Gary W. McDonogh

Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice

Cities play a pivotal but paradoxical role in the future of our planet. As world leaders and citizens grapple with the consequences of growth, pollution, climate change, and waste, urban sustainability has become a ubiquitous catchphrase and a beacon of hope. Yet, we know little about how the concept is implemented in daily life – particularly with regard to questions of social justice and equity.

Stop Making Sense Language, humor and the nation-state in transitional Spain

These words, while not a formal critique of language, crystallize a neglected issue in the analysis of language and political economy in Spain since the 1970s: the reform of Castilian as the language of the state and of civil society. Social scientists analyzing the dismantling of Franco’s authoritarian regime have been attracted by issues of language and power within political arenas (De Miguel, 1985; DiGiacomo, 1986), by education and social change (Woolard, 1989) and, above all, by language and national minorities (Johnston, 1991; Shabad and Gunther, 1982; Strubell Trueta, 1981; Woolard, 1989; Urla, this issue). Studies, however, have tended to focus on alternate Iberian languages, especially Basque and Catalan, as vehicles of resistance to the Castilian-dominant state. While this contrast remains vital to the comprehension of Spain’s political evolution, anthropologists also must examine Castilian-dominant communities and Castilian-based interactions of citizens and the state in order

The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space

I struggled through my review of this synthetic text on urban design and society against the background of several visits to Barcelona and multiple encounters with its central Rambles, a globally known promenade that has been the spine of my life and research for decades. Barcelona friends now complain of tourist behavior, wretched food, and commercial signage visible through the tile trees, but complaining about the Rambles also has long been part of urban life. Since the eighteenth century, this broad avenue— occupying the space of a drainage ditch and a market—has been the site of social display and political confrontation, peopled not only by urbanites and neighbors but also by coteries of friends, marches by workers, celebratory parades after Barc a championships, and even, yes, rowdy bachelorette parties from England. Not only its position and grace but also its contested uses make it a great street, an urbane street, and a changing heart for the city, even as its citizens lament changes and debate corrections and reforms. This juxtaposition was all the more striking because Vikas Mehta’s review of street history, form, technique, and best practices remains so resolutely American and constrained in referents and recommendations. The end result, in a sense, becomes a model for “nice streets” whose sociability, while “enduring” is both comfortable and anodyne, a template for a postindustrial American middle-class inclusiveness that remains far from the passion and struggle of a great street like the Rambles, or even the arteries surrounding it. While the author presents a convincing synthesis of ideas from urban design, urban social sciences, practical observations, and cultural interpretations that will appeal to students in the same way that William Whyte, Kevin Lynch, Jane Jacobs, and Jan Gehl clarify the relationships about us, the promise of good design seems to be much safer and less debatable or even political. To be fair, much of the work offers a clear synthetic guide to existing interdisciplinary studies before presenting a lengthy set of methods and results exemplified by studies of three commercial streets in Greater Boston. These early chapters, nonetheless, made me wonder who the intended readers are: planners, politicians, citizen groups? The first chapter, for example, embodies a manifesto for the centrality of streets in urban life, citing Lewis Mumford, Lyn Lofland, Henri Lefebvre, William Whyte, and many others. It ends in a classification of various images of streets, including promenading streets (sic), efficient streets, oriental streets, communal streets, mean streets, celebration streets, protest streets, and survival streets (the domain of the homeless). This inchoate

“Bad Spaces?”: Interrogating Suburbs, Myth and Spatial Justice

The riots that have repeatedly encircled Paris and ignited other suburban communities around France in the 21st century provide iconic visions of the banlieue as social problem. Powerful images of burning cars, angry youths and social injustice resonate with cinema and social studies that analyze “ces banlieues qui nous font peur”. For many global spectators, the vivid demands of these youths in bleak places far from the promises of Paris, have epitomized issues of space and social justice th...

From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. in a Global Era, and: Letters across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants (review)

ers the “English-only” movement, the erroneous coupling of Latinos with illegal immigrants, post-9/11 hostility toward Arab and Muslim Americans, and the frequent blaming of America’s economic woes on immigrants. But he offers hope in the end, by encouraging us to realize that we are all from someplace else, that “we are in this together.” In terms of marketing, however, the very strength of this book might also be its main drawback. Given its breadth and length, I do not see this book being assigned in an undergraduate class on immigration history. Instead, I view this book as a “must read” for scholars interested in immigration, racial and ethnic formation, and the development of multiculturalism. It will no doubt have a lasting impact on how they approach and teach those subjects. k. scott wong Williams College

Carnival and Culture: Sex, Symbol and Status in Spain (review)

Carnival and Culture: Sex, Symbol and Status in Spain. DAVID GILMORE. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1998; 256 pp. David Gilmore has been observing carnival in Andalusia for more than a quarter of this century. Hence, his articles and books have chronicled Spains fundamental political transition in this time from the conservative national Catholic Franco regime (1939-- 1975) to a robust democracy. Political change, moreover, has been linked to economic developments within the European Union and changes in social mores shaped by economics and politics as well as the penetration of mass media and mass consumption into smaller cities. Through this era Gilmore has assiduously documented changes in carnival while looking for its historical continuities as an arena for contestation of the meanings of gender, sexuality, and status. Thus his work poses a haunting question for anthropology in Europe-what are the traits that define Mediterranean cultures in a world of continuing connections and change? Once, a near-ahistorical Mediterranean seemed to mirror ethnographic visions of other peoples around the world. Yet, the complexities of written historical records, the cooperation of interdisciplinary studies and the changes anthropologists themselves have witnessed defy easy identification of eternal traits. At the same time characterization of Mediterranean lives as historical products of ever-changing connections of peoples, social and economic ties and ideas scarcely represents the continuities and memories we know in the field. While the Mediterranean may be a shifting construct, even for its citizens, we must describe and analyze more. Carnival, a longstanding central cultural performance replete with multiple levels of dialogue, meaning, and ambivalence as well as change, then, exemplifies this dilemma. Gilmores presentation of carnival is at once ludic in its examples and carefully structured. His analysis incorporates psychoanalytic insights that he has pursued in previous works and a critical response to Marxist models, tempered by his sensibilities of what carnival means in concrete places to concrete persons. Above all, Gilmore writes with an awareness of history as lived experience and rich documentation: the texts here, gathered from decades of carnival songs, represent an important ethnographic contribution in themselves. Gilmore first presents carnival vividly as an historically-based experience of the Mediterranean, stressing the central elements of the Andalusian festival-the songs, divided between bawdy chirigotas and more solemn estudiantiles, the performance of sexual inversion by male participants, and the aggression above and below the surface of street festivities. He also reviews the extensive literature on carnival in Spain and other relevant cases, underscoring the strengths and weaknesses of the analyses this key event has evoked. Gilmore weaves these strengths together in his vision of carnival as a festival of contradiction itself. Subsequent chapters explore Andalusian gender and sexuality as enduring categories negotiated by both individual and society. Gilmore first counterposes the degradation of women by the joking chirigota bands to the sentimental laments of the estudiantiles. The first chastise bad girls and harridans through inventive copias (verses) in which Gilmore reveals the subtlety and ambiguity of gendered criticism and expression. …

The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection

Description: In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia.