Big Sur: Utopia, U.S.A.?

Big Sur ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelley Alden Brooks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jack Kerouac ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
The West ◽  
Henry Miller ◽  
Big Sur ◽  
Oriented Region

The West that emerged in the postwar era—a rapidly growing, suburban, industrialized, consumer-oriented region—shaped American culture, and this culture became the foil against which Henry Miller and many others imagined Big Sur. Big Sur sat perched at the literal—and, increasingly, at the figurative—edge of the United States, and its cultural significance grew as the state continued to flourish. Chapter 3 examines the efforts from inside and out to paint Big Sur as a place apart but also as a hyper-representation of California complete with an exceptional landscape, a relatively young and flexible culture, a compelling lifestyle, and a place of perceived personal freedom. Ironically, this freedom and flexibility thrived within the zoning parameters established by Monterey County. A growing number of the diverse inhabitants of Big Sur, including the beatniks—drawn by Jack Kerouac—the artists, the professionals, and the upper-class residents, all shared at least one quality: they possessed social privilege and could use this capital to work with county officials to protect their haven from becoming one more commercialized coastal strip.

Radical Bodies and Dangerous Ladies: Martial Arts and Women's Performance, 1900–1918

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANA LOOSER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Martial Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Self Defence

This article explores women's practice and theatrical presentation of jujutsu and judo in the early years of the twentieth century in the United States, Britain and New Zealand. My discussion treats three figures in particular: Fude Yamashita, who tutored upper-class Washington socialites and performed judo demonstrations on the American stage; the English militant vote-seeker, playwright and jujutsu practitioner Edith Garrud, proponent of jujutsu as a political activist performance and coordinator of the ‘fighting suffragettes’; and New Zealander Florence Le Mar, vaudeville performer and ‘the World's Famous Ju-Jitsu Girl’, who enthralled audiences with her spectacular show designed as an educational enterprise to empower women through transferable self-defence skills. A historical survey of these women's activities contributes to our understanding of the varied ways that women during this period used performance to resist patriarchal institutions and definitions, while offering insights into some of the ways that the Japanese martial arts were reinvented following their introduction to the West.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Lundestad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Modernization

There are no laws in history. Realists, liberals, and others are both right and wrong. Although no one can be certain that military incidents may not happen, for the foreseeable future China and the United States are unlikely to favor major war. They have cooperated well for almost four decades now. China is likely to continue to focus on its economic modernization. It has far to go to measure up to the West. The American-Chinese economies are still complementary. A conflict with the United States or even with China’s neighbors would have damaging repercussions for China’s economic goals. The United States is so strong that it would make little sense for China to take it on militarily. There are also other deterrents against war, from nuclear weapons to emerging norms about international relations. It is anybody’s guess what will happen after the next few decades. History indicates anything is possible.

The Proximity of Other Skins

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Existing Frames ◽  
The Voice

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.

scholarly journals Environmental justice, settler colonialism, and more-than-humans in the occupied West Bank: An introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Irus Braverman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
West Bank ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The West ◽  
The Core ◽  
Waste Concrete

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in the West Bank, challenging the all-too-binary assumptions at the core of settler colonialism. Against the backdrop of the settler colonial project of territorial dispossession and elimination, we illuminate the infrastructural connections and disruptions among lives and matter in the West Bank, interpreting these through the lens of environmental justice. We finally ask what forms of ecological decolonization might emerge from this landscape of accumulating waste, concrete, and ruin. Such alternative visions that move beyond the single axis of settler-native enable the emergence of more nuanced, and even hopeful, ecological imaginaries that focus on sumud, dignity, and recognition.

scholarly journals EPIDEMIOLOGY OF PEDIATRIC CARTILAGE RESTORATION PROCEDURES IN THE UNITED STATES: INSURANCE AND GEOGRAPHY PLAY A ROLE

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4_suppl3) ◽  
pp. 2325967120S0024
Author(s):  
Tyler B. Hall ◽  
Max J. Hyman ◽  
Neeraj M. Patel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Private Insurance ◽  
Univariate Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Database ◽  
The West ◽  
Cartilage Restoration ◽  
Common Diagnosis

Background: A number of surgical options are available for sizeable articular cartilage lesions of the knee. These include osteochondral autograft (OAU) or allograft (OAL) transfer, or autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI). In the pediatric population, there is little data on the patients undergoing these procedures or evidence to support one technique over another, which may lead to variation in preferred practice. Hypothesis/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the epidemiology of children and adolescents undergoing OAU, OAL, and ACI in the United States, with attention to variation along the lines of demographic and geographic factors. Methods: The Pediatric Health Information System, a national database consisting of 49 children’s hospitals, was queried for all patients undergoing OAU, OAL, and ACI between 2012 and 2018. Demographic information was collected for each subject. United States Census guidelines were used to categorize hospitals geographically into regions. Univariate analysis was followed by purposeful entry multivariate regression to adjust for confounding factors. Results: A total of 809 subjects with a mean age of 15.4±2.4 years were included in the analysis. Of these, 393 (48.6%) underwent OAL, 339 (41.9%) underwent OAU, and 77 (9.5%) underwent ACI. The most common diagnosis at the time of surgery was osteochondritis dissecans in 360 patients (44.5%) followed by an associated cruciate ligament injury in 126 (15.6%) and patellar instability in 98 (12.1%). After adjusting for confounders in a multivariate model, ACI was more 3.4 times more likely to be performed in patients with private insurance than those that were publicly insured (95% CI 1.5-7.5, p=0.002). Furthermore, a patient in this Northeast was 29.3 times more likely to undergo ACI than in the West (95% CI 4.0-217.4, p=0.001). OAU was performed most frequently in the West and Midwest (52.4% and 51.8% of the time, respectively; p<0.001). Univariate analysis also revealed differences along the lines of race, but these findings did not maintain statistical significance in multivariate analysis. Conclusion: In the United States, there is substantial variation in the procedures performed for cartilage restoration in children and adolescents. Though ACI is the least commonly selected operation overall, it is significantly more likely to be performed on patients with private insurance and those in the Northeast. OAU is the most commonly performed procedure in the West and Midwest.

Morality and U.S. Foreign Policy

Worldview ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 13-23
Author(s):  
Charles Frankel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
American Continent ◽  
Economic Support

The United States was never an isolationist country except in a Pickwickian sense of the term. It went through no period of excluding the outside world, as the Japanese did for two hundred years. On the contrary, the United States, in consequence of its openness to immigration, linked itself, between 1790 and 1920, ever more closely by ties of culture and blood to the various countries of Europe. It engaged in trade with them, allowed and invited their economic support in the task of settling and exploiting the American continent, and sent its upper-class children and its best writers, artists, and scientists on mandatory tours of Europe for the good of their souls. Culturally, ethnically, in its historical affinities, the United States has been perhaps the least isolated of nations.

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