During the Great Depression, California became a wellspring for some of the era's most inventive and imaginative political movements. In response to the global catastrophe, the multiracial laboring populations who formed the basis of California's economy gave rise to an oppositional culture that challenged the modes of racialism, nationalism, and rationalism that had guided modernization during preceding decades. In Rebel Imaginaries Elizabeth E. Sine tells the story of that oppositional culture's emergence, revealing how aggrieved Californians asserted political visions that embraced difference, fostered a sense of shared vulnerability, and underscored the interconnectedness and interdependence of global struggles for human dignity. From the Imperial Valley's agricultural fields to Hollywood, seemingly disparate communities of African American, Native American, Mexican, Filipinx, Asian, and White working-class people were linked by their myriad struggles against Depression-era capitalism and patterns of inequality and marginalization. In tracing the diverse coalition of those involved in labor strikes, citizenship and immigration reform, and articulating and imagining freedom through artistic practice, Sine demonstrates that the era's social movements were far more heterogeneous, multivalent, and contested than previously understood.
- Cover
- Contents
- Prologue: Capitalism and Crisis in Global California
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Politics and Poetics of Rebellion
- Part I. The Art of Labor Protest
- 1. Multiracial Rebellion in California’s Fields
- 2. “A Different Kind of Union”: The Politics of Solidarity in the Big Strike of 1934
- Part II. Policy Making for The People
- 3. Reimagining Citizenship in the Age of Expulsion
- 4. Radicalism at the Ballot Box
- Part III. Expressive Culture and The Politics of The Possible
- 5. The Art of Opposition in the Culture Industry’s Capital
- 6. Native Jazz and Oppositional Culture in Round Valley Reservation
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
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