| This Is the City: Making Model Citizens in Los Angeles Contributor(s): Schmidt Jr, Ronald J. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0816641919 ISBN-13: 9780816641918 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press OUR PRICE: $26.24 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2005 Annotation: Jack Webb's Los Angles, a Southern California paradise built of confidence games and real estate booms, swindles and boondoggles, is indeed "the City." But it is not the only one, as Ronald Schmidt makes clear in this critical look at the little-examined foundation of L.A.'s political culture. Schmidt reveals how the political culture of Southern California is structured by over a century's worth of efforts to exhort citizens to emulate models of virtue and to coerce them to imitate models of passive behavior. "This Is the City traces this effort to "script" the city's social life, demonstrating how democratic pedagogy and popular media have been used to advance a utopian vision of government. In a history peopled by outsized characters like Harrison Gray Otis, first publisher of the "L.A. Times, and studio moguls Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner, Schmidt shows how Angeleno elites, from media mavens to the militaristic heroes of the LAPD, have offered themselves as models of civic virtue and have used popular culture and political rhetoric to consolidate their power and remake the city in their image. Schmidt argues that the political education provided by L.A. elites has been intentionally imperial and hierarchical, and that a transformation of the city's politics will require a confrontation of its models of civic participation. Unique in its use of urban politics to engage central questions of political theory, in its combination of cultural artifacts and political history, and in its attempt to connect the political culture of Los Angeles with American founding and refounding moments, "This Is the City brings rare and sobering insight into the making of urban history and politicalculture in the United States. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | American Government - Local - Social Science | Sociology - Urban - History | United States - State & Local - West (ak, Ca, Co, Hi, Id, Mt, Nv, Ut, Wy) |
| Dewey: 979.494 |
| LCCN: 2004017203 |
| Physical Information: 0.41" H x 6.18" W x 8.94" (0.53 lbs) 180 pages |
| Themes: - Locality - Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA - Cultural Region - Southern California - Geographic Orientation - California - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Cultural Region - West Coast |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Rather than presenting a comprehensive history of Los Angeles, Schmidt (political science, U. of Southern Maine) traces attempts to script the city of angels with an idealistic civic identity. He illuminates three defining influences in influencing the city's urban culture: Los Angeles Times' publisher Harrison Gray Otis in the 1880s, Hollywood i |