Suchergebnisse

This essay considers how globalized capitalism affects Latino communities in the United States and suggests implications for Latino studies. Contextualizing US Latinos within a restructured economic system and the current neoliberal policy regime provides a lens for understanding their conditions. The essay examines structural dynamics based on the logic of economic imperatives, including the inexorable pressure to accumulate capital by cutting costs and expanding markets, and highlights impacts on Latino labor, immigration, and neighborhoods. An ideological apparatus of social messaging and mechanisms of social control support these imperatives and shift the blame for poor economic conditions to Latinos themselves. Values, principles, and research-based analyses stemming from the foundations of Chicano and Puerto Rican studies can help challenge the dominant discourse and address contemporary issues facing Latino communities. The call for renewed emphasis on the political economy and on research-based solutions is intended to place the output of Latino studies scholarship into discourse and policy debates and to make Latino presence in universities true to the social movements that brought them there.

The Resource Centerf or Raza Planning has been remarkably effective in providing students a vehicle to connect their university education with the needs and dreams of their communities. Thispaper begins to share the work ofRCRPand serves as an important example of how research can contribute to political action and community development. This paper concludes with insights on the power of using research and policy analysis, along with planning processes and techniques, for strategic engagement in community development. Significant to the success of RCRPis the director's belief in standards of excellence, a community and relationship building approach to our work, and a guiding theory of strategic engagement.

When Fracking Comes to Town traces the response of local communities to the shale gas revolution. Rather than cast communities as powerless to respond to oil and gas companies and their landmen, it shows that communities have adapted their local rules and regulations to meet the novel challenges accompanying unconventional gas extraction through fracking. The multidisciplinary perspectives of this volume's essays tie together insights from planners, legal scholars, political scientists, and economists. What emerges is a more nuanced perspective of shale gas development and its impacts on municipalities and residents. Unlike many political debates that cast fracking in black and white terms, this volume's contributors embrace the complexity of local responses to fracking. States adapted legal institutions to meet the new challenges posed by this energy extraction process while under-resourced municipal officials and local planning offices found creative ways to alleviate pressure on local infrastructure and reduce harmful effects of fracking on the environment. The essays in When Fracking Comes to Town tell a story of community resilience with the rise and decline of shale gas production