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"Understanding Urban Riots" published on by Oxford University Press.

Describes violent public protests against an increase in public transportation prices that occurred in Caracas, Venezuela, during Feb 1989 to explore fear of the Other. Over 80 people died in the spontaneous burning & looting that spread to well-to-do neighborhoods & turned latent fears of the upper classes into reality. It is contended that the encroachment of poverty-stricken people from the surrounding hills unraveled the social fabric of Venezuelan society. The rioting exposed a society that had too long accepted "subalterns who live their subordination with normality, dominated by a naturalizing vision of social hierarchies, & a relationship to the state expressed more in terms of clientelism or paternalism than in terms of citizenship, rights, & obligations." A discussion of the implications for life in Caracas notes an increased number of people carrying weapons; an erosion of trust in the legal/judicial system; & obsession with personal security. Concepts of Us & the Other are discussed, along with the power of narratives, & the constitution of social identity by memories, myths, & the symbolic order. J. Lindroth

Compares African American & mainstream newspaper coverage of the 1965 Watts & 1991 Rodney King racial crises in Los Angeles, CA, to ascertain whether civil society consists of a single discourse & public sphere, or multiple public spheres & discourses. Content analysis of coverage in the Los Angeles Sentinel & the Los Angeles Times shows that both newspapers embraced a universalized semiotic system of civil discourse & a romanticized vision of a utopian public sphere. Important aspects of this public sphere were notions of citizenship, participation, & basic human rights. However, the newspapers elaborated this idealized image of civil society in distinctive ways. While the Los Angeles Sentinel tended to link these crises to police brutality & a quest for civil rights, & to frame them in terms of a narrative that stressed the tragic indifference of mainstream society, the Los Angeles Times preferred to associate these events with communist threats, urban policies, & a threat to civility. It is concluded that civil society is composed of both idealized & romanticized images & of anticivil pressures that drive competing discourses in a competition for interpretive authority. 66 References. D. Ryfe