Anthropology of Los Angeles: Place and Agency in an Urban Setting

by Maryann Aguirre (Contribution by), Beth F. Baker (Contribution by), Jenny Banh (Contribution by), Nathalie Boucher (Contribution by), Charles Joseph (Contribution by)

Overview

The Anthropology of Los Angeles: Place and Agency in an Urban Setting questions the production and representations of L.A. by revealing the gray spaces between the real and imagined city. Contributors to this urban ethnography document hidden histories that connect daily actors within cultural systems to global social formations. This diverse collection is recommended for scholars of anthropology, history, sociology, race studies, gender studies, food studies, Latin American studies, and Asian studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498528559
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/11/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Jenny Banh is assistant professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at California State University, Fresno.

Melissa King is faculty chair of the anthropology department at San Bernardino Valley College.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Yolanda T. Moses

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Melissa King with Jenny Banh

Chapter 1 Hauntings of a Different Kind: Militarized Spaces and Memories of Containment
Jocelyn Pacleb

Chapter 2 Bicycle Anthropology of Los Angeles
Adonia Lugo, Allison Mattheis, with Maryann Aguirre


Chapter 3 The People in Los Angeles Public Spaces Are Not Dead: Micro-Sociability in the Squares, Plazas, and Parks of the Post-Modern Global City
Nathalie Boucher

Chapter 4 Embodying Democratic Spaces: Community Organizer Alternative Narratives That Challenge the Mainstream Negative Stigma of South Los Angeles
George Villanueva

Chapter 5 Analysis of Latino-Korean Relations in the Workplace: Latino Perspectives in the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest
Kyeyoung Park

Chapter 6 Memory: The Angeleno Pharmakon
Charles Joseph

Chapter 7 Multiple Ways of Knowing: Layers of History on The Great Wall of Los Angeles
Andrea Lepage

Chapter 8 Making Space: Ethnic Towns and the Racing of Public Space in Los Angeles
Beth F. Baker and ChorSwang Ngin


Chapter 9 Agro-Ethnic Landscapes of Los Angeles
Natale Zappia

Chapter 10 A Conversation with Diego Vigil a Los Angeles Pioneer Anthropologist: An Anthropologist
Past, Present, and Future
Jenny Banh

Conclusion
Jenny Banh

Editorial Reviews

This important collection on Los Angeles exposes the formation of contradictions in the fabric of society, the diversity of communities, and the ongoing struggles to overcome the myriad dimensions of the inequalities that exist today.

Thomas Patterson

Banh and King’s anthology is a timely and multifaceted addition to Los Angeles studies and urban anthropology. Reminiscent of editors Raúl Villa and George Sánchez’s Los Angeles and the Future of Urban Cultures (2005), the book focuses on contestations of power and space through public culture, agency, and memory. Threads of activism and intersecting identities run throughout the chapters, which range from the aftermath of the 1992 LA uprisings to the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, urban agriculture, and models of community organizing. The book’s methodological emphasis on ground-up ethnography (including autoethnography) is one of its greatest strengths, along with interventions into scholarship of the city that has largely drawn from archives, interviews, or literary works.... [T]his is a useful volume for students and scholars of postmodern urban landscapes, as well as practitioners seeking an introduction to the heterogeneity of Los Angeles. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

Choice

This book is a must-read in the growing body of literature on postmodern Los Angeles. It offers a broad range of Angeleno experiences that challenge urban anthropology's canon with scholarship that centers on the people, and that intersects with the studies of ethnic landscapes of race, class, and gender.

Herbert G. Ruffin II

Banh and King’s anthology is a timely and multifaceted addition to Los Angeles studies and urban anthropology. Reminiscent of editors Raúl Villa and George Sánchez’s Los Angeles and the Future of Urban Cultures (2005), the book focuses on contestations of power and space through public culture, agency, and memory. Threads of activism and intersecting identities run throughout the chapters, which range from the aftermath of the 1992 LA uprisings to the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, urban agriculture, and models of community organizing. The book’s methodological emphasis on ground-up ethnography (including autoethnography) is one of its greatest strengths, along with interventions into scholarship of the city that has largely drawn from archives, interviews, or literary works.... [T]his is a useful volume for students and scholars of postmodern urban landscapes, as well as practitioners seeking an introduction to the heterogeneity of Los Angeles. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

Choice Reviews

Banh and King’s anthology is a timely and multifaceted addition to Los Angeles studies and urban anthropology. Reminiscent of editors Raúl Villa and George Sánchez’s Los Angeles and the Future of Urban Cultures (2005), the book focuses on contestations of power and space through public culture, agency, and memory. Threads of activism and intersecting identities run throughout the chapters, which range from the aftermath of the 1992 LA uprisings to the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, urban agriculture, and models of community organizing. The book’s methodological emphasis on ground-up ethnography (including autoethnography) is one of its greatest strengths, along with interventions into scholarship of the city that has largely drawn from archives, interviews, or literary works.... [T]his is a useful volume for students and scholars of postmodern urban landscapes, as well as practitioners seeking an introduction to the heterogeneity of Los Angeles. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.

CHOICE