Mike Davis

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Mike Davis

Mike Davis (* 1946 in Fontana , California) is an American social commentator, sociologist and historian .

For a long time, his main interest was the study of social structures and urban development in his native Southern California . He became internationally known in 1990 with his bestseller City of Quartz , a social history of Los Angeles . He coined the term Los Angeles School of Urbanism and was assigned to it, but was also critical of it. His more recent publications deal with the emergence of slums and forgotten great famines , which he does not refer to as such, but as genocide and in connection with El Niño events. In his book Late Victorian Holocaust , for example, he writes how up to sixty million people died in superficially climate-related catastrophes during the 1870s and 1890s.

biography

Mike Davis was born in Fontana, a suburb of Los Angeles, in 1946. At the age of 16, he first dropped out of high school to help support his family as a worker in a meat factory.

In the early 1960s he briefly studied at Reed College in Oregon , became a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), joined the Communist Party and ran its bookstore in Los Angeles. For the next four years he worked as a truck driver on the West Coast until he decided to continue his academic training at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In addition to history and economics at the University of California, he studied Irish history in London, Edinburgh and Belfast, where he campaigned for Northern Irish independence.

He earned a bachelor's and master's degree in history from UCLA in the 1970s . He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998 and was a fellow at the Getty Center .

Davis initially taught at Stony Brook University and since 2002 in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine . He is currently professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside . He writes for the British monthly newspaper Socialist Review , the organ of the British Socialist Workers Party .

Davis wrote City of Quartz in 1990 . Excavations of the future in Los Angeles, which is now considered a classic of urban sociology . Most recently, he published a history of the car bomb in German (2007).

In December 2008, Mike Davis was awarded the Munich University Society's Culture Prize, which was awarded for the first time that year.

Davis is a member of the Irish Socialist Workers Party . He lives with his family in San Diego , California.

Fonts

Books (selection)

  • Phoenix nosedive. On the Political Economy of the United States in the 1980s. Rotbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-88022-315-7 . ( Prisoners of the American Dream. 1986.)
  • City of Quartz. Excavation of the Future in Los Angeles and recent essays. Black Risse Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-924737-23-1 . Verlag Association A, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-935936-37-8 . ( City of Quartz. Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. 1990.)
  • Casino zombies and other fables from the neon west of the USA. Black Risse Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-924737-44-4 .
  • Ecology of fear. Los Angeles and living with disaster. Kunstmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3888972256 ; Piper non-fiction book, 2004, ISBN 349223819X . ( Ecology of Fear. Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. 1999).
  • The birth of the third world. Famine and mass extermination in the imperialist age. Association A, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-935936-43-5 . ( Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. 2001.)
  • Bird flu. For the social production of epidemics. Association A, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-935936-42-7 . ( The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. 2005)
  • with Justin Akers Chacón: Crossing the Border. Migration and Class Struggle in US History. Association A, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-935936-59-0 . ( No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US-Mexico Border. 2006.)
  • A history of the car bomb. Association A, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-935936-58-3 . ( Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb. 2007.)
  • Contribution in: Spaceship Earth has no emergency exit. Energy and Politics in the Anthropocene. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-518-06176-3

items

  • 2003: Surrounded by an infallible army The Pentagon works to eradicate chance. - In: Die Zeit, April 10, 2003.
  • 2003: White hatred and dark dreams In Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Californian citizens have found the hero of their power fantasies. - In: Die Zeit, October 16, 2003.
  • 2006: Speculators after the Flood A year ago, Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. - In: Die Zeit, August 24, 2006.
  • 2006: The Great Wall of Capital How the world's poor are brutally marginalized from rich countries. - In: Die Zeit, October 12, 2006.
  • 2007: Normal weather Extreme drought, wind erosion and forest fires have long characterized the landscape in the southwest of the USA. - In: Die Zeit, March 15, 2007.
  • 2008: Who will build the ark? The commandment to utopia in the age of catastrophes. - Essay and speech at the University of Munich on December 8, 2008.
  • 2011: 10 Commandments for Revolt An American protest veteran's New Year's speech to the young. - In: Die Zeit, December 29, 2011.

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Michael Dear: Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate . In: City & Community . tape 1 , no. 1 , 2002, p. 5-32 , doi : 10.1111 / 1540-6040.00002 .
  2. ↑ George Monbiot : How Britain Denies its Holocausts . In: The Guardian . December 27, 2005
  3. ↑ Perlentaucher.de : Reviews of "The Birth of the Third World" , accessed on November 27, 2017.
  4. ↑ Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich : Urbanist Professor Mike Davis receives the Munich University Society's cultural award . December 8, 2008
  5. ↑ Davis 1990/2006 - summary ( memento of December 24, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) by Armin Medosch in Telepolis , February 13, 1996.
  6. ↑ Davis 1999a - compilation of articles that appeared in various US newspapers between 1992 and 1999.
  7. ^ Davis 1999b - Ecology of Fear, Review by A. Remler - in Telepolis , October 5, 1999.
  8. ↑ Davis 2006 - review by C. Parnreiter - on Planet of the Slums in the specialist forum H-Soz-Kult .
  9. ↑ Davis 2008 (Arche) - also in the book 2011: The Spaceship Earth has no emergency exit.
personal data
SURNAME Davis, Mike
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Fontana