Up for Discussion

Oh, Sweet Velveeta!

What Should We Miss From the Decades When Salad Meant Jello?

February 20, 2012

Americans have never had as many food choices as they do today. Nor have they ever relished food more for its own sake. It’s all very haute, this attention to cuisine, and it’s good for the restaurant business. It’s also easy to forget that, only a few decades ago, a good meal was hard to find outside of a major city, and, if you ordered pineapple salad, odds were you’d get pineapple suspended in Jello. But that doesn’t mean everything has changed for the better in the world of food. So in advance of “Does Foodie Culture Do Anyone Any Good?“, a Zócalo event, we asked several notable names in the world of food to offer their thoughts about what, from the era when salad meant Jello, we should be saddest to have lost. Should we miss anything? …

If We Name It, Will They Come?

Zócalo’s Readers On What To Call L.A.’s Arriving-Soon-Honest-Any-Minute-Now NFL Team

On February 15, 2012

What’s in a name? A lot, apparently. Zócalo has been deluged with proposals for naming a future Los Angeles NFL team that we do not have, but that may be on the way soon.

To wade through the inspired nominations is to realize that the quest for a name that fits Los Angeles the way the “Steelers” fits Pittsburgh isn’t easy. Los Angeles, by its very nature, is frustratingly difficult to sum up. Like few other places, L.A. is an open-source platform, a spectacular shared geography where an overwhelming array of identities, cultures, and aspirations coexist. It’s a beacon and refuge for those who don’t want to belong to a place that can be tidily summed up. …

So What Explains The Stubborn Poverty?

On February 14, 2012

For a quarter century, India has had one of the best-performing economies in the world, averaging over 6 percent of growth per year. Its middle class has quadrupled. Its business leaders enjoy international admiration. At the same time, we read stories of unspeakable poverty and misery—of disease, hunger, and deprivation. We asked several scholars of India’s past and present to explain the divergence. With all of India’s growth, why is its poverty so obstinate? …

A Discussion of How, If At All, the Internet Should Be Patrolled

On February 7, 2012

Many of us realize how much we take the Internet’s current qualities for granted only when some party proposes to change them. Perhaps you felt you were just getting a handle on the most common domain extensions, such as .com and .org and .edu, only to find that domain extensions will soon be as limitless as our imaginations. Or perhaps you were looking for something on Wikipedia only to find that the site had gone dark in protest of proposed “SIPA/SOPA” legislation that would regulate the Internet far more closely. Proposals to police the Internet come up frequently, and, of course, tight control of the Internet is a daily reality in many nations. In an ideal system, though, how, if at all, should the Internet be policed? In advance of the Zócalo event “Is Internet Freedom At Risk?”, we asked several scholars and thinkers to weigh in on this topic. …

What Event in Arizona's Past Matters Most Today?

On February 5, 2012

As the state of Arizona turns 100, it finds itself greater in population than its earliest inhabitants could have imagined. Water, land, social cohesion, governance, turf—all of these have been subject to pressures from growth and changing demography. But where, if we look back at historic moments, do we find the ones that affect the state most today? In advance of the Zócalo event, “Does Arizona History Matter?“, in Tucson, we asked several Arizonans to reflect on how Arizona’s past is shaping its future. …

Feuilleton

Friday, December 3, 2010 00:16

How One Family Created Chinese America

Zócalo

The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America by Mae Ngai Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.

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Up for Discussion

Oh, Sweet Velveeta!

What Should We Miss From the Decades When Salad Meant Jello?