government

Bloomberg’s New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City

brittany — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Julian Brash’s Bloomberg’s New York is an anthropological study of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration’s implementation of a particular type of neoliberal urban governance (the “Bloomberg Way”) since taking office in 2002, “branding and marketing the city as a luxury good,” an agenda aimed not only at “advancing the economic elite’s class interests” but in shaping the culture and geography of the city of New York by prioritizing this demographic. A thoughtful and rigorous analysis of class, urban development, and neoliberal governance in the context of New York City during the Bloomberg years, Bloomberg’s New York is a thought-provoking read primarily aimed at scholars of urban studies.

Brash’s work interestingly contextualizes the politics of governance in New York City in its “post-fiscal crisis era” but also shows how this paved the way for an individual like Michael Bloomberg (the “CEO as Mayor”) to take on the mayoralty of the Big Apple. The most interesting section of Brash’s work is the more theoretical chunk of this book, which employs an analysis of Bloomberg’s governance style—the Bloomberg Way—of running New York City “like a business,” viewing residents as “clients” and branding the city itself as a product to be marketed to a select demographic. The penultimate section of Brash’s study is a close look at the Bloomberg administration’s promotion of the Hudson Yards plan, contextualized by elite driven redevelopment drives in New York. Brash also illuminates with extensive ethnographic evidence the deeply contested public debates that surrounded the city’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, highlighting differing perceptions of New Yorkers of what this meant for New York, and pointing the reader to the ruptures that this debate revealed in economic, political, cultural, and other differences between New Yorkers which have long characterized the fabric of this city.

Brash’s meticulous uncovering of the mechanics of class interests underpinning the shaping of the cultural, economic and political space of global cities is in the context of New York, but certainly poses important questions applicable to both urban scholarship of other cities and in furthering our understanding of class as a unit of analysis. For example, Brash calls for a more rigorous interrogation of the interests of the “transnational capitalist class” (or “TCC”)—shorthand for the owners of globalized means of production—and how these interests have a physical and cultural impact on the local spaces in which these classes are formed, live and work. His injunction not to “abstract” elite class interests from the physical spaces they inhabit comes as an important reminder in a time where their transnational mobility (enabled by the travel and technology that global capital allows) can easily allows us to forget the increasingly bigger and more powerful role that private enterprise and business interests have on the physical shaping and growth of cities today.

From a feminist perspective, it is important to note that Brash uses class as his primary unit of analysis but declares at the outset that his understanding of the term extends beyond its use as the individual’s relation to the means of production and that class is mediated by a range of other factors such as race, gender, and sexuality. While he acknowledges how class relationships may be displaced by other identities (such as gender), his own analysis is not necessarily engaged in these debates for the purposes of his book.

Written by: Kaavya Asoka, April 8th 2011

The Tiger Next Door

admin — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Camilla Calamandrei

First Run Features

"Experts estimate that there are now more tigers in private captivity in the USA than there are roaming wild in the world."

This is the opening line from The Tiger Next Door, a compelling documentary about the surprisingly widespread practice of breeding, selling, and owning exotic animals in the United States. The film focuses on Dennis Hill, a big cat owner who resides in Indiana. Hill has been keeping tigers and other exotic animals since the early 1990s. The film follows his fight to keep his tigers, cougars, and bears after a government inspection put his facility in question.

The Tiger Next Door is a fascinating, thought-provoking documentary that presents a well-rounded look at the issue of owning exotic animals, raising many complex ethical questions that don't necessarily have a cut-and-dried answer. Should individuals be allowed to own big cats as pets? Just how much should the government regulate this?

Director and producer Camilla Calamandrei makes her stance clear on TheTigerNextDoor.com, with a “Take Action” page urging viewers to call for the ban of exotic animals as pets. Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel. On one hand, I am uncomfortable with the idea of keeping any animal—bird or lion—in a cage; on the other hand, doting pet owners often take exceptional care of their animals, with vet check-ups, treats, affection, and so forth. Is that a better life than living in the harsh wild? Or are we just indulging the humans that own them? What about keeping endangered animals in captivity to help restore their numbers?

Of course, it's a lot easier to care for a bird than a tiger. Questions were raised about the care Hill provided for his tigers, coming to a head in one explosive scene when Joe Taft of The Exotic Feline Rescue Center—who has taken in many of Hill's animals—argued that many of the cats were in poor health when they arrived at the rescue facility. Watching this film, I got the impression that Hill is extraordinarily devoted to his animals, although his own facility certainly had its flaws. I think if Hill is guilty of anything, it might be denial. It seemed that he couldn't bear to admit when he was overwhelmed with too many animals, which I suspect could have contributed to the alleged health issues. I think his downsized facility will make it easier for him to better care for his beloved cats, although he seems determined to add more tigers to his menagerie.

Personally, I feel that individuals should have the right live their lives as they see fit, so long as they are not causing harm. This is where the issue of animal rights comes in–if an animal is being abused or neglected, then obviously their owner is causing harm. Likewise, it is of grave importance that we safeguard humans from the threat that exotic animals pose—precautions must be taken to ensure that they cannot cause people any harm. Hill says in the documentary that he doesn't care if one of his beloved pets kills him—“What better way to die?”—and it's his right to make that choice. But it's critical that we have fair laws in place to regulate the conditions in which dangerous animals are kept to avoid unnecessary tragedies.

Regardless of your stance on keeping big cats as pets, I think The Tiger Next Door makes it clear that further action must be taken to ensure the health and safety of humans and felines alike.

Written by: Beeb Ashcroft, July 5th 2010

Fig Trees

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by John Greyson

V Tape

It’s hard to explain Fig Trees. It’s an opera yet it's also a documentary. There’s an albino squirrel and a nun. It scrutinizes the critical circumstances of the AIDS epidemic, from the 1980s to the present day, and points out, with sharp observations, the irony of consumer-driven AIDS campaigns. The main issues addressed are the ineffectiveness of governments and the greediness of pharmaceutical companies, but popular culture is not completely innocent either.

In Fig Trees, director John Greyson documents the story of South African AIDS activist, Zackie Achmat. Greyson portrays Achman as thoughtful, creative, and most of all, brave. He went on a treatment strike and refused to take his medication because he didn’t believe it was right that he could buy life while other, less affluent people couldn’t. This is where the opera, squirrel and nun come into play; they are a fragment of the visual puzzle Greyson creates.

The way in which all of the ingredients are put together to create such poignant commentary about HIV is interesting. Fig Trees is theatrical and complex—a bit too complex for my taste. For the most part, I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. Fig Trees is subtitled, but instead of making things easier to understand, it made them even more nonsensical. This was especially true when the screen was split into two, each side giving different sets of subtitles.

This doesn't mean that the film wasn't enjoyable. On the contrary, there were some “Aha!” moments that gave me great pleasure and other moments that made me think more deeply about the issues. This prompting of contemplation is always a good thing.

Written by: Jessica Sánchez, March 11th 2010

Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Stacy Parker Aab

Ecco

In the 1940s, thousands of adventurous young women flocked to Washington, DC to take wartime jobs in federal agencies. The media dubbed them “government girls.” More than fifty years later, when Stacy Aab née Parker entered the White House as an 18-year-old student intern, she was similarly primed—eager both to serve the nation and to improve her social standing by elbowing in on the country’s movers and shakers.

As a devoted champion of then-President Bill Clinton, this biracial, working class, daughter of the Detroit suburbs was smitten by her proximity to power, and her prattle-filled, if shockingly apolitical, memoir of those years is a fun read. At the same time, it sheds little light on the Clinton years, focusing almost-exclusively on the day-to-day machinations of those within the president’s orbit. Oddly, neither Hillary Rodham Clinton nor first daughter Chelsea are central figures in the text; instead they appear as blips in an otherwise male-centric tale. Indeed, Government Girl is, first and foremost, an insider’s peek at the President’s Men: Paul Begala, Rahm Emanuel, George Stephanopoulis, Vernon Jordan, and numerous Secret Service and FBI agents. Nonetheless, Parker’s writing is extremely descriptive and it is disturbing to glimpse the sexually-charged White House in which women—usually in subordinate positions—were, and perhaps still are, caught in the collision between their own ambitions and the abuse of authority by those who employed them.

Of course, Monica Lewinsky is part of the fray, since Parker and Lewinisky were interns at the same time. While the two were not well acquainted, Parker describes the victim blaming that ensued once Lewinsky’s affair with President Clinton became public: “Monica developed a reputation beyond the office. After the story broke I heard the ‘c’ word used—the kiss of death for an aspiring staffer. She was a clutch, they said. To be a clutch was to be so blinded by desire to be near the principal that you didn’t care who saw you and you didn’t let gossip slow you down…Monica managed to be wherever the president was, whenever she could. She always vied for attention, for time. Clutch.”

Parker further describes the protocol that interns and staff were expected to follow, complete with the wearing of panty hose and suits on even the hottest days of DC summer. Challenging rules was anathema to interns and staff alike. The overriding ethos? Be grateful that you are in the inner circle, no matter if the expectations are absurd, and no matter if there is rampant workplace harassment.

And Parker was thankful. In fact, she makes race, class, gender, and sexual preference seem beside the point when she moves from intern to low-level staffer. As she makes the transition, she offers cringe-worthy revelations. For example, her wide-eyed crushes on the many men with whom she toiled reveal her to be little more than a lovesick teenager. What’s more, as she expounds on her incessant crushes I found her racial politics simultaneously repugnant and shocking. To wit: “Black boys scared me,” she writes. “They got into my space... Maybe because my father was black and no one was going to hurt me as he did, leaving me for good at such a young age.“

In addition, Parker Aab’s political naivete, demonstrated by her blind acceptance of Clinton-era shifts that have decimated communities of color—from the North American Free Trade Agreement to the abolition of Aid to Families with Dependent Children—make Government Girl little more than a guilty pleasure, a juicy morsel that, in the end, is utterly disappointing.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, February 9th 2010

The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Hannah Pakula

Simon and Schuster Press

No one will fail to notice this giant red book on your bookshelf. Nearly 800 pages long, containing two sections of photographs and spanning 137 years, Hannah Pakula’s biography of Soong May-ling, The Last Empress, better known to the world as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the most famous wife of Chiang Kai-shek (the nationalist general who briefly united China before losing it to the communists organized under Mao Tse-tung) is a formidable conglomeration of information about many of the characters who had a hand in moving China from imperialism to communism. Readers looking for a concise, tightly organized, strategically written account of Madame’s life should look elsewhere: this book is dense with the stories of those whose lives and histories were entangled with the Chiang-Soong families and is as much a story of China as it is of Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Unfortunately, Pakula’s style is not well suited to explaining concisely the complexities of Chinese political history in the early part of the twentieth century to the average, educated reader. This is not to say that Pakula obscures what is otherwise and elsewhere perfectly clear; the events and attitudes that initiated and characterized China’s shift from imperialism to nationalism to communism are difficult to outline cleanly.

Pakula takes a chronological approach to this biography, dividing the work into nine sections, each covering a span of several years. These sections, which are titled only according to the years they cover (which may be as few as two or as many as twenty-plus), are further broken down into chapters, the titles of which are only numbers. This chronological division is the only explicit structuring move Pakula makes, and she rarely offers her readers authorial ‘anchoring points’, which help the reader to orient her- or himself within the narrative structure. Certainly there is an overarching narrative—the intertwined trajectories of Madame Chiang Kai-shek and modern China—however, Pakula repeatedly interrupts her overarching narrative in order to insert interesting and gossipy anecdotes which can only be (thinly) justified by their chronological placement. This has the effect of flattening much of the narrative movement—important events don’t anchor the narrative or push it forward when surrounded by so many non-essential tidbits.

The story, whatever the flaws in the storytelling, is an enthralling one. Even when I grew frustrated with Pakula’s prose, I continued to read on... and on... and on. Pakula, who is carefully sympathetic to Soong May-ling, sometimes portrays her as a kind of feminist sympathizer, reinforcing May-ling’s articulate recognition of the political implications of women’s subordinate status. At other times, there are revelations of Madame’s hardness and cruelty: asked how China would respond to a difficult union leader, Madame remained silent and simply slid her hand across her throat. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, whose political speeches charmed billions of dollars in U.S. loans to China; whose translating work for her husband helped to delay world recognition of some of his personal and political shortcomings; whose sex appeal was the subject of some amusingly purple journalism (“her teeth are visual symphonies of oral architecture.” Wow. Just wow.); who worked to improve conditions in hospitals and orphanages but spent thousands of dollars on furs and shoes and wore diamonds the size of buttons; who lived to be 105 and whose life spanned the entire twentieth century was a fascinating woman whose story could well fill several books. Pakula’s The Last Empress makes for a sometimes juicy, sometimes frustrating, but always eventful read.

Written by: kristina grob, February 8th 2010

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuilt and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:09:00 +0000

By Robert D. Bullard, Beverly Wright

Westview Press

Hurricane Katrina was one of those events that it was impossible not to be affected by because the images we all watched on our televisions and in the newspapers were so horrible. There was a sense of shock that U.S. citizens could be treated so poorly in their own country. Yet this outrage seems to have faded along with the general public’s memory of the storm.

Hurricane Katrina will forever alter the course of history in New Orleans and the life paths of thousands of families from the region. Bullard and Wright’s set of essays, Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, begins to make sense of the government policies that allowed New Orleans to flood, as well as post-Katrina efforts to rebuild the city and region. This collection is a reminder that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in New Orleans, particularly in poor and African American communities, which have suffered disproportionately.

The twelve essays that make up the book are broken into four sections, encompassing the challenges of racialized place, health and environment post-Katrina, equitable rebuilding and recovery and policy choices for social change. Essay topics range from disparities in access to transportation to environmental contaminants after the hurricane. The most powerful aspect of the book is that it sheds light on the fact that Hurricane Katrina was only partly a natural disaster, which was substantially exacerbated by the way that government and society as a whole chose to (not) respond.

The authors argue that the lack of preparedness and dismal response to victims of Hurricane Katrina are profoundly impacted by race and class. The essays force the reader to ask themselves again and again, “What would have happened if New Orleans was full of predominantly wealthy white people?”

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina isn’t exactly an easy or light-hearted read, but it is full of important information that will be of particular interest to people interested in the theoretical importance of the concept of place, as well as anyone interested in better understanding environmental justice and racial disparities.

Written by: Liz Simmons, July 20th 2009

Global Sense: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (An Update of “Common Sense”)

admin — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:02:00 +0000

By Judah Freed

Media Visions Press

Judah Freed has opinions about government that seem inline with progressive thought. The government is corrupt. People in government are too removed from the people – both through the need for security and from a reliance on special interest money over common people’s votes – to be appropriately representative. Representative democracy is flawed from its inception, checks and balances are a pipe dream, and direct democracy is the only hope for liberty.

If this had been all he wrote in Global Sense: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace, then he might have had a decent book, but he tries to link his thoughts to popular Western political philosophy, primarily Thomas Paine. His one-sentence summaries of the philosophies of these great thinkers are oversimplified, at best, and erroneous, at worst. What’s more, his effort to hold himself as the logical extension of Western political thought merely reveals that his theories to be contradictory, a little shallow and, more importantly, extremely different from those of the men he uses to convince us of his legitimacy.

For example, Freed encourages democracy. Though he uses the word to mean different things, in his critiques of representative democracy (citizens vote for representatives who, in turn, vote for laws) over direct democracy (citizens vote directly for laws). His critiques of representative democracy contain many excerpts of “Common Sense,” which I infer as an argument based on a plea to the authority of Thomas Paine. But Paine does not even use the word “democracy” in “Common Sense,” and based on my own readings of Paine’s writing, I am doubtful he differed that dramatically from the other “founding fathers” in near-universal skepticism of Greek-style democracy and the risks of the tyranny of the majority.

He includes the story of his own self-doubt and awakening to self-actualization in his political theorizing. I don’t doubt his sincerity, and I think his ideas warrant consideration, but cloaking his whole message in the authority of Paine diminishes his impact. Yes, citizens today face challenges to civil liberties from unjust laws, as we did before the Revolution. But Freed’s fury at the abuses of government is the only thing he has in common with Paine. He’d be more believable if he had the confidence to let his ideas stand alone, and if his subtitle actually alluded to “Common Sense” rather than “The Crisis.”

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, February 10th 2007