes, as has its mission, number of staff, the type of records it holds and its users. This paper examines significant events in the development of the UN Archives, the challenges it has faced and what may be learned from them.


2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-29
Author(s):  
Marc Stein

This essay summarizes the methods and results of a collaborative student-faculty research project on the history of sexual politics at San Francisco State University. The collaborators collected and analyzed 160 mainstream, alternative, student, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans) media stories. After describing the project parameters and process, the essay discusses six themes: (1) LGBT history; (2) the Third World Liberation Front strike; (3) feminist sexual politics; (4) the history of heterosexuality; (5) sex businesses, commerce, and entrepreneurship; and (6) sexual arts and culture. The conclusion discusses project ethics and collaborative authorship. The essay’s most significant contributions are pedagogical, providing a model for history teachers interested in working with their students on research skills, digital methodologies, and collaborative projects. The essay also makes original contributions to historical scholarship, most notably in relation to the Third World Liberation Front strike. More generally, the essay provides examples of the growing visibility of LGBT activism, the intersectional character of race, gender, and sexual politics, the complicated nature of gender and sexual politics in the “movement of movements,” the commercialization of sex, and the construction of normative and transgressive heterosexualities in this period.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-136
Author(s):  
Brock Winstead

Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay was created to host the Golden Gate International Exposition, a World’s Fair, in 1939-40. The fair was an expression of an idealized order of both design and international relations. Neither survived much longer than the fair itself. The author considers the creation and re-creation of Treasure Island and the problem of building for an uncertain, ultimately unknowable future. This article is a critical appreciation of Andrew Shanken’s Into the Void Pacific, a design history of the fair.


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