Imagining Miami

by Croucher, Sheila L.

• ISBN13: 9780813917054
• ISBN10: 0813917050
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

Miami has long captured the world's attention in provocative ways. During the 1980s, a series of violent racial disturbances focused national and international attention there as analysts and observers scrambled to explain the demise of the "Magic City." What has emerged is a popular image of Miami as an urban area in which three distinct ethnic groups- Hispanics, Blacks, and Anglos- are pitted against one another in a battle for limited political, economic, and social resources.Sheila L. Croucher uses Miami as a laboratory in which to explore the social and political construction of ethnic identities and ethnic group conflict. Incorporating interviews with community leaders, politicians, journalists, and business people, as well as periodical and popular literature on Miami, this book examines how social constructs emerge and become accepted, as well as how these definitions reflect the pull of vested interests locally, nationally, and even internationally.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Postmodern Miami	p. 1
From "Magic City" to "Paradise Lost": The Evolution of Ethnic Conflict in Miami	p. 24
The Discourse of Displacement: Constructing the Threat of an Immigrant Takeover	p. 61
The Success of the Cuban Success Story: Cuban American Ethnicity and the Politics of Identity	p. 102
Mandela in Miami: The Globalization of Ethnicity in an American City	p. 142
Contested Realities/Shifting Terrain: Toward a Theory of Ethnicity in the Postmodern World	p. 172
Labor Market Analysis	p. 199
Methodological Strategy	p. 201
Interview Schedule for Community Informants	p. 204
Notes	p. 207
References	p. 215
Index	p. 231
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