Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479802180
- eISBN:
- 9781479892006
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479802180.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the ...
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On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. After serving a year in Alderson prison, Carlson resumed organizing for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ran for vice president of the United States under its banner in 1948. Then, in 1952, she abruptly left the SWP and returned to the Catholic Church. With the support of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had educated her as a child, Carlson began a new life as a professor who now advocated for social justice as a Catholic Marxist. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist is a historical biography that examines Carlson’s story in the context of her times. Her experiences illuminate the workings of class identity within the context of various influences over the course of a lifespan. Her story contributes to recent historical scholarship exploring the importance of faith in workers’ lives and politics. And it uncovers both the possibilities and limitations for working-class and revolutionary Marxist women in the period between the first- and second-wave feminist movements. The long arc of Carlson’s life (1906–1992) reveals continuities in her political consciousness that transcended the shifts in her partisan commitments, most notably her lifelong dedication to challenging the root causes of social inequality. In that struggle Carlson proved herself to be a truly fierce woman.Less
On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. After serving a year in Alderson prison, Carlson resumed organizing for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ran for vice president of the United States under its banner in 1948. Then, in 1952, she abruptly left the SWP and returned to the Catholic Church. With the support of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had educated her as a child, Carlson began a new life as a professor who now advocated for social justice as a Catholic Marxist. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist is a historical biography that examines Carlson’s story in the context of her times. Her experiences illuminate the workings of class identity within the context of various influences over the course of a lifespan. Her story contributes to recent historical scholarship exploring the importance of faith in workers’ lives and politics. And it uncovers both the possibilities and limitations for working-class and revolutionary Marxist women in the period between the first- and second-wave feminist movements. The long arc of Carlson’s life (1906–1992) reveals continuities in her political consciousness that transcended the shifts in her partisan commitments, most notably her lifelong dedication to challenging the root causes of social inequality. In that struggle Carlson proved herself to be a truly fierce woman.
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479800612
- eISBN:
- 9781479800674
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479800612.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
In restaurants, why do all the white people work in the front and the brown people in the back? What keeps these workers apart, consigned to highly unequal types of jobs? Drawing on six years of ...
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In restaurants, why do all the white people work in the front and the brown people in the back? What keeps these workers apart, consigned to highly unequal types of jobs? Drawing on six years of ethnographic research within three Los Angeles–based restaurants, Wilson details how managers and workers jointly divide service workplaces by race, class, and gender. While managers frame social inequality through discriminatory hiring and supervisory policies that grant educated whites access to the most desirable positions and relegate foreign-born Latino men with low levels of education to the marginal jobs, interactions between members of each group end up sealing distinct "worlds of work" off from one another. While these processes bind the most vulnerable Latinx workers to low-level service jobs, it can also foster unexpected opportunities for others. Through Wilson's extensive behind-the-scenes research, we learn how what happens in everyday service establishments exacerbates but also gives new dimension to social inequalities in our society at large.Less
In restaurants, why do all the white people work in the front and the brown people in the back? What keeps these workers apart, consigned to highly unequal types of jobs? Drawing on six years of ethnographic research within three Los Angeles–based restaurants, Wilson details how managers and workers jointly divide service workplaces by race, class, and gender. While managers frame social inequality through discriminatory hiring and supervisory policies that grant educated whites access to the most desirable positions and relegate foreign-born Latino men with low levels of education to the marginal jobs, interactions between members of each group end up sealing distinct "worlds of work" off from one another. While these processes bind the most vulnerable Latinx workers to low-level service jobs, it can also foster unexpected opportunities for others. Through Wilson's extensive behind-the-scenes research, we learn how what happens in everyday service establishments exacerbates but also gives new dimension to social inequalities in our society at large.
Cynthia Grant Bowman
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479891047
- eISBN:
- 9781479874248
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479891047.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This book describes a new way of being a couple and a new family form—living apart together—where couples who are committed to one another nevertheless maintain separate residences and finances. ...
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This book describes a new way of being a couple and a new family form—living apart together—where couples who are committed to one another nevertheless maintain separate residences and finances. Although studied previously in Europe and other areas, LAT has not attracted attention in the United States, although it appears to be as prevalent there as elsewhere. After presenting the research done about LATs in other areas of the world, the book presents the results of the author’s empirical research on this lifestyle—both the results of surveys taken in 2016 and of interviews of LAT couples in 2016 and 2017 in the United States and England, which explore the numbers of LATs, their reasons for living apart, their demographics, the economics of their relationships, and their mutual caregiving. It also compares and contrasts this lifestyle with both commuter marriage and cohabitation. A particular focus is placed on the special role that LAT appears to play in the lives of women, gay males, and couples 65 and older. Ways in which LATs encounter the US legal system currently—primarily with respect to the termination of alimony upon cohabitation—are described and criticized. After discussing what the purposes of family law should be in general, the author proposes a number of legal reforms that should be undertaken to support the caregiving functions LAT partners perform for each other.Less
This book describes a new way of being a couple and a new family form—living apart together—where couples who are committed to one another nevertheless maintain separate residences and finances. Although studied previously in Europe and other areas, LAT has not attracted attention in the United States, although it appears to be as prevalent there as elsewhere. After presenting the research done about LATs in other areas of the world, the book presents the results of the author’s empirical research on this lifestyle—both the results of surveys taken in 2016 and of interviews of LAT couples in 2016 and 2017 in the United States and England, which explore the numbers of LATs, their reasons for living apart, their demographics, the economics of their relationships, and their mutual caregiving. It also compares and contrasts this lifestyle with both commuter marriage and cohabitation. A particular focus is placed on the special role that LAT appears to play in the lives of women, gay males, and couples 65 and older. Ways in which LATs encounter the US legal system currently—primarily with respect to the termination of alimony upon cohabitation—are described and criticized. After discussing what the purposes of family law should be in general, the author proposes a number of legal reforms that should be undertaken to support the caregiving functions LAT partners perform for each other.
Kathleen C. Oberlin
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479881642
- eISBN:
- 9781479897520
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479881642.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
The typical story about creationist social movements centers on battles in the classroom or in the courtroom—like the Scopes Trial in 1925. But there is a new setting: a museum. “Prepare to Believe” ...
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The typical story about creationist social movements centers on battles in the classroom or in the courtroom—like the Scopes Trial in 1925. But there is a new setting: a museum. “Prepare to Believe” is the slogan that greets visitors throughout the Creation Museum located in Petersburg, Kentucky. It carries the message that the organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) uses to welcome fellow believers as well as skeptics since opening in 2007. The Creation Museum seeks to persuade visitors that if one views both the Bible (a close, literal reading) and nature (observational, real world data) as sources of authority, then the earth appears to be much younger than conventionally understood in mainstream society. This book argues that the impact of the Creation Museum does not depend on the accuracy or credibility of its scientific claims, as many scholars, media critics, and political pundits would suggest. Instead, what AiG goes after by creating a physical site like the Creation Museum is the ability to foster plausibility politics—broadening what the audience perceives as possible and amplifying the stakes as the ideas reach more people. Destabilizing the belief that only one type of secular institution may make claims about the age of the earth and human origins, the Creation Museum is a threat to this singular positioning. In doing so, AiG repositions itself to produce longstanding effects on the public’s perception of who may make scientific claims. Creating the Creation Museum is a story about how a group endures.Less
The typical story about creationist social movements centers on battles in the classroom or in the courtroom—like the Scopes Trial in 1925. But there is a new setting: a museum. “Prepare to Believe” is the slogan that greets visitors throughout the Creation Museum located in Petersburg, Kentucky. It carries the message that the organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) uses to welcome fellow believers as well as skeptics since opening in 2007. The Creation Museum seeks to persuade visitors that if one views both the Bible (a close, literal reading) and nature (observational, real world data) as sources of authority, then the earth appears to be much younger than conventionally understood in mainstream society. This book argues that the impact of the Creation Museum does not depend on the accuracy or credibility of its scientific claims, as many scholars, media critics, and political pundits would suggest. Instead, what AiG goes after by creating a physical site like the Creation Museum is the ability to foster plausibility politics—broadening what the audience perceives as possible and amplifying the stakes as the ideas reach more people. Destabilizing the belief that only one type of secular institution may make claims about the age of the earth and human origins, the Creation Museum is a threat to this singular positioning. In doing so, AiG repositions itself to produce longstanding effects on the public’s perception of who may make scientific claims. Creating the Creation Museum is a story about how a group endures.
Hsuan L. Hsu
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479807215
- eISBN:
- 9781479805372
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479807215.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The Smell of Risk considers the capacities of olfaction as a tool for sensing and staging modernity’s differentiated atmospheres and their associated environmental risks. Focusing on American ...
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The Smell of Risk considers the capacities of olfaction as a tool for sensing and staging modernity’s differentiated atmospheres and their associated environmental risks. Focusing on American literature and art from the 1890s to the present, the book considers how smell stages the pathways through which environmental materials enter and interact with bodies in detective fiction, naturalist novels, environmental illness memoirs, environmental justice narratives, and olfactory art. These texts reframe modernization as a regime of differential deodorization that relocates bad air and its associated noxious odors to vulnerable spaces and populations even as it derecognizes olfaction as a mode of embodied knowledge. The Smell of Risk brings insights from the fields of material ecocriticism, sensory studies, atmospheric geography, and critical race studies to bear on diverse contexts of atmospheric disparity, including Latinx communities exposed to freeway exhaust and pesticides, Asian diasporic artists’ responses to racial discourses about Asiatic odors, and writings that explore the atmospheric devastation of settler colonialism and the olfactory capacities of Indigenous plants.Less
The Smell of Risk considers the capacities of olfaction as a tool for sensing and staging modernity’s differentiated atmospheres and their associated environmental risks. Focusing on American literature and art from the 1890s to the present, the book considers how smell stages the pathways through which environmental materials enter and interact with bodies in detective fiction, naturalist novels, environmental illness memoirs, environmental justice narratives, and olfactory art. These texts reframe modernization as a regime of differential deodorization that relocates bad air and its associated noxious odors to vulnerable spaces and populations even as it derecognizes olfaction as a mode of embodied knowledge. The Smell of Risk brings insights from the fields of material ecocriticism, sensory studies, atmospheric geography, and critical race studies to bear on diverse contexts of atmospheric disparity, including Latinx communities exposed to freeway exhaust and pesticides, Asian diasporic artists’ responses to racial discourses about Asiatic odors, and writings that explore the atmospheric devastation of settler colonialism and the olfactory capacities of Indigenous plants.
David E. Settje
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479803149
- eISBN:
- 9781479803156
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479803149.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Christians today participate as a significant force in politics, asserting their historic role as arbiters of morality and ethics in the process despite being of very different minds about what that ...
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Christians today participate as a significant force in politics, asserting their historic role as arbiters of morality and ethics in the process despite being of very different minds about what that means. Evil Deeds in High Places examines Christian responses to the Watergate affair that brought about the debate over impeachment and resignation of Richard M. Nixon. It demonstrates how Christians contributed to the debate over this moral and ethical crisis, and reveals how the Watergate moment became a turning point in twentieth-century American history for Christian engagement with politics. This study uncovers Protestant reactions to Watergate and traces the long-term effects of Protestants’ efforts on the American political landscape. The sampling of periodicals, denominations, and individuals herein presents much diversity in terms of theological and political outlooks, to further highlight the many points of view that a “Christian lens” contributes. Within Protestant Christianity there were significant variations in responses to the proceedings, offering an important step in surfacing the opinions of everyday Americans to Watergate. Moreover, the engagement of Protestants with the political crisis had particularly important ramifications for American politics, which persist to this day. Protestants engaged Watergate in order to solve the moral catastrophe and, as a result, intensified their political activities. In inching into this realm, they became accustomed to having political influence.Less
Christians today participate as a significant force in politics, asserting their historic role as arbiters of morality and ethics in the process despite being of very different minds about what that means. Evil Deeds in High Places examines Christian responses to the Watergate affair that brought about the debate over impeachment and resignation of Richard M. Nixon. It demonstrates how Christians contributed to the debate over this moral and ethical crisis, and reveals how the Watergate moment became a turning point in twentieth-century American history for Christian engagement with politics. This study uncovers Protestant reactions to Watergate and traces the long-term effects of Protestants’ efforts on the American political landscape. The sampling of periodicals, denominations, and individuals herein presents much diversity in terms of theological and political outlooks, to further highlight the many points of view that a “Christian lens” contributes. Within Protestant Christianity there were significant variations in responses to the proceedings, offering an important step in surfacing the opinions of everyday Americans to Watergate. Moreover, the engagement of Protestants with the political crisis had particularly important ramifications for American politics, which persist to this day. Protestants engaged Watergate in order to solve the moral catastrophe and, as a result, intensified their political activities. In inching into this realm, they became accustomed to having political influence.
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479872244
- eISBN:
- 9781479868346
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479872244.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Each year the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, celebrates its annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. The crowning event is the Dance of ...
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Each year the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, celebrates its annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. The crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, a devotional spectacle of strength and struggle in which men lift a four-ton, seventy-foot tower through the streets. This ethnographic study delves into this masculine world of devotion and the religious lives of lay Catholic men. It explores contemporary men’s devotion to the saints and the Catholic parish as an enduring venue for the pursuit of manhood and masculinity amid gentrification and neighborhood change in New York City. It explores the way laymen imagine themselves and their labor as high stakes, the very work of keeping their parish alive. In this Brooklyn church men, money, and devotion are intertwined. In the backstage spaces of the parish men enact their devotion through craft, manual labor, and fundraising. A rich exploration of embodiment and material religion, this book examines how men come to be part of religious community through material culture: costumes, clothing, objects, and tattoos. It argues that devotion is as much about skills, the body, and relationships between men as it is about belief.Less
Each year the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, celebrates its annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola. The crowning event is the Dance of the Giglio, a devotional spectacle of strength and struggle in which men lift a four-ton, seventy-foot tower through the streets. This ethnographic study delves into this masculine world of devotion and the religious lives of lay Catholic men. It explores contemporary men’s devotion to the saints and the Catholic parish as an enduring venue for the pursuit of manhood and masculinity amid gentrification and neighborhood change in New York City. It explores the way laymen imagine themselves and their labor as high stakes, the very work of keeping their parish alive. In this Brooklyn church men, money, and devotion are intertwined. In the backstage spaces of the parish men enact their devotion through craft, manual labor, and fundraising. A rich exploration of embodiment and material religion, this book examines how men come to be part of religious community through material culture: costumes, clothing, objects, and tattoos. It argues that devotion is as much about skills, the body, and relationships between men as it is about belief.
Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479885459
- eISBN:
- 9781479805341
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479885459.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
At the same time that reactionary conservative political figures like Donald Trump were elected and disastrous socioeconomic policies like Brexit were voted into law, representations of bleakly comic ...
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At the same time that reactionary conservative political figures like Donald Trump were elected and disastrous socioeconomic policies like Brexit were voted into law, representations of bleakly comic white fragility spread across television screens. Analyzing a cycle of transatlantic television programs that emerged mostly between 2014 and 2016 targeting affluent, liberal, white audiences, Horrible White People examines the complicity of the white Left, obsessed with its own anxiety and suffering, in the rise and maintenance of the Far Right—particularly in the mobilization, representation, and sustenance of structural white supremacy on television. The authors use a combined methodology of media-industry analysis and feminist cultural studies, especially close textual analysis, to interrogate a cycle of US and British programming, like Broad City, Casual, You’re the Worst, Catastrophe, Fleabag, and Transparent, that features the abjection of middle-class, liberal, young white people. Throughout, they put these “horrible white people” in conversation with similar upmarket comedies from creators and casts of color, like Insecure, Atlanta, Dear White People, and Master of None, to highlight the ways those shows negotiate prestige TV’s dominant aesthetics of whiteness to push back against the centering of white suffering in a time of cultural crisis. The authors argue that multiple, concurrent, interrelated crises—recession, the emergent mainstreaming of feminism(s), and the unmasked visibility of racial inequality and violence—have caused upheaval among liberals. These crises are represented in this cycle as a collection of circumstances inextricable from and intertwined with the reactionary conservatism, antifeminism, and racism of the rising Right.Less
At the same time that reactionary conservative political figures like Donald Trump were elected and disastrous socioeconomic policies like Brexit were voted into law, representations of bleakly comic white fragility spread across television screens. Analyzing a cycle of transatlantic television programs that emerged mostly between 2014 and 2016 targeting affluent, liberal, white audiences, Horrible White People examines the complicity of the white Left, obsessed with its own anxiety and suffering, in the rise and maintenance of the Far Right—particularly in the mobilization, representation, and sustenance of structural white supremacy on television. The authors use a combined methodology of media-industry analysis and feminist cultural studies, especially close textual analysis, to interrogate a cycle of US and British programming, like Broad City, Casual, You’re the Worst, Catastrophe, Fleabag, and Transparent, that features the abjection of middle-class, liberal, young white people. Throughout, they put these “horrible white people” in conversation with similar upmarket comedies from creators and casts of color, like Insecure, Atlanta, Dear White People, and Master of None, to highlight the ways those shows negotiate prestige TV’s dominant aesthetics of whiteness to push back against the centering of white suffering in a time of cultural crisis. The authors argue that multiple, concurrent, interrelated crises—recession, the emergent mainstreaming of feminism(s), and the unmasked visibility of racial inequality and violence—have caused upheaval among liberals. These crises are represented in this cycle as a collection of circumstances inextricable from and intertwined with the reactionary conservatism, antifeminism, and racism of the rising Right.
Melissa Schwartzberg and Daniel Viehoff (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479804788
- eISBN:
- 9781479804801
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479804788.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Today we confront the prospect that some of the world’s oldest and most durable democracies may be backsliding, at risk of failure. But how should we conceptualize and measure democratic failure, ...
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Today we confront the prospect that some of the world’s oldest and most durable democracies may be backsliding, at risk of failure. But how should we conceptualize and measure democratic failure, given the imperfect nature of all existing political regimes? How should we identify those institutions that might be most vulnerable? Democratic Failure draws together leading scholars from philosophy, political science, and law to clarify the key challenges facing democracies, past and present, and to locate the intellectual resources available to actors and institutions under threat. It analyzes pressing problems of legitimacy and political representation, and inequality within democracies, addressing the rise of populism and the future of democratic citizenship. While timely, this latest addition to the NOMOS series demonstrates that democratic erosion constitutes a perennial concern.Less
Today we confront the prospect that some of the world’s oldest and most durable democracies may be backsliding, at risk of failure. But how should we conceptualize and measure democratic failure, given the imperfect nature of all existing political regimes? How should we identify those institutions that might be most vulnerable? Democratic Failure draws together leading scholars from philosophy, political science, and law to clarify the key challenges facing democracies, past and present, and to locate the intellectual resources available to actors and institutions under threat. It analyzes pressing problems of legitimacy and political representation, and inequality within democracies, addressing the rise of populism and the future of democratic citizenship. While timely, this latest addition to the NOMOS series demonstrates that democratic erosion constitutes a perennial concern.
Melissa Checker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479835089
- eISBN:
- 9781479859245
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479835089.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Science, Technology and Environment
Are today’s sustainable cities built on their own undoing? This book uncovers the hidden costs of sustainable policies and practices in an era of hyper-gentrification. From state-of-the-art parks to ...
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Are today’s sustainable cities built on their own undoing? This book uncovers the hidden costs of sustainable policies and practices in an era of hyper-gentrification. From state-of-the-art parks to rooftop gardens, LEED-certified buildings, bike lanes, and organic shops and restaurants, industrial waterfronts are transforming into eco-friendly urban oases. But how sustainable is this green wave? Will it lift all boats? In New York City, Melissa Checker finds that sustainable initiatives have fostered resource-intensive, high-end development in some areas and left others overburdened with polluting facilities and under-protected from climate change. Checker weaves together ethnographic and historic detail to tell the story of local activists who struggle to improve the environmental health of their neighborhoods while maintaining their affordability. For over a decade, Checker’s research on “environmental gentrification”—the use of environmental improvements to drive high-end redevelopment—has exposed the paradoxes of urban sustainability. This book develops an intricate and comprehensive account of environmental gentrification, from its historic roots to the different forms it takes. Extending this analysis, Checker also challenges popular myths about civic engagement: her work alongside environmental justice activists reveals how institutional mechanisms meant to foster public participation and community empowerment have actually undermined both. And yet Checker finds hope in surprising places. Across the country, sustainability’s broken promises have given rise to new, nonpartisan political formations. Borne of crisis, these grassroots coalitions are crossing racial, economic, and political divides to create new possibilities for our collective future.Less
Are today’s sustainable cities built on their own undoing? This book uncovers the hidden costs of sustainable policies and practices in an era of hyper-gentrification. From state-of-the-art parks to rooftop gardens, LEED-certified buildings, bike lanes, and organic shops and restaurants, industrial waterfronts are transforming into eco-friendly urban oases. But how sustainable is this green wave? Will it lift all boats? In New York City, Melissa Checker finds that sustainable initiatives have fostered resource-intensive, high-end development in some areas and left others overburdened with polluting facilities and under-protected from climate change. Checker weaves together ethnographic and historic detail to tell the story of local activists who struggle to improve the environmental health of their neighborhoods while maintaining their affordability. For over a decade, Checker’s research on “environmental gentrification”—the use of environmental improvements to drive high-end redevelopment—has exposed the paradoxes of urban sustainability. This book develops an intricate and comprehensive account of environmental gentrification, from its historic roots to the different forms it takes. Extending this analysis, Checker also challenges popular myths about civic engagement: her work alongside environmental justice activists reveals how institutional mechanisms meant to foster public participation and community empowerment have actually undermined both. And yet Checker finds hope in surprising places. Across the country, sustainability’s broken promises have given rise to new, nonpartisan political formations. Borne of crisis, these grassroots coalitions are crossing racial, economic, and political divides to create new possibilities for our collective future.
The Intimacies of Conflict
