Robert Lemon
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042454
- eISBN:
- 9780252051296
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042454.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
When primarily immigrant, day-laboring clientele eat a meal at a traditional taco truck, the taco truck becomes a significant social space in which Mexican cultural identity is reaffirmed. But the ...
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When primarily immigrant, day-laboring clientele eat a meal at a traditional taco truck, the taco truck becomes a significant social space in which Mexican cultural identity is reaffirmed. But the traditional taco truck is also a politically charged symbolic space that can spark heated debates about Latino culture and the uses of street spaces in cities. This book uses the taco truck as a vehicle to tell a story about the Mexican American experience and identity and deconstructs the myriad meanings taco trucks represent to diverse community groups and how such meanings influence urban politics and the built environment. The traditional taco truck is a powerfully transformative feature of the American landscape because the trucks’ social spaces intersect with complex geographic processes of immigration, class, ethnicity, gentrification, commodification, food-ways, and the right to public space. Thus the book is also about power, privilege, and the political economy of cities and the novel ways marginalized Mexican immigrants take and remake urban space through their food practices. Through investigating taco trucks in various U.S. metropolises, this book elucidates the ways neoliberal cities work and how Mexican immigrants claim their right to the city.Less
When primarily immigrant, day-laboring clientele eat a meal at a traditional taco truck, the taco truck becomes a significant social space in which Mexican cultural identity is reaffirmed. But the traditional taco truck is also a politically charged symbolic space that can spark heated debates about Latino culture and the uses of street spaces in cities. This book uses the taco truck as a vehicle to tell a story about the Mexican American experience and identity and deconstructs the myriad meanings taco trucks represent to diverse community groups and how such meanings influence urban politics and the built environment. The traditional taco truck is a powerfully transformative feature of the American landscape because the trucks’ social spaces intersect with complex geographic processes of immigration, class, ethnicity, gentrification, commodification, food-ways, and the right to public space. Thus the book is also about power, privilege, and the political economy of cities and the novel ways marginalized Mexican immigrants take and remake urban space through their food practices. Through investigating taco trucks in various U.S. metropolises, this book elucidates the ways neoliberal cities work and how Mexican immigrants claim their right to the city.
Mitchum Huehls
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190456221
- eISBN:
- 9780190456245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190456221.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Chapter two reads two novels about Los Angeles—Karen Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and Helena Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with Them—in the context of the vexed relationship between public and private ...
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Chapter two reads two novels about Los Angeles—Karen Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and Helena Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with Them—in the context of the vexed relationship between public and private space under neoliberalism. Refusing to critique privatization with the rhetoric of public space, both authors develop new ways to generate meaning and value in and out of the neoliberal city by imagining urban development as a complex mixture of public and private values. With Yamashita’s turn to networked maps that shift in time and Viramontes’s fixation on an assortment of unassuming objects that suture together the space of the city, this chapter identifies alternative modes of value production that supersede the ideological divide between public and private that drives neoliberalism’s treatment of urban space.Less
Chapter two reads two novels about Los Angeles—Karen Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and Helena Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came with Them—in the context of the vexed relationship between public and private space under neoliberalism. Refusing to critique privatization with the rhetoric of public space, both authors develop new ways to generate meaning and value in and out of the neoliberal city by imagining urban development as a complex mixture of public and private values. With Yamashita’s turn to networked maps that shift in time and Viramontes’s fixation on an assortment of unassuming objects that suture together the space of the city, this chapter identifies alternative modes of value production that supersede the ideological divide between public and private that drives neoliberalism’s treatment of urban space.
Gordon C.C. Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190691332
- eISBN:
- 9780190691349
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190691332.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Chapter 3 demonstrates that DIY urban designers are largely motivated by failings they perceive in urban policy and planning. Placing them in this context is essential for interpreting the ...
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Chapter 3 demonstrates that DIY urban designers are largely motivated by failings they perceive in urban policy and planning. Placing them in this context is essential for interpreting the phenomenon. While do-it-yourselfers respond to the problems they see in creative ways, their individualistic tactics of doing so introduce problems of their own. The chapter focuses on bus stops to consider the lack of sidewalk seating in many cities, the privatization of street furniture, and concerns with local service provision. In trying to correct problems they see, do-it-yourselfers always impart their own personal and cultural values, and some DIY alterations can be selfish and anti-social in impact. The chapter interrogates DIY urbanism in the context of the “neoliberalized” city, arguing that even as the practices aim to counter the ill effects of market-driven planning, they can also reinforce an individualistic, undemocratic logic in placemaking.Less
Chapter 3 demonstrates that DIY urban designers are largely motivated by failings they perceive in urban policy and planning. Placing them in this context is essential for interpreting the phenomenon. While do-it-yourselfers respond to the problems they see in creative ways, their individualistic tactics of doing so introduce problems of their own. The chapter focuses on bus stops to consider the lack of sidewalk seating in many cities, the privatization of street furniture, and concerns with local service provision. In trying to correct problems they see, do-it-yourselfers always impart their own personal and cultural values, and some DIY alterations can be selfish and anti-social in impact. The chapter interrogates DIY urbanism in the context of the “neoliberalized” city, arguing that even as the practices aim to counter the ill effects of market-driven planning, they can also reinforce an individualistic, undemocratic logic in placemaking.
Robert Lemon
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042454
- eISBN:
- 9780252051296
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042454.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
The conclusion summarizes the chapters in the book through comparing and contrasting how taco truck owners employ their mobility to navigate culturally and politically distinct urban environments. It ...
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The conclusion summarizes the chapters in the book through comparing and contrasting how taco truck owners employ their mobility to navigate culturally and politically distinct urban environments. It addresses the ways in which taco trucks alter streetscapes through geographic concepts of the street and the economic flows of the capitalist city. Additionally, the chapter assesses issues of gentrification and the commodification of immigrant food-ways, as well as the way in which taste preferences transform the built environment. It demonstrates that by examining taco trucks, we can see that our ordinary landscapes and our humdrum, everyday routines are actually quite remarkable. Overall, the conclusion argues that taco trucks are prominent features of the American cultural landscape because they profoundly transform as well as reflect the ways neoliberal cities work.Less
The conclusion summarizes the chapters in the book through comparing and contrasting how taco truck owners employ their mobility to navigate culturally and politically distinct urban environments. It addresses the ways in which taco trucks alter streetscapes through geographic concepts of the street and the economic flows of the capitalist city. Additionally, the chapter assesses issues of gentrification and the commodification of immigrant food-ways, as well as the way in which taste preferences transform the built environment. It demonstrates that by examining taco trucks, we can see that our ordinary landscapes and our humdrum, everyday routines are actually quite remarkable. Overall, the conclusion argues that taco trucks are prominent features of the American cultural landscape because they profoundly transform as well as reflect the ways neoliberal cities work.
Rebecca J. Kinney
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816697564
- eISBN:
- 9781452955162
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816697564.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Beautiful Wasteland critically examines the racial logics embedded in the contemporary stories of Detroit that flow through popular culture, from Internet forums, photography, films, advertising, to ...
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Beautiful Wasteland critically examines the racial logics embedded in the contemporary stories of Detroit that flow through popular culture, from Internet forums, photography, films, advertising, to news medias, in order to map the extension of the mythology of the frontier in American culture. Through analysing the cross-sections of these cultural locations, the book reveals the continued process of racialization in stories told about the rise, fall, and potential rise again of the city of Detroit. Detroit is indeed a ‘beautiful wasteland’, desirable and distressed in its narrative of ruin. The book is primarily a humanities-based audience. However, it is also interdisciplinary in focus in terms of theoretical and methodological intervention, as the study of the circulation of narratives is always in conversation with other ideas and discourses.Less
Beautiful Wasteland critically examines the racial logics embedded in the contemporary stories of Detroit that flow through popular culture, from Internet forums, photography, films, advertising, to news medias, in order to map the extension of the mythology of the frontier in American culture. Through analysing the cross-sections of these cultural locations, the book reveals the continued process of racialization in stories told about the rise, fall, and potential rise again of the city of Detroit. Detroit is indeed a ‘beautiful wasteland’, desirable and distressed in its narrative of ruin. The book is primarily a humanities-based audience. However, it is also interdisciplinary in focus in terms of theoretical and methodological intervention, as the study of the circulation of narratives is always in conversation with other ideas and discourses.
