Search Results

This chapter examines how and why the availability of choice matters for an aspirant moral community. Part One rehearses the contrast drawn in the previous chapter between a regime of total control (the West Coast) and a standard criminal justice regime (the East Coast). Part Two considers the temptation to move some way to the West, to make use of regulating technologies. Part Three considers a revised contrast in which the West Coast model is compared not with the typically ineffective East Coast model, but an East Coast community that fulfils the chaplain's aspirations, citizens doing the right thing for the right reason. The chapter then raises the question of whether the chaplain's view is compatible, first, with an East Coast commitment to human rights and individual freedom — a commitment that rejects the kind of cultural conservatism that is often articulated in the name of respect for human dignity — and, secondly, with scientific developments that cast doubt on the very idea of anyone having a ‘real choice’.

This chapter draws a contrast between two ideal-typical forms of regulation: the East Coast and the West Coast. It sketches a particular type of West Coast approach, ‘techno-regulation’. The chapter begins by discussing the nature of techno-regulation. It considers the objection that techno-regulation, even if it makes for safer societies, fails to respect the values of good governance, especially the values of transparency and accountability. It then turns to the deep objection that techno-regulation — by undermining notions of respect and responsibility — is corrosive of the conditions of moral community.

The story of Jelly Roll Morton's odyssey is set against the historical backdrop of the Great Migration. He did not simply get on the bandstand and play music. Instead, he was often responsible for staging a floor show with dancers, singers, comedians, and the like. His relationship with the Spikes brothers seems to have been a combination of friendly rivalry and business partnership. His notorious temperament may have cost him some work. It is believed that playing the part of Morton's wife must have been very stressful. The year 1919 marks the point when Spikes turned decisively to music as business. Several of Morton's compositions were attributed to Spikes-Morton-Spikes. The thematic material of “Dead Man Blues” provides some clues to “London Blues.” Jelly's West Coast years mark a crucial period of transition in his life and work.

This chapter examines how the resettlement of West Coast Japanese Americans in the Midwest and Northeast after internment irrevocably transformed the population of Japanese Chicagoans. As both Allan Austin and Gary Okihiro have demonstrated, many young Nisei managed to leave the camps earlier than expected by filing education waivers. They matriculated predominantly at midwestern and East Coast schools, and some of their campmates were recruited for Japanese-language immersion at the Military Intelligence Service Language School, based at Camp Savage, Minnesota. Yet residual delinquency among Nisei bachelors and the lack of children's playgrounds still made the North Side area less than appealing to Nisei families; hence, another critical mass of Japanese Americans congregated on the South Side.

This chapter presents the text of Isabel Morse Jones article titled Gershwin Analyzes Science of Rhythm, which was published in the February 7, 1937, issue of the Los Angeles Times. Jones' article reportz on Gershwin's decision to settle on the West Coast in August 1936. He made a number of friends because of insatiable desire to learn new things. During this time, Gershwin also recognized the new phase of jazz called swing.

This chapter takes a look at jazz on the West Coast. It reveals the efforts to resurrect the spirited music that slowly disappeared during the swing era in different parts of the United States, Australia, and Europe. The most enthusiastic revival activity occurred in the West Coast, and was led by several independent record firms. The chapter describes Los Angeles during the swing era and recalls the Palomar Ballroom Fire of October 2, 1939. Several notable jazz musicians during this time are introduced, including Benny Strickler and Dave Dexter, Jr.

This study examines how orthodox narratives of Japanese American experience in popular and academic discourse have contributed to the skewed way in which the membership of Japanese America has been defined and its boundaries cemented since the 1910s. That process entails glorification and demonization of certain types of Japanese Americans as well as exclusion of other individuals from the race history. Based on the accumulated effects of such discursive contrivances, the established notions of community, identity, history, and indeed race in contemporary Japanese America have affirmed and even encouraged the marginalization of anomalous historical agents—like Kibei—while rendering others—like postwar immigrants—as perpetual co-ethnic foreigners.

This chapter examines the haunting autobiography of Art Pepper, one of the leading jazz saxophonists of the postwar period, reading it against recent work on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue and West Coast jazz, more generally. Pepper’s account of his experiences with Black music and culture reprises some of the central themes of this study, including a white jazzman’s early recognition of the Black roots of jazz, his desire to belong to that world, and the euphoria and limitations of jazz interracialism. As the only autobiography in this book coauthored by a woman, Straight Life opens pathways for considering women’s resistance to the misogyny and rigid gendering that has dominated jazz culture. Laurie Pepper’s account of her central role during her husband’s final decade illuminates the authority and influence of a jazzwoman in a study of texts in which women’s voices are generally on the periphery or absent entirely.

On the Pacific Coast, the transition from boundary survey to day-to-day control took half a century. Canadian and American dependence on Indigenous labor limited the restrictions they could implement. By the mid-1880s, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of settlers shifted the balance of power. Both governments drove the Coast Salish out of the work force and imposed a new geographic order on top of existing Indigenous ones. At the same time, Chinese immigration drove grassroots pressure to reform federal border controls. In the wake of riots, protest, and vigilante justice, the United States passed Chinese Exclusion Acts in 1882 and 1888 and Canada developed a head tax.

In the post–World War II years, jazz started to split off into many different directions, spurring a fragmentation that expanded the creative range of the idiom but caused long-lasting divisions among artists and fans (the so-called jazz wars). The first fault lines emerged between traditional and modern jazz exponents, but during the 1950s and early 1960s, many different styles emerged—including cool jazz, hard bop, soul jazz, West Coast jazz, modal jazz, Third Stream jazz, and various experimental approaches. This chapter traces these stylistic developments, and their leading exponents. It looks at the life and work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, and Bill Evans, among other major jazz stars of the era, and assesses key albums such as Kind of Blue, Mingus Ah Um, and Giant Steps.

This chapter explores the development of sports capitalism in the transpacific cultural zone and probes the actions and motivations of various historical agents who promoted or resisted it. It pays particular attention to American semipro and professional baseball squads' venturing out of the U.S West Coast to Hawaii, Japan, and its imperial outposts. The first American baseball professionals to hit the shores of Japan were the Reach All-Americans. The Reach All-Americans 1908 Oriental Tour aimed to extend the gospel of American baseball farther and wider, particularly in America's newly acquired colonial territory, the Philippines.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, La Guardia and Eleanor Roosevelt visited the West Coast. Part fact-finding mission, part-morale raising tour, their visit failed to quell the rising fears that more attacks were coming and that the nation was virtually defenseless. As the face of home defense, La Guardia came under fire for his hysterical oratory, his confused messages, and his inflammatory admonishments that civilians had better follow his prescriptions—or else risk death. La Guardia—even though he was not explicitly faulted for letting down the Navy’s guard—became swept up in the sense that home defense had failed to meet its acid test and that Americans had died in an attack the government had failed to anticipate. His tour of the West Coast, as his city experienced chaos, revived the charge that nobody could serve as mayor and home defense chief simultaneously.

During the Progressive Period, there was nationwide deliberation over minimum wage. The Supreme Court ruled against providing a minimum wage in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital in 1923, sparking a debate as to what constituted a minimum wage, especially for women. This chapter discusses the various forms of attack the debaters used to argue for or against the wage, along with the impact of their rhetoric on women. Fourteen years after Adkins, the Court reversed their decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, declaring minimum wage constitutional, even as gender differences in pay were the norm.

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) is a prominent center of herpetological research in the United States. It is located on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Department of Zoology was officially established in 1887, and in 1891, William E. Ritter joined Joseph Le Conte and became the first formal Instructor in Zoology. The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology was established in 1908 by the Regents of the University and President Benjamin Ide Wheeler. The force behind the establishment of the MVZ was a remarkable young naturalist, Annie M. Alexander, who invented the museum and personally selected its first director, Joseph Grinnell. Alexander personally paid the salaries and expenses of the MVZ and the university provided housing and maintenance of its location. The plan Grinnel and Alexander devised for the museum focused on mammals, birds, and reptiles of the West Coast.

This chapter discusses the popularity of the ʻukulele and the new Hawaiian music in the West Coast. Because of its proximity to the Islands and because of San Francisco's historic role as the chief port of the Pacific seaboard, California had long been Hawaii's principal point of contact with the mainland. It was the residents of “Kaleponi” who provided the first enthusiastic audiences for the ʻukulele and its music. Indeed, Hawaiian musicians covered the entire West Coast during the first decade of the new century. California, after all, was the scene of the first documented hula performance on the mainland and of the first mainland appearance of a professional hula troupe.

The chapter examines various damages caused to the NFL and the resignation of Pete Rozelle in 1989. It discusses Bill Walsh's West Coast Offense which revolutionized defensive play. The media played a crucial role in increasing the popularity of the Super Bowl. But the performance of the NFL eventually dipped. Stained labor relations added to the struggle of the NFL. The structural breakdown of the NFL, arrests, and drug offenses contributed to the troubled situation. The chapter presents some legal views on violations of the antitrust law by the Rozelle Rule.

This chapter focuses on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, where West Coast eugenics initially coalesced under the aegis of the Race Betterment Foundation. It describes the context in which advocates of race betterment from across the country united in the cosmopolitan city of San Francisco to articulate a vision of human improvement for the twentieth century. One of the striking features of this race betterment project is the extent to which it was shaped by colonial medicine, particularly tropical medicine as implemented in the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Panama Canal. Moreover, the racial imperatives behind colonial medicine—as well as concepts and practices such as quarantine and prophylaxis—not only informed eugenics, it also became entwined in the American public health mentality.

This chapter discusses the music and community organizing of the Filipino American hip hop movement on the West Coast. Through in-depth interviews with members of the rap group Power Struggle, as well as close readings of Filipino rap songs dating back to the Bush administration, the chapter explores the dynamics of political consciousness in underground hip hop leading up to and during Obama’s presidency. According to the members of Power Struggle, Obama has continued to abuse and exploit working people across the globe and is pursuing the same “imperialist agenda” as his Republican predecessors. The chapter finds that in order to maintain their radical politics, the members of Power Struggle travel to the Philippines and work with Filipino Studies departments and organizations on American campuses. The lack of progress under Obama has solidified their belief that change comes from grassroots and global hip hop activism, not national electoral politics.

This chapter focuses on the musical style of TopNotch the Villain, a hip-hop artist from the Mississippi Delta. It explains that TopNotch’s freestyle technique reveals the rhythms of blues music, the complexity of poetry, and the song-like phrasing of the West-Coast G-Funk hip-hop collective. The chapter also mentions that the art and aesthetics that shape TopNotch’s verbal style are the result of many years of talking lessons in the church house, at home, in the schoolyard, and over the radio waves.

This chapter details the story of two American smugglers—Chris Delance and Michael Deeds—who were unfortunate enough to be caught by the Khmer Rouge. For pot smugglers who regularly took their loads out into the Gulf of Thailand, capture by the Khmer Rouge meant certain death. Unlike the smugglers detained by the Vietnamese who were discussed in the previous chapter, Deeds and Delance did not survive their incarceration. In addition, this chapter also discusses the dangers of piracy in marijuana smuggling operations. By the late 1970s, pirates had posed enough of a threat that a handful of scammers had begun to arm themselves and fight back. Regardless of the risks, more and larger loads of Thai marijuana were finding their way to the West Coast of the United States because the rewards were so great.