Albert S. Fu

Glorified Fantasies and Masterpieces of Deception on Importing Las Vegas into the ‘New South Africa’

With the end of apartheid, Johannesburg and other South African cities are now part of a new global race to become ‘world-class’ tourist and business centers. At the center of this development is the importation of Vegas-style spectacle by local entrepreneurs, firms and other city boosters who create fantasyscapes such as the Emperors Palace and GrandWest. Financed and run by South African impresarios — whose luxurious empires transcend the continent — these resorts represent not only the globalization of gaming but the way in which South African cities see themselves within the worldwide urban hierarchy. As such, this article seeks to untangle the global and local aspects of importing fantasy into the ‘new South Africa’.

The Façade of Safety in California's Shelter-In-Place Homes: History, Wildfire and Social Consequence

This article examines the seemingly incongruous ways in which Shelter-in-Place (SIP) practices have been sold, deployed, and discussed in Southern California to battle wildfire. In particular, this will be a critique of the technical literature and application of fire safety in housing, as well as the anthropocentric hubris that humans can outsmart wildfire. Rather than focus on the success or failure of SIP, I am situating the SIP within the context of architecture, the history of fire safety, and the push of neoliberalism. The purpose of this approach is to make SIP and fire safe home design less about technology and know-how, and more about broader social issues such as privatization and social inequality.

Cinema and the edgy city: Johannesburg, carjacking, and the postmetropolis

Oliver Schmitzs Hijack Stories (2000) is a story of cross‐over cultures and mixed genres set in Johannesburg. In this blurring of boundaries, he presents us an interplay between the dangerous city of both fact and fiction. Schmitzs cinematic depiction of the city, weaves in and out, as well as to and from yuppie neighbourhoods and Soweto. Thus, we see how post‐apartheid Johannesburg is a place of hybrid identities not only in the different spaces of the city, but through the influence of global hip‐hop cultures, as well as the real and imagined perceptions of the citys ‘citizens’. This paper examines the way in which Schmitzs film intersects these relationships in this edgy city.

Neoliberalism, logistics and the treadmill of production in metropolitan waste management: A case of Turkish firms

This paper examines the domestic growth and overseas expansion of Turkish firms as part of the treadmill of production. The treadmill of production is an environmental and political-economy approach to society’s insatiable hunger for material goods. In this approach, economic growth leads to withdrawals of natural resources, and the addition of waste to the environment that stresses both nature and society. Drawing on the treadmill of production approach, I argue that logistical service providers are a coping and modernisation mechanism for accelerated urban growth and economic expansion. This process is visible in the expansion of privatised waste management, and even more so in rapidly urbanising regions where growth and modernisation are of great importance to policy-makers. Owing to the importance of growth and expansion, logistics firms in newly industrialised countries, like their counterparts in the Global North, increasingly export logistical services overseas. This, in turn, accelerates the treadmill of production internationally. As such, this paper will also look at the expansion of Turkish firms into Pakistan.

Politics of Urban Development and Wildfires in California and Turkey

While Turkey and California suffer similar wildfire risks, they have developed diametrically opposed fire-suppression strategies: the former adopted an increasingly centralized strategy, while the latter depends upon a highly decentralized system. This paper is a comparative analysis that relates the politics of land use in wildland–urban interfaces (WUIs) to this divergence in firefighting strategies. Our argument is that the evolution of the divergent fire-suppression strategies in California and Turkey are linked to two different types of rent-seeking behavior. Developers and landed interest seek absolute rent in Turkey and differential rent in California. The decentralized strategy in California allows property prices to be distinguished between areas of low and high protection, and commodifies safety as a form of investment regulating the market prices of land. In Turkey, the tendency toward centralization of firefighting is a part of the composite political strategy to open new land for development by completing the hitherto unfinished cadastral records of the WUIs. Thus, the centralized firefighting strategy leads indirectly to extensive commodification of the WUIs in Turkey and expands the national land market.

Connecting urban and environmental catastrophe: linking natural disaster, the built environment, and capitalism

Outside of warfare, natural disaster represents the greatest challenge to the physical nature of cities. This is due to the relative fixity of cities, in which they are bound by particular historical and environmental conditions. Sociologists in the fields of disaster, environmental, and urban studies have addressed the social and political components of natural disaster, and its consequences for urban populations. However, despite the growth of work in this area, there are gaps between the varied sub-disciplinary approaches to urban disaster. To bridge these gaps, this paper examines the relationship between disaster, built environment, and capitalism in modern cities. In turn, this paper offers concepts for analysing how cities have lived with natural disaster – an environmental bad – and how such catastrophes have contributed to urban development.

Shared intelligence: American painting and the photograph

The relationship between craft and contemporary art is complex, constantly evolving and often contentious. Maria Elena Buszek brings together 17 scholars, curators, critics, artists and writers in this engaging anthology that contextualises craft tracing it from its historical roots and its evolving and constantly changing relationship to fine art through the current interest in craft cultures and movements including DIY and craftivism.

Materializing Spanish-Colonial Revival Architecture

ABSTRACT In the early twentieth century, Spanish-Colonial Revival became embedded in the local culture of Southern California. However, this architectural style did not simply appear, rather it was materialized by architects, builders, realtors, and manufacturers of construction materials who built for and sold to homeowners. This process was not simply about using “history” and “heritage.” Rather, these social actors had to legitimize the ubiquitous use of red-tile roofing and cement stucco to establish new aesthetic norms and conventions for the vernacular landscape. As such, this article will look at the relationship between the political economy of building and aesthetics in the shaping of the vernacular landscape.

Waste Away: Working and Living with a North American Landfill:

chapter also shows that coverage of September 11 more often featured average Americans, whereas coverage of the financial crisis included more experts, which ‘‘rendered the fearful language around the [financial crisis] less authentic’’ (p. 125) and less relatable. Recuber concludes that the discourse used to frame each disaster shaped support for legislative responses. The book also explores how Americans used online commemoration as therapy after September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. Recuber analyzes the rhetoric appearing in ‘‘digital memory banks,’’ which aimed to preserve collective memory but became sites for achieving individual catharsis. He finds that most contributors to the September 11 memory bank experienced no direct loss from the disaster but were nonetheless emotionally traumatized, whereas most contributors to the Katrina bank were directly and materially affected. Media framings of each event led viewers to understand September 11 as an attack on the entire United States and Katrina as a regional disaster restricted to predominantly black parts of the South. Thus, while September 11 generated an outpouring of national pride, the response to Hurricane Katrina was complicated by victim-blaming and racism. Consuming Catastrophe might leave readers wanting in the relationship it draws between data and conclusions. For example, while Chapter Two analyzes four television broadcasts insightfully, it does not give enough evidence to demonstrate that the four particular broadcasts were watershed events that ‘‘evinced a shift away from sympathy and toward empathy as the moral responsibility of the spectator’’ (p. 61). Likewise, the book’s strong assertions about the changing subjectivities of media consumers might have benefited from interviews or conversations with them to bolster conclusions drawn on the basis of publicly available textual and visual sources. Recuber also makes generalizations about a generic ‘‘we’’ that could invite question: ‘‘Why, despite so many admonitions to never forget, do we seem to do just that—at least when it comes to the big, long-term solutions that disaster prevention tends to require?’’ (p. 3, italics original). Without presenting data on how well Americans remember disasters—and given that few Americans have forgotten September 11, and that their government launched two wars and has spent many billions of dollars in a long-term ‘‘war on terror’’—some may question such claims. The book’s greatest strength lies in its conceptual vocabulary and schema for theorizing the interplay among socially constructed media narratives, media technologies, the subjectivities and psychology of media consumers, and elite interests. The ‘‘empathetic gaze’’ and ‘‘empathetic hedonism’’ name recognizable and pervasive phenomena in modern society, offering scholars of media and disasters a platform from which to debate and explore further. The book also offers a novel analysis of how individualistic capitalist social relations—with consumption practices standing in as the salve for the ills of modern life—have shifted response to the suffering of others inward in the form of personal demonstrations of empathy. Consuming Catastrophe is a thoughtprovoking and conceptually rich book that contributes to the literatures on disasters, mass media, and consumption. Scholars of these fields—especially those appreciating qualitative methods and textual analysis— will surely find the book useful.

The Price of Nuclear Power: Uranium Communities and Environmental Justice

The product of Stephanie A. Malin’s fieldwork in the region since 2006, The Price of Nuclear Power tells the story of several communities in the Colorado Plateau through archival research, surveys, and interviews. In this book, Malin provides an interesting and timely examination of communities in the Plateau faced with renewed uranium production. Specifically, the book looks at the ‘‘paradox’’ that uranium communities find themselves in. Despite high cancer rates and other illnesses, a sizable number of residents in these communities are in favor of renewed uranium production. This paradox provides thought-provoking insights on issues such as community identity, environmental justice, ideology, and neoliberalism. In particular, she argues that environmental justice is a project heavily influenced by local and material conditions. Following the introduction, the book offers readers a history of uranium in the United States. The story of uranium’s boom and bust cycles is similar to that of other communities that have fallen on hard times. Correspondingly, this book will be of great interest to those interested in the plight of struggling towns in rural America. One cannot help but think of similar issues, such as natural gas fracking, when reading this book. In fact, Malin remarks early in the book that Pennsylvania communities, like those in the Colorado Plateau, experience similar problems such as spatial isolation. This suggests the potential for very interesting comparative work in the future. At the same time, Malin does an excellent job reminding us that uranium is unique in its political, economic and military significance. The focus on uranium gives the story of its extraction in the American West the ability to stand out among similar work. Most of the book’s chapters discuss specific communities in the Colorado Plateau. One chapter details the town of Monticello’s struggle with waste material and illness caused by contamination. This chapter details the work of an activist group, Victims of Mill Tailings Exposure, and their advocacy for cancer victims. However, Malin also discusses ambivalent support for the group: some members support renewed uranium production despite the health risks. This chapter is followed by the story of a corporation called Energy Fuels and their return to Piñon Ridge. Malin notes that many of the area’s residents see the company as ‘‘local,’’ rather than a transnational corporation coming from outside. In fact, the company, in the words of Malin, has ‘‘masterfully’’ established itself as a local institution that seeks to provide jobs and healthcare to the community. Hence, some see the proposed mill as a ‘‘symbol of renewal,’’ despite the work of activists opposing the mill. The aforementioned examples support Malin’s point that environmental justice cannot be reduced simply to the prohibition of uranium mining. Rather, the fight for environmental justice is complex, with different actors pursuing different goals. This is further influenced by the special material conditions faced by these communities. There are several threads, according to Malin, that connect the different positions of community members. Issues of isolation, poverty, and social dislocation affect both communities and activists. For instance, opponents to the uranium industry that live in areas where alternatives to mining exist (for example, tourism or sustainable agriculture) fight a very different battle than those who do not. Those who do not have alternatives are forced to define environmental justice differently—such as by supporting industry regulation. Reviews 475