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The removal of irrigated lands from production far exceeded the rate of land use for suburbanization. Some 76 percent of the irrigated land in California is in the Great Central Valley. The surge in the gross population in the valley over ten years added 1.1 million people to the area. The average …

[...] The severe drought of 1976–77, preceded by several dry years, raised the specter of a permanent water shortage. Farmers responded to the crisis in different ways. Some took part in federal programs that pay farmers who agree to idle lands on which they would otherwise have grown federally des…

The deepening division of California into richer and poorer is a function of what Richard Walker (among others) identifies as three “central contradictions” (Walker 1995): (1) the changing mix of jobs and industrial and residential location; (2) Anglos’ fear of their demotion to minority status, cou…

In “Questions of Theory” (1988) Stuart Hall and Bill Schwarz provide a useful definition of crisis. “Crises occur when the social formation can no longer be reproduced on the basis of the preexisting system of social relations” (96). The pivotal verb “to re- produce” signifies the broad array of poli…

The relationship of prison to dispossession has been well studied. Wedged between ethics and the law, the justification for putting people behind bars rests on the premise that as a consequence of certain actions, some people should lose all freedom (which we can define in this instance as control ov…