Novum Simulacrum » history

Sociology Timeline (in Excel)

Albert S. Fu — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:54:02 +0000

Timelines are useful tools for social scientists or anyone interested in history or how things in the past are interrelated. While there are a lot of free timeline tools online (e.g. CHNM, SIMILE), I wanted something I could easily cut & paste into documents and presentations.

This is an Excel based timeline that covers the lifetimes of various sociologists (based on the timelines found on Vertex42). It also includes some of their major works and a few major historical events. Since this is done in Excel, you can copy and paste it into Power Point very easily.

You can download the excel file and edit it as you like.

NOTE: Excel has a long standing problem with dates prior to 1900. My solution was to basically drop the first 2 digits of the year on the X axis, since they aren’t absolutely necessary in this timeline.

Legitimizing Shelter-In-Place in Southern California: History, Landscape, and the Fear of Fire

Albert S. Fu — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:00:31 +0000

This article looks at the way in which nature and wildfires have been used to legitimize not only urban development, but the way in which homes are bought and sold in Southern California. In particular, it looks at the seemingly incongruous ways in which Shelter-in-Place (SIP) practices have been sold, deployed and discussed in both the past and present. Thus, rather than focus on the success or failure of SIP, I look at the intersection of nature and ‘safety’ in urbanism to better understand how fear of natural disasters can be tied to the vernacular landscape

Materializing Fantasy: Myth & Home Construction in Southern California

Albert S. Fu — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:00:46 +0000

Presentation for the Pacific Sociological Association in San Diego, CA (April 2009).

In early twentieth century, Spanish-Colonial Revival became embedded in the local culture of Southern California. Through community celebrations, literature, film, and place names, images of the romantic Spanish past proliferated in mass media. However, perhaps most important of all was Spanish-Colonial Revival’s implementation in new homes. Both in the 1920s and since the 1980s, Spanish-Colonial Revival dominated the look of new suburban developments in Southern California. As such, red-tile, stucco, and palm trees are ubiquitous markers of not only development, but of regional identity. This presentation intends to explore the past (1920s) in order to make sense of present in two ways. The first is a demystification of Spanish-Colonial Revival via an examination of the political-economy of construction. It is my argument that, through the intersection of architecture, construction, and real-estate, the myth of “Hispanic California” was materialized. Secondly, this presentation seeks to grapple with the problematic legacy of the mythologized “Hispanic California” past. To put it simply, no heads turn when a new community is named after a hacienda, but the same could not be said about the term plantation, despite both terms have the same implications. Thus looking at construction and the iconography around it, we can understand the way in which power and difference is reproduced within both the built environment and discourse.