Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 253-268
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civic Action ◽  
Social Advocacy ◽  
New Policies

This concluding chapter presents the practical findings on coalitions and social advocacy. It argues that civic action is not intrinsically good or bad, polite or risky, enlightened or reactive, humane or hateful. Neither is it necessarily a substitute for governmental action; in the United States, growth in civic action has accompanied growth in governmental initiatives. Civic action comes with no guarantees. Los Angeles housing advocates fought for more power over decisions about housing made, or allowed, by local government and private developers. When governments institute new policies to address social problems, such as through affordable housing mandates, it is often because of the pressure of civic action. Yet civic action is not necessarily always “progressive.” Sometimes people engage collective problem-solving with the goal of reducing citizen steering power.

Placing and Studying the Action

2020 ◽  
pp. 38-58
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing Affordability ◽  
Housing Conditions ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Civic Action ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Big Picture

This chapter examines the fight for housing affordability, which is just one instance of civic action. Advocates across the coalitions and organizations in this study talked about housing “affordability” as one of their primary concerns, and often the biggest one. When they said housing in Los Angeles was unaffordable and there was a “housing crisis,” they usually meant housing was too expensive for many ordinary Angelenos or frequently unavailable at an affordable price. Using the same language of affordability, it makes sense to ask about the big picture. Is housing unaffordability usually temporary or chronic? Does it result from deep, institutional processes or contingencies relatively easy to alter? Does it affect only particular kinds of people or places? It makes sense to ask about this study's locale too. What might make housing conditions and problems in Los Angeles distinctive, or characteristic of life in the United States, or global, or maybe all three? The chapter provides a brief sketch of crucial contexts that affect the affordability of housing and make it potentially a problem.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Civic Action ◽  
Social Advocacy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter provides an overview of social advocacy groups. Social advocates turn conditions into social problems. They craft compelling claims about the problems, and build campaigns to solve them. How do social advocates make the claims and sustain the relationships of collective problem-solving? A lot of research has conceived of social advocacy groups as savvy operators carrying out these tasks strategically. The book shows that as advocates strategize, they are embedded in cultural and social contexts every step of the way. These contexts shape advocates' notions of what counts as savvy — and in which situations — what counts as a win, and how to get there. Solving social problems, in other words, depends a lot on how advocates pursue the solutions, not just what their solutions are. There are distinct ways to be strategic, with different trade-offs. Ultimately, the book demonstrates how civic action works.

Who Can Say What, Where, and How?

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-197
Author(s):  
Paul Lichterman
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Civic Action ◽  
South Los Angeles ◽  
Field Works ◽  
Discursive Field ◽  
Crucial Part

This chapter studies how advocates “construct” social problems through claims making. Claims are demands, criticisms, or declarative statements that actors make in relation to public debate. By definition then, claims makers publicize problems for collective problem-solving. Claims making is thus a crucial part of civic action. Claims making happens in the context of not only a style of interaction but also a set of conventional categories for making claims. A discursive field provides those basic symbolic categories that advocates on multiple sides use to make claims about a problem. Scene style keeps some ways of talking about social problems outside the discursive field altogether, and relegates others to marginal enclaves or subordinate status inside the field. Following the action of claims making in the Tenants of South Los Angeles and Housing Justice coalitions, one can learn how a discursive field works.

The “Japanese Turn” in Fine Dining in the United States, 1980–2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Yamashita
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Further Training ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Wide Acceptance

In the 1970s, Japanese cooks began to appear in the kitchens of nouvelle cuisine chefs in France for further training, with scores more arriving in the next decades. Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Joël Robuchon, and other leading French chefs started visiting Japan to teach, cook, and sample Japanese cuisine, and ten of them eventually opened restaurants there. In the 1980s and 1990s, these chefs' frequent visits to Japan and the steady flow of Japanese stagiaires to French restaurants in Europe and the United States encouraged a series of changes that I am calling the “Japanese turn,” which found chefs at fine-dining establishments in Los Angeles, New York City, and later the San Francisco Bay Area using an ever-widening array of Japanese ingredients, employing Japanese culinary techniques, and adding Japanese dishes to their menus. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the wide acceptance of not only Japanese ingredients and techniques but also concepts like umami (savory tastiness) and shun (seasonality) suggest that Japanese cuisine is now well known to many American chefs.

A Comprehensive Review of the Evolution of Accounting Standards for State and Local Government Pensions and Other Postemployment Benefits in The United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
Dale L. Flesher ◽  
Craig Foltin ◽  
Gary John Previts ◽  
Mary S. Stone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Accounting Standards ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pension Funds ◽  
Defined Benefit ◽  
Defined Contribution ◽  
Defined Contribution Plans ◽  
State And Local Government ◽  
State And Local

ABSTRACT Both the business media and the popular press have emphasized the underfunding problems associated with pension funds that are set aside for state and local government workers, a group that also includes teachers and professors at state-affiliated colleges and universities. The realization that pension funds are typically underfunded stems from the fact that the accounting standards associated with state and local government employee pension funds have led to greater transparency since 2011. This paper examines, explains, and interprets the historical development over the last 70 years of accounting standards for state and local government pension funds in the United States. Changing accounting standards, along with economic and social change, have led to consequences such as employers transforming their pension programs to avoid substantial costs and significant liabilities, for example by changing from defined benefit to defined contribution plans.

Forging Aztecness: Twentieth-Century Mexican Musical Nationalism in Twenty-First Century Los Angeles

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
KRISTINA F. NIELSEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Siglo Xx

Abstract (Spanish/English)Forjando el Aztecanismo: Nacionalismo Musical Mexicano del Siglo XX en el siglo XXI en Los ÁngelesHoy en día, un creciente número de músicos mexico-americanos en los Estados Unidos tocan instrumentos indígenas mesoamericanos y réplicas arqueológicas, lo que se conoce como “Música Azteca.” En este artículo, doy a conocer cómo los músicos contemporáneos de Los Ángeles, California, recurren a los legados de la investigación musical nacionalista mexicana e integran modelos antropológicos y arqueológicos aplicados. Al combinar el trabajo de campo etnográfico con el análisis histórico, sugiero que los marcos musicales y culturales que alguna vez sirvieron para unir al México pos-revolucionario han adquirido una nuevo significado para contrarrestar la desaparición del legado indígena mexicano en los Estados Unidos.Today a growing number of Mexican-American musicians in the United States perform on Indigenous Mesoamerican instruments and archaeological replicas in what is widely referred to as “Aztec music.” In this article, I explore how contemporary musicians in Los Angeles, California, draw on legacies of Mexican nationalist music research and integrate applied anthropological and archeological models. Pairing ethnographic fieldwork with historical analysis, I suggest that musical and cultural frameworks that once served to unite post-revolutionary Mexico have gained new significance in countering Mexican Indigenous erasure in the United States.

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