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Liquid capital : making the Chicago waterfront
In the nineteenth century, politicians transformed a disease-infested bog on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan into an intensively managed waterscape supporting the life and economy of Chicago, now America's third-most populous city. In Liquid Capital, Joshua A. T. Salzmann shows how, through a combination of entrepreneurship, civic spirit, and bareknuckle politics, the Chicago waterfront became a hub of economic and cultural activity while also the site of many of the nation's precendent-setting decisions about public land use and environmental protection. Through the political saga of waterfront development, Salzmann illuminates Chicago's seemingly paradoxical position as both a paragon of buccaneering capitalism and assertive state power.The list of actions undertaken by local politicians and boosters to facilitate the waterfront's success is long: officials reversed a river, built a canal to fuse the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, decorated the lakeshore with parks and monuments, and enacted regulations governing the use of air, land, and water. With these feats of engineering and statecraft, they created a waterscape conducive to commodity exchange, leisure tourism, and class harmony—in sum, an invaluable resource for profit making. Their actions made the city's growth and the development of its western hinterlands possible. Liquid Capital sheds light on these precedent-making policies, their effect on Chicago's development as a major economic and cultural force, and the ways in which they continue to shape legislation regarding the use of air and water.
eBook
Chicago in the Age of Capital
In this sweeping interpretive history of mid-nineteenth-century Chicago, historians John B. Jentz and Richard Schneirov boldly trace the evolution of a modern social order. Combining a mastery of historical and political detail with a sophisticated theoretical frame, Jentz and Schneirov examine the dramatic capitalist transition in Chicago during the critical decades from the 1850s through the 1870s, a period that saw the rise of a permanent wage worker class and the formation of an industrial upper class._x000B__x000B_Jentz and Schneirov demonstrate how a new political economy, based on wage labor and capital accumulation in manufacturing, superseded an older mercantile economy that relied on speculative trading and artisan production. The city's leading business interests were unable to stabilize their new system without the participation of the new working class, a German and Irish ethnic mix that included radical ideas transplanted from Europe. Jentz and Schneirov examine how debates over slave labor were transformed into debates over free labor as the city's wage-earning working class developed a distinctive culture and politics._x000B__x000B_The new social movements that arose in this era--labor, socialism, urban populism, businessmen's municipal reform, Protestant revivalism, and women's activism--constituted the substance of a new post-bellum democratic politics that took shape in the 1860s and '70s. When the Depression of 1873 brought increased crime and financial panic, Chicago's new upper class developed municipal reform in an attempt to reassert its leadership. Setting local detail against a national canvas of partisan ideology and the seismic structural shifts of Reconstruction, Chicago in the Age of Capital vividly depicts the upheavals integral to building capitalism.
eBook
Latino Crossings
First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Nicholas P. De Genova is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Latino Studies at Columbia University.
Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University.
eBook
Urban Revolt
Urban Revolt is an incisive reexamination of the most
highly mobilized urban revolutionary force in American history-the
late nineteenth-century Chicago labor movement. By documenting the
importance of ethnic origins in accounting for political choice,
Eric L. Hirsch completely reconceptualizes the dynamics of urban
social movements. Hirsch links the industrialization of Chicago to
the development and maintenance of an ethnically segmented labor
market. Urbanization, he argues, fostered ethnic enclaves whose
inhabitants were channeled into particular kinds of jobs and
excluded from others. Hirsch then demonstrates the political
implications of emergent ethnic identities and communities. In the
late nineteenth century, Chicagoans of German background-denied
economic power by Anglo-Americans' control of craft unions and
excluded from political influence by Irish-dominated political
machines-formulated radical critiques of the status quo and devised
innovative political strategies. In contrast, the Irish
revolutionary movement in Chicago targeted the oppressive British
political system; Irish activists saw no reason to overthrow a
Chicago polity that brought them political and economic upward
mobility. Urban Revolt gives a new perspective on
revolutionary mobilization by de-emphasizing the importance of
class consciousness, social disorganization, and bureaucracy. In
his original and provocative focus on the importance of ethnicity
in accounting for political choice, Hirsch makes a valuable
contribution to the study of social movements, race, and
working-class politics. This title is part of UC Press's Voices
Revived program, which commemorates University of California
Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and
give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to
1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship
accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title
was originally published in 1990.
eBook
Empowered participation
Every month in every neighborhood in Chicago, residents, teachers, school principals, and police officers gather to deliberate about how to improve their schools and make their streets safer. Residents of poor neighborhoods participate as much or more as those from wealthy ones. All voices are heard. Since the meetings began more than a dozen years ago, they have led not only to safer streets but also to surprising improvements in the city's schools. Chicago's police department and school system have become democratic urban institutions unlike any others in America.
Empowered Participationis the compelling chronicle of this unprecedented transformation. It is the first comprehensive empirical analysis of the ways in which participatory democracy can be used to effect social change. Using city-wide data and six neighborhood case studies, the book explores how determined Chicago residents, police officers, teachers, and community groups worked to banish crime and transform a failing city school system into a model for educational reform. The author's conclusion: Properly designed and implemented institutions of participatory democratic governance can spark citizen involvement that in turn generates innovative problem-solving and public action. Their participation makes organizations more fair and effective.
Though the book focuses on Chicago's municipal agencies, its lessons are applicable to many American cities. Its findings will prove useful not only in the fields of education and law enforcement, but also to sectors as diverse as environmental regulation, social service provision, and workforce development.
eBook