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Making San Francisco American : cultural frontiers in the urban West, 1846-1906 / Barbara Berglund.

By: Berglund, Barbara.
Material type: TextTextPublisher: Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, c2007Description: xviii, 294 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.ISBN: 9780700615308 (cloth : alk. paper); 070061530X (cloth : alk. paper); 9780700617227 (pbk.); 0700617221 (pbk.).Subject(s): San Francisco (Calif.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century | San Francisco (Calif.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century | City and town life -- California -- San Francisco -- History | Elite (Social sciences) -- California -- San Francisco -- History | Social control -- California -- San Francisco -- History | Assimilation (Sociology) -- California -- San Francisco -- History | National characteristics, American -- History | Political culture -- California -- San Francisco -- History | San Francisco (Calif.) -- Social conditions | San Francisco (Calif.) -- Ethnic relationsDDC classification: 306.09794/6109034 Other classification: 71.14
Contents:
Introduction: Ordering the Disorderly City -- Nation-Making on Cultural Ground -- 1. Living in the City: Everyday Cultures of Restaurants, Hotels, and Boardinghouses -- 2. Playing in the City: Vicious and Virtuous Amusement -- 3. Making Race in the City: Chinatown's Tourist Terrain -- 4. Celebrating the City: Labor, Progress, and the Promenade at the Mechanics' Institute Fairs -- 5. Imagining the City: The California Midwinter International Exposition -- Conclusion: Creating an American Place: Cultural Ordering's Broader Implications.
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Book University of Texas At Tyler
Stacks - 3rd Floor 		F869 .S35 B47 2007 (Browse shelf) Available 0000001937101

Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-284) and index.

Introduction: Ordering the Disorderly City -- Nation-Making on Cultural Ground -- 1. Living in the City: Everyday Cultures of Restaurants, Hotels, and Boardinghouses -- 2. Playing in the City: Vicious and Virtuous Amusement -- 3. Making Race in the City: Chinatown's Tourist Terrain -- 4. Celebrating the City: Labor, Progress, and the Promenade at the Mechanics' Institute Fairs -- 5. Imagining the City: The California Midwinter International Exposition -- Conclusion: Creating an American Place: Cultural Ordering's Broader Implications.

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CHOICE Review

Berglund (Univ. of South Florida) employs Gramsci and Foucault's theories on group social power and replaces Turner's emphasis on orderly rural frontier advance with Wade's urban focus with her central themes of "cultural frontiers" between San Francisco's competing populations and the growth of ordered social structure reflecting prevailing US social attitudes, 1846-1906. This evolution was filled with group conflict and prejudice, and masses of evidence support this thesis. The first chapter treats the shift of the city's living patterns from the 1850s' overwhelmingly male population living in rented lodging and eating in restaurants to the rise of stable family structures. The course of popular amusements showed the rise of a cultural elite with the swing from P. T. Barnum-like shows to the advent of arts museums. The elite used fairs to see and be seen, combining odes to self-education and workers' opportunities to achieve wealth with anti-unionism. The Midwinter Expositions of the 1890s shifted focus from a continental to a Pacific empire, with San Francisco as the gateway. Although the national context is thin in this microhistory, the book is deeply researched, richly illustrated, and superbly written, with ample notes. A model work, possibly a classic. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. D. Steeples formerly, Mercer University

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