Browsing by Subject "San Francisco Bay Area"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Freaks of the industry : peculiarities of place and race in Bay Area hip-hop(2010-05) Morrison, Amanda Maria, 1975-; Hartigan, John, 1964-; Flores, Richard R.; Stewart, Kathleen; Perez, Domino; Wakins, CraigThrough ethnography, I examine how hip-hop’s expressive forms are being used as the raw materials of everyday life by residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to what many regard as one of the most stylistically prolific, politically charged, and racially diverse hip-hop “scenes” in the world. This focus on regional specificity provides a greater understanding of the impact hip-hop is having on the ground, as an aspect of localized lived practice. Throughout, I make the case for the importance of ethnographically grounded localized research on U.S. hip-hop, which is surprisingly still relatively rare. Most scholars simply stress its continuity within a set of deterritorialized Diasporic African and African-American verbal-art traditions. My aim is not to contest this assertion, but to add to the body of knowledge about one of the most significant cultural inventions of the twentieth century by exploring hip-hop’s racial heterogeneity and its regional specificity. Acknowledging this kind of diversity allows us to reconceive what hip-hop is and how it matters in U.S. society beyond the ways it is usually framed: as either an oppositional form of black-vernacular culture or a co-opted and corrupted commodity form that reinscribes hegemonic values more than it actually contests them. Examining hip-hop within a specific, regionally delineated community reveals how hip-hop’s role in American life is more nuanced and complex. It is neither a pure vernacular expression of an oppressed class nor merely a cultural commodity imposed upon consumers and alienated from producers. In the Bay Area, hip-hop “heads” simultaneously consume mass-produced rap while producing homespun forms of music, dance, slang, fashion, and folklore. Through these forms, they construct individual and group identities that register primarily in expressive, affective terms. These novel cultural identities complicate rigid social markers of race, gender, and class; more specifically, they challenge the widely held perception that hip-hop is solely the terrain of inner-city young African-American men. More fundamentally, a sense of belonging is engendered through localized modes of expression and embodied style that manifest through shared practices, discourses, texts, symbols, locales, and imaginaries.Item Role of transportation in employment outcomes of the disadvantaged(2009-05) Yi, Chang, Ph. D.; Zhang, Ming, 1963 Apr. 22-This dissertation focuses on the relationship between accessibility to job opportunities, travel mode choices and employment outcomes of the disadvantaged. In past research examining the impact of accessibility on employment outcomes of the underprivileged, it has been an implicit assumption that a poor individual's employment status is directly connected to accessibility to transport modes and job opportunities. This dissertation challenges such a fundamental assumption and argues that due to unique travel needs of the poor, a high level of access to transportation means or job accessibility provided by a given travel mode does not automatically determine the choice of that particular travel mode. What is missing in the existing literature is examination of how accessibility affects travel mode choices for low-income individuals, and how travel mode preferences subsequently influence their employment outcomes. The objective of this dissertation is to shed new light on current understanding of the relationship between transportation and employment of the disadvantaged. The study focuses on explaining what factors influence low-income individuals in their choice of a transportation mode, and more importantly, how modal preferences, along with job accessibility, affect employment of the poor. Household travel survey data from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Atlanta Metropolitan Region were used to examine this interrelationship. The research findings show that higher modal and job accessibility do not always determine the choice of a particular travel mode, defying the assumption of the previous studies. What is important for enhancing one's employment is whether or not a low-income person has regular access to cars and an individual circumstance allows the poor to utilize existing automobiles rather than the efficiency of highway network. In terms of public transportation, higher job accessibility by transit network is associated with better employment outcomes for transit users. Nonetheless, when transit riders had to access transit systems by walking, job accessibility did not have meaningful impact on employment. It is important to note that the impact that job accessibility by transit has on employment is found only in a transit-friendly Bay Area. Policy implication from this dissertation is discussed.