Missions Resources - Bibliography
Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
Authors: Davis, Mike
ISBN: 0-375-70607-0
Publisher: New York: Vintage Press, 1999
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary: Ecology of Fear is Part II of Mike Davis' Trilogy on Los Angeles. The first installment, City of Quartz, aroused much ire from official boosters of the city; Ecology of Fear made an even bigger splash.
Ostensibly about natural disasters in Southern California, Ecology of Fear is far more important than an environmental call to arms. The erudite Davis is fully literate in both the scientific and the social realms. He could be equally comfortable at a convention of Seismologists, and in a community center in South Central.
It is that broad vision that makes this book so valuable. Davis sees behind the disasters, and the municipal reponses, to reveal the social-cultural meaning behind them.
For example, he notes how L.A. has been destroyed in movies and novels far more than any other city in the world. He builds the convincing case that Americans secretly want L.A. to be destroyed, as a sort of national sacrificial lamb. In this sense, Los Angeles is playing the role in the 20th and 21st centuries that Babylon did in the 6th century B.C.
From this perspective, what happens in L.A. is more important than what happens in New York or Toronto, as it pertains to urban society in the rest of the continent.
Those interested in making a difference for Jesus in their cities would do well to take a look at these books. You will see how much influence your church can have, by changing in some minor ways.
As a practical example, Davis shows how the level of mass promiscuity in the streets (the level of interactions in the street or in other public places, across class and racial lines) is directly related to the level of permeability of walls between classes and races. If you want your congregation to take more interest in the poor in your city, bring your congregation into real, organic (that is, not staged or spectacular) interaction with the poor. This happens best on the terms of the poor.
Davis takes a hard look at public architecture in L.A. (and everywhere), from subdivisions, and the ways they are named, to the psychological meanings behind the boom in Sports Utility Vehicles. As it turns out, our ways of living (surprise!) are both symptom and cause of our social values.
- Paul Grant pgrant@ivcf.org
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