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2 books match the query 'Mitchell, Don'
Food Across Borders
Garcia, Matt
Rutgers University Press, 2017
The act of eating defines and redefines borders. What constitutes “American” in our cuisine has always depended on a liberal crossing of borders, from “the line in the sand” that separates Mexico and the United States, to the grassland boundary with Canada, to the imagined divide in our collective minds between “our” food and “their” food. Immigrant workers have introduced new cuisines and ways of cooking that force the nation to question the boundaries between “us” and “them.”
The stories told in Food Across Borders highlight the contiguity between the intimate decisions we make as individuals concerning what we eat and the social and geopolitical processes we enact to secure nourishment, territory, and belonging.
Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.
The stories told in Food Across Borders highlight the contiguity between the intimate decisions we make as individuals concerning what we eat and the social and geopolitical processes we enact to secure nourishment, territory, and belonging.
Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.
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Lie Of The Land
Migrant Workers and the California LandscapeDon Mitchell
University of Minnesota Press, 1996
A hard-hitting look at the story behind California's famous scenery.
The beauty of the California landscape is integral to its place in the imagination of generations of people around the world. In The Lie of the Land, geographer Don Mitchell looks at the human costs associated with this famous scenery. Through an account of the labor history of the state, Mitchell examines the material and ideological struggles over living and working conditions that played a large part in the construction of the contemporary California landscape.
The Lie of the Land examines the way the California landscape was built on the backs of migrant workers, focusing on migratory labor and agribusiness before World War II. The book relates the historical geography of California to the processes of labor that made it, discussing not only significant strikes but also on the everyday existence of migrant workers in the labor camps, fields, and “Hoovervilles” where they lived. Mitchell places class struggle at the heart of social development, demonstrating concretely how farm workers affected their social and material environment, as well as exploring how farm owners responded to their workers’ efforts to improve their living and working conditions. Mitchell also places “reformers” in context, revealing the actual nature of their role in relation to migrant workers’ efforts—that of undermining the struggle for genuine social change. In addition, this volume captures the significance of the changing composition of the agricultural workforce, particularly in racial terms, as the class struggle evolved over a period of decades. Mitchell has written a narrative history that describes the intimate connection between landscape representations and the material form of geography. The Lie of the Land places people squarely in the middle of the landscapes they inhabit, shedding light on the complex and seemingly contradictory interactions between progressive state agents, radical workers, and California growers as they seek to remake the land in their own image.[more]