Part 1 - Koreatown
A fortnight on from returning to the United States, winter quarter has begun already and is picking up momentum rapidly. Since my last blog post I have been busy doing various academic, social and recreational activities. Firstly, I have been discovering Los Angeles with more intrigue, tasting the wonderful mix of cultures that is contained here. An observation I would make is that Los Angeles is very culturally segregated, this goes against what I claimed in my first blog post when I stated it wasn’t as culturally and racially segregated like other major metropolitan cities. My adjusted claim is one that is backed up in the works of Logan et al. (2002), Pulido et al. (1996) and UCLA’s own Roger Waldinger (1996) whom highlight the segregation of African Americans and Latinos in South Central LA and other pockets of the city, infamous for being extremely poor, receiving the least public spending, and with the highest police presence (Logan et al., 2002). The area of Los Angeles I visited the other day was another well known area, Koreatown or ‘K town’ which grew in central areas of the city out of the mass immigration of South Koreans in the 1960s (Light and Bonacich, 1991). Figure 1. Illustrates a rough estimation of the extent of Koreatown shows the sheer size of the region, at around 2.7 square miles (Lee, 2008). Clearly, a pocket of culture like this is not uncommon for metropolitan cities; as many around the world such as Toronto and London of course have similar areas, however I haven’t witnessed one on a similar scale to this. The purpose of the visit was to taste for the first time a Korean barbecue at an authentic restaurant that was bustling with Koreans and tourists alike. The food, needless to say was flavourful and extremely tasty. It is always thought provoking to me how my favourite dishes since arriving here in Los Angeles wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for widespread migration In the 20th century. The Asian and Latin tastes of Los Angeles are one of the highlights of my experience thus far. These sets of thoughts make me reflect to immigration situations home and how immigration has enriched culture in the United Kingdom. My favourite food at home also comes from the various swathes of immigration, with Indian cuisine being my favourite. It is almost inconceivable nowadays to find a small town without a local Indian restaurant (Narayan, 1995). It makes one question the distaste towards the recent wave of Eastern European immigration into the UK over the past decade. Hard working, culturally and occasionally skilfully rich individuals contributing to the resource pool of the UK. I perceive it to be largely ironic that the same ignorant individuals whom complain about immigrants ‘stealing their jobs’ are the same people that will happily consume immigrants’ traditional dishes on a Friday night. Unfortunately this hypocrisy and ignorance will be something we will most certainly have to contend with for the foreseeable future.
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| Figure 1. Map of Koreatown, Los Angeles |
Part 2 - Classes
My hydrology class is proving to be challenging as I anticipated but it is mostly proving to be resourceful, taking conceptual hydrology further and applying it to practical scenarios. Weekly assignments building on skills taught in class are testing my knowledge of statistics and ability to analyse them. Considerations however are taken further than this to engineering and how to produce the hydrological information that informs engineers planning to build culverts for example. This includes understanding how to use peak streamflow data to predict the chance of certain basins having a 100 or 500 year flood, so engineers and planners can decide whether the levels of risk are significant enough to plan accordingly. Although truthfully I preferred learning about the conceptual side of hydrology it has been important for me to build on my current knowledge of the topic area. My impressions of lectures by Professor Lettenmaier is that he teaches in a similar way to lecturers at UCL, knowledge and skills are less ‘spoon-fed’ and lectures are merely an introduction into a topic area where further reading and practice will aid in skill building and advancing comprehension. I believe this is refreshing and makes learning the topic more mentally stimulating than simply being told to replicate answers and methods taught in class. In addition to this, reading is a lot more fluid, with less emphasis on one textbook and more on practical examples of published work done by other hydrologists.
Political Geography is a well-structured, thoroughly interesting class. Professor Agnew has taught three different theoretical perspectives that are widely used to analyse topical issues. The first of which rose in the 1960s, spatial analysis, utilizing GIS to make inferences about patterns (Agnew, 2012). The other two important discourses are a Political Economic analysis looking at economic/organisational forces to explain patterns and Post Modern, a new analysis which arose in the 1980s through the growth of Critical Geography, led by the likes of Edward Soja (1989). This perspective aims to analyse stories and narratives to pose ways in which actors produce outcomes or patterns (Agnew, 2012). Further explanation of these is out of the scope of this post, however utilization of these perspectives to analyse recent or contemporary conflicts will enable one to differentiate between these perspectives and their different inferences they make. Despite early indications of Agnew critiquing International Relations as a theory, it appears geopolitics will not be looked at in depth in this class. My exposure to political geography and geopolitics in the UK placed emphasis on the study of geopolitics and interstate relations, as opposed to political geography. As I learn more about the two I’m more clearly understanding the differences between them.
My upcoming post will be leading up to midterms, in the meantime the fun, hard work and exploration will continue!
Agnew, J. (2012) Making Political Geography, Maryland: Rowman and Littlfield.
Lee, D.O (2008) ‘Koreatown and Korean Small Firms in Los Angeles: Locating in the Ethnic Neighbourhoods,’ The Professional Geographer, 47, 2, 184-195.
Light, I. and E. Bonacich (1991) Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982,’ Los Angeles: University of California.
Logan, J.R., Alba, R.D. and W. Zhang (2002) ‘Immigrant enclaves and ethnic communities in New York and Los Angeles,’ American Sociological Association, 62, 2, 299-322.
Narayan, U. (1995) ‘Eating cultures: Incorporation, identity and indian food,’ Social Identities: Journal for the study of race, nation and culture, 1, 1, 63-86.
Pulido, L., Sidawi, S. and R.O. Vos (1996) ‘An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Los Angeles,’ Environmental Racism, 17, 5, 419-439.
Waldinger, R. and M. Bozorgmehr (1996) Ethnic Los Angeles, New York: Sage.
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