Introduction: Flint and the Racialized Geography of Indifference

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Cassano ◽  
Terressa A. Benz
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Critical Sociology ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
African American Population ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Oakland County ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

In this introduction to the Critical Sociology symposium, “The Flint Water Crisis and the Failure of Neoliberal Governance,” the authors outline the social and cultural conditions for the racialized underdevelopment of Flint and Detroit in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We begin with an examination of the racially coded rhetoric of Oakland County manager, L. Brooks Patterson, and the manner in which those racial codes reveal the deep roots of white suburban anxiety and racism in the history of economic and spatial apartheid in Michigan. Turning to Flint itself, we draw upon Andrew Highsmith’s recent history of the city, Demolition Means Progress (2015), and examine 20th century red-lining, school segregation, and neoliberal policy decisions as they interacted, effectively rendering Flint’s African American population invisible and, finally, through emergency management, nearly powerless. We close with a survey of the articles within the symposium. Each contribution to the symposium finds that even within the structural and political limitations imposed by neoliberalism, residents and activists continue to find productive spaces for resistance.

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

Studies in the Social and Economic History of Ostia

1938 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 152-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick H. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

The first of these Studies was concerned chiefly with the history of Ostia during the period when the city was still growing and its prosperity increasing. Even so, during the period already considered, the prosperity of Ostia, though real, was to this extent artificial, in that it depended upon factors over which the citizens themselves had no control. Ostia was the port of Rome, and nothing else, and in consequence any lowering of the standard of living in, or reduction of imports into the capital city must have had immediate and marked repercussions upon her prosperity. She even lacked to a great extent those reserves of wealth which in other cities might be drawn upon to tide over bad times. The typical citizen of Ostia came to the city in the hope of making his fortune there; but when he had made it, he usually preferred to retire to some more pleasant town, such as Tibur, Tusculum, Velitrae, or Rome itself, where he could enjoy his leisure. Few families seem to have remained in the city for more than two, or, at the most, three generations. Whilst therefore fortunes were made in Ostia, wealth was not accumulated there.

The semiotics of the deictic field: Reckoning language and experience in East Los Angeles

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-49
Author(s):  
Dana Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
East Los Angeles ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Single Speaker ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Formative Experiences ◽  
The City

AbstractThis analysis examines the ways in which a single speaker, Ana, born in mid-century East Los Angeles, organizes and reflects upon her experiences of the city through language. Ana’s story is one that sheds light on the experiences of many Mexican Americans who came of age at a critical time in a transitioning L.A., and the slow move of people who had been up until mid-century relegated largely in and around racially and socioeconomically segregated parts of L.A. These formative experiences are demonstrated to have informed the ways that speakers parse the social and geographical landscape along several dimensions, and this analysis interrogates the symbolic value of a special category of everyday language, deixis, to reveal the intersection between language and social experience in the cityscape of L.A. In this way, it is analytically possible to not only approach the habituation and reproduction of specific deictic fields as indexical of the ways that speakers parse the city, but also to demonstrate the ways in which key moments in the history of the city have shaped the emergence and meaning of those fields.

Visions in conflict: a city of possibilities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Howell ◽  
Richard Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Local Production ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Industrial Economy ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Land Water

This chapter casts the deindustrialization of Detroit as part of a larger transition providing new dangers and opportunities. The disappearance of industrial economy has created opportunities for the emergence of alternative means of creating new, sustainable and vibrant urban life. The resources of African American culture and imagination provide a perspective on developing innovative ways of making a living that nurture our capacities for cooperation and care. Rooted in Detroit’s long history of social struggle, a vision of self-determining urban life based, on local production for local needs is emerging. Mainstream elites and media generally ignore or deride these efforts. This chapter explores specific examples of the practices and programs emerging from the community. New forms of resisting dehumanization, especially since the takeover of the city by emergency management, are combined with creation of concrete alternatives to questions of land, water new ways of thinking.

Urban Change in Early Medieval Italy: The Example of Pavia

1966 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 82-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Bullough
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Warm Hospitality ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Prefatory Note.—My interest in Pavia goes back at least to 1951 when I was elected Rome Scholar in Medieval Studies. I began seriously to collect material for the history of the city in the early Middle Ages in the winter and spring of 1953 when I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Collegio Ghislieri, thanks to the efforts made on my behalf by the late Hugh Last, to whose memory this article is dedicated. The published proceedings of the Reichenau and Spoleto congresses on ‘The early medieval town’ in the 1950s clearly underlined the need for detailed studies of particular towns; but the lack of adequate archaeological evidence discouraged me from attempting such a study of early medieval Pavia. In 1964, however, Dr. A. Peroni, Director of the Museo Civico invited me to read a supplementary paper on this topic to the Convegno di Studio sul Centro Storico di Pavia held in the Università degli Studi at Pavia on July 4th and 5th of that year. The present article is an amplified and corrected version of that paper: I have made no substantial alterations to my account of the ‘urbanistica’ of early medieval Pavia—written for an audience of architects and art-historians as well as of historians—but have dealt more fully with the social history of the city in this period. Professor Richard Krautheimer read a draft of the revised version and made some pointed and helpful comments. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Peroni, not merely for the invitation to present the original paper but also for supplying illustrations and answering queries at a time when he and his staff were engaged in helping to repair the ravages of the Florence floods.

scholarly journals HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN THE EXPEDITION ALONG THE IPIRANGA STREAM

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERMELINDA MOUTINHO PATACA ◽  
CAMILA MARTINS DA SILVA BANDEIRA
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Botanical Garden ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Scientific Representations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Abstract In this article we reflect on the development of an educational fieldwork conducted along the Ipiranga River, in which we bring the debates concerning History of Science and Environmental Education closer together, by problematizing the social and environmental issues in the city of São Paulo in a contextualized and critical way. To that end, we established the limits for the hydrographic basin by highlighting the headwaters of the Ipiranga River and the changes it has undergone, as well as the political, sanitary and environmental meanings throughout the 20th Century. We associated the environmental issues with the history of two important institutions located along the river: The Botanical Garden and the Museu Paulista’s [São Paulo Museum] arboretum. We highlighted the practices, techniques and scientific representations that were developed on the sites, by valuing them as cultural heritage of the Brazilian science.

PRINT CULTURE AND ITS PUBLICS: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF BOOKSTORES IN TEHRAN, 1900–1950

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Afshin Marashi
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Book Trade ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article investigates the evolution of print culture and commerce in Tehran during the first half of the 20th century. The first section examines technological changes that facilitated the commercialization of texts and then details the history of early print entrepreneurs in the Tehran bazaar. The second section examines the expansion of the book trade between the 1920s and 1940s, tracing the emergence of modern bookstores in a rapidly changing Tehran. I argue that patterns of change in print commerce between 1900 and 1950 contributed to the emergence of mass culture by midcentury. This new mass culture involved the social and political empowerment of a diversity of new reading publics in the city, and enabled the emergence of new forms of popular politics.

Sociocultural History of Rio de Janeiro

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Cruz Terra ◽  
Marcelo de Souza Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Common People ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sociocultural History ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
The City

The city of Rio de Janeiro underwent profound changes between 1870 and the early 20th century. Its population grew dramatically, attracting migrants not only from abroad but also from other regions of Brazil. It also expanded significantly in size, as the construction of trolley and railway lines and the introduction of real estate capital powered the occupation of new areas. Meanwhile, urban reforms aimed at modernization transformed the social ways in which urban space was used. During this period, Rio de Janeiro went from being the capital of the Brazilian Empire to being the capital of the Brazilian Republic. It nevertheless maintained its position as the cultural, political-administrative, commercial, and financial center of the country. Against this backdrop of change, the city was an important arena for the political struggles that marked the period, including demonstrations in favor of abolition and the republic. Rio de Janeiro’s citizens were not inert during this period of transformation, and they found various ways to take action and fight for what they understood to be their rights. Protests, demands, petitions, and a vibrant life organized around social and political associations are examples of the broad repertoire used by the city’s inhabitants to gain a voice in municipal affairs. Citizens’ use of public demands and petitions as a channel to communicate with the authorities, and especially with city officials, shows that while they did not necessarily shun formal politics, they understood politics to be a sphere for dialogue and dispute. The sociocultural history of Rio de Janeiro during this period was therefore built precisely through confrontations and negotiations in which the common people played an active role.

The Modern City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City ◽  
Rich History

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.

Out of Tlatelolco’s Ruins: Patronage, Devotion, and Natural Disaster at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, 1745–1781

2013 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ramírez ◽  
William B. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
City Center ◽  
The Social ◽  
Promotional Efforts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Disease Epidemics ◽  
The City

Abstract Colonial inhabitants of Mexico City were accustomed to coping with natural disasters, including disease epidemics, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, which menaced rich and poor alike and stirred fervent devotion to miraculous images and their shrines. This article revisits the late colonial history of the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, an image preserved miraculously on an adobe wall in the Indian quarter of Santiago Tlatelolco. The assumption has been that archiepiscopal authorities aiming to deflect public worship toward a more austere, interior spirituality suppressed activities there after 1745 because they saw the devotion as excessively Indian and Baroque. The shrine has served as a barometer of eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms even though its story has not been fully told. This article explores the politics of patronage in the years after the shrine’s closure and in the decades prior to the arrival on the scene of a new Spanish patron in 1776, revealing that Indian caretakers kept the faith well beyond the official intervention, with some help from well-placed Spanish devotees and officials. The efforts of the new patron, a Spanish tailor from the city center, to renovate the building and image and secure the necessary permissions and privileges helped transform the site into one of the most famous in the capital. Attention to earlier patterns of patronage and to the social response to a series of tremors that coincided with his promotional efforts helps to explain why a devotion so carefully managed for enlightened audiences was nevertheless cut from old cloth.

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