Miranda Martinez | The Ohio State University (original) (raw)

Books by Miranda Martinez

Through direct engagement with gardeners, activists, and residents, Miranda Martinez shows the br... more Through direct engagement with gardeners, activists, and residents, Miranda Martinez shows the breadth and diversity of the community gardening movement. She demonstrates how real people are effective as social forces amid large scale urban change and looks at the complexities and contradictions involved in transformations of urban neighborhoods. One of the most important contributions of this study is its focus on the Puerto Ricans of the Lower East Side and their struggle to sustain its Latinidad. It goes deeply into the ethnic and cultural significance at the neighborhood and personal level to show the contradictory meanings of gentrification to Puerto Ricans and others, and more importantly, the ways that the history and culture of Puerto Ricans are ignored, devalued, and erased. By going to the grassroots, this book vividly demonstrates how Puerto Ricans interact with the global and local trends involved in gentrification and how the struggles against displacement can alter the boundaries of the process.

Papers by Miranda Martinez

Antipode, Sep 17, 2019

Financial coaching is intensive, long-term counselling intended to foster "financial capability",... more Financial coaching is intensive, long-term counselling intended to foster "financial capability", defined as a state of heightened self-efficacy and knowledge that facilitates the exercise of financial agency. Coaching is a behaviourist technology intended to intervene in the cognition and affect of subjects, and that relates to neoliberal imperatives to fashion disciplined market-oriented subjects. However, it can also be understood as a contested element of envisioned financial agencements used by local organisations to shield vulnerable financial consumers from financial predation. Analysis of policy documents and interviews is used to capture the meanings attached to financial coaching by local actors, and to offer a more textured, affectively complex description of the dilemmas of inclusion confronting financial consumers who experience the terrain of everyday consumer finance as predatory.

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Dec 15, 2021

This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix... more This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. Based on the comic book character, Luke Cage, who was created in response to the popularity of the 1970s blaxploitation films, and the Black Power movement, the television series portrays a Black superhero who defends contemporary Harlem and its people from crime and exploitation. Critically recognized and widely watched during its first airing from 2016 to 2018, Luke Cage was a breakthrough television series that not only centered a Black superhero but directed itself to Black experience and public dialogue during the time of Black Life Matters. The Harlem portrayed in Luke Cage is both a specific community, and a virtual invocation of Black community aspiration, and the structural violence of gentrification. The violent emotions and displacement of gentrification that are presented in the series represent a form of intramural dialogue between the Black creatives working on the show and the broader Black public that is engaging with the long-time debates around the meaning and future of Harlem.

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate enviro... more Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the "rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support" (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but "out of the way" of predefined norms and practices.

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2021

This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix... more This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. Based on the comic book character, Luke Cage, who was created in response to the popularity of the 1970s blaxploitation films, and the Black Power movement, the television series portrays a Black superhero who defends contemporary Harlem and its people from crime and exploitation. Critically recognized and widely watched during its first airing from 2016 to 2018, Luke Cage was a breakthrough television series that not only centered a Black superhero but directed itself to Black experience and public dialogue during the time of Black Life Matters. The Harlem portrayed in Luke Cage is both a specific community, and a virtual invocation of Black community aspiration, and the structural violence of gentrification. The violent emotions and displacement of gentrification that are presented in the series represent a form of intramural dialogue between the Black creat...

Latinx Talk Mini-Readers offer a curated selection of essays and creative work previously publish... more Latinx Talk Mini-Readers offer a curated selection of essays and creative work previously published on our site and our predecessor site, Mujeres Talk, on specific themes and topics, followed by a set of discussion questions relevant to the readings. We hope these resources contribute to growing knowledge in and of Latinx Studies, expanding dialogues on critical issues, and turning ideas into praxis. These mini-readers are made for classroom and community use. Mujeres Talk published from 2011 to 2017. Latinx Talk has been in publication since 2017.

Antipode, 2019

Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”,... more Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”, defined as a state of heightened self‐efficacy and knowledge that facilitates the exercise of financial agency. Coaching is a behaviourist technology intended to intervene in the cognition and affect of subjects, and that relates to neoliberal imperatives to fashion disciplined market‐oriented subjects. However, it can also be understood as a contested element of envisioned financial agencements used by local organisations to shield vulnerable financial consumers from financial predation. Analysis of policy documents and interviews is used to capture the meanings attached to financial coaching by local actors, and to offer a more textured, affectively complex description of the dilemmas of inclusion confronting financial consumers who experience the terrain of everyday consumer finance as predatory.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2012

1 Chapter 1: Introduction 2 Chapter 2: Class Cultures in Conflict 3 Chapter 3: How to Tame a Neig... more 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 2 Chapter 2: Class Cultures in Conflict 3 Chapter 3: How to Tame a Neighborhood 4 Chapter 4: Bello Amanecer Borincano 5 Chapter 5: The Symbolic Lower East Side

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2021

This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix... more This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. Based on the comic book character, Luke Cage, who was created in response to the popularity of the 1970s blaxploitation films, and the Black Power movement, the television series portrays a Black superhero who defends contemporary Harlem and its people from crime and exploitation. Critically recognized and widely watched during its first airing from 2016 to 2018, Luke Cage was a breakthrough television series that not only centered a Black superhero but directed itself to Black experience and public dialogue during the time of Black Life Matters. The Harlem portrayed in Luke Cage is both a specific community, and a virtual invocation of Black community aspiration, and the structural violence of gentrification. The violent emotions and displacement of gentrification that are presented in the series represent a form of intramural dialogue between the Black creatives working on the show and the broader Black public that is engaging with the long-time debates around the meaning and future of Harlem.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

Antipode, 2019

Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”,... more Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”, defined as a state of heightened self‐efficacy and knowledge that facilitates the exercise of financial agency. Coaching is a behaviourist technology intended to intervene in the cognition and affect of subjects, and that relates to neoliberal imperatives to fashion disciplined market‐oriented subjects. However, it can also be understood as a contested element of envisioned financial agencements used by local organisations to shield vulnerable financial consumers from financial predation. Analysis of policy documents and interviews is used to capture the meanings attached to financial coaching by local actors, and to offer a more textured, affectively complex description of the dilemmas of inclusion confronting financial consumers who experience the terrain of everyday consumer finance as predatory.

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000

This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York exami... more This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of movement framing by activists in their struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. In repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners successfully de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves, and the city. This process of re-framing urban development helped activists to compensate for their disempowered political status, and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens. Focusing on framing by movement activists demonstrates the purposive and strategic character of neighborhood identity. Emphasizing the strategy of neighborhood identities is a useful corrective to the many studies of community movements that emphasize their emergence from a relational, presumably nonstrategic, local reality.

Sociological Forum, 1999

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate enviro... more Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the “rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support” (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but “out of the way” of predefined norms and practices.

Through direct engagement with gardeners, activists, and residents, Miranda Martinez shows the br... more Through direct engagement with gardeners, activists, and residents, Miranda Martinez shows the breadth and diversity of the community gardening movement. She demonstrates how real people are effective as social forces amid large scale urban change and looks at the complexities and contradictions involved in transformations of urban neighborhoods. One of the most important contributions of this study is its focus on the Puerto Ricans of the Lower East Side and their struggle to sustain its Latinidad. It goes deeply into the ethnic and cultural significance at the neighborhood and personal level to show the contradictory meanings of gentrification to Puerto Ricans and others, and more importantly, the ways that the history and culture of Puerto Ricans are ignored, devalued, and erased. By going to the grassroots, this book vividly demonstrates how Puerto Ricans interact with the global and local trends involved in gentrification and how the struggles against displacement can alter the boundaries of the process.

Antipode, Sep 17, 2019

Financial coaching is intensive, long-term counselling intended to foster "financial capability",... more Financial coaching is intensive, long-term counselling intended to foster "financial capability", defined as a state of heightened self-efficacy and knowledge that facilitates the exercise of financial agency. Coaching is a behaviourist technology intended to intervene in the cognition and affect of subjects, and that relates to neoliberal imperatives to fashion disciplined market-oriented subjects. However, it can also be understood as a contested element of envisioned financial agencements used by local organisations to shield vulnerable financial consumers from financial predation. Analysis of policy documents and interviews is used to capture the meanings attached to financial coaching by local actors, and to offer a more textured, affectively complex description of the dilemmas of inclusion confronting financial consumers who experience the terrain of everyday consumer finance as predatory.

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Dec 15, 2021

This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix... more This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. Based on the comic book character, Luke Cage, who was created in response to the popularity of the 1970s blaxploitation films, and the Black Power movement, the television series portrays a Black superhero who defends contemporary Harlem and its people from crime and exploitation. Critically recognized and widely watched during its first airing from 2016 to 2018, Luke Cage was a breakthrough television series that not only centered a Black superhero but directed itself to Black experience and public dialogue during the time of Black Life Matters. The Harlem portrayed in Luke Cage is both a specific community, and a virtual invocation of Black community aspiration, and the structural violence of gentrification. The violent emotions and displacement of gentrification that are presented in the series represent a form of intramural dialogue between the Black creatives working on the show and the broader Black public that is engaging with the long-time debates around the meaning and future of Harlem.

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate enviro... more Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the "rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support" (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but "out of the way" of predefined norms and practices.

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2021

This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix... more This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. Based on the comic book character, Luke Cage, who was created in response to the popularity of the 1970s blaxploitation films, and the Black Power movement, the television series portrays a Black superhero who defends contemporary Harlem and its people from crime and exploitation. Critically recognized and widely watched during its first airing from 2016 to 2018, Luke Cage was a breakthrough television series that not only centered a Black superhero but directed itself to Black experience and public dialogue during the time of Black Life Matters. The Harlem portrayed in Luke Cage is both a specific community, and a virtual invocation of Black community aspiration, and the structural violence of gentrification. The violent emotions and displacement of gentrification that are presented in the series represent a form of intramural dialogue between the Black creat...

Latinx Talk Mini-Readers offer a curated selection of essays and creative work previously publish... more Latinx Talk Mini-Readers offer a curated selection of essays and creative work previously published on our site and our predecessor site, Mujeres Talk, on specific themes and topics, followed by a set of discussion questions relevant to the readings. We hope these resources contribute to growing knowledge in and of Latinx Studies, expanding dialogues on critical issues, and turning ideas into praxis. These mini-readers are made for classroom and community use. Mujeres Talk published from 2011 to 2017. Latinx Talk has been in publication since 2017.

Antipode, 2019

Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”,... more Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”, defined as a state of heightened self‐efficacy and knowledge that facilitates the exercise of financial agency. Coaching is a behaviourist technology intended to intervene in the cognition and affect of subjects, and that relates to neoliberal imperatives to fashion disciplined market‐oriented subjects. However, it can also be understood as a contested element of envisioned financial agencements used by local organisations to shield vulnerable financial consumers from financial predation. Analysis of policy documents and interviews is used to capture the meanings attached to financial coaching by local actors, and to offer a more textured, affectively complex description of the dilemmas of inclusion confronting financial consumers who experience the terrain of everyday consumer finance as predatory.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2012

1 Chapter 1: Introduction 2 Chapter 2: Class Cultures in Conflict 3 Chapter 3: How to Tame a Neig... more 1 Chapter 1: Introduction 2 Chapter 2: Class Cultures in Conflict 3 Chapter 3: How to Tame a Neighborhood 4 Chapter 4: Bello Amanecer Borincano 5 Chapter 5: The Symbolic Lower East Side

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2021

This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix... more This article analyzes the cultural politics of gentrification as they are deployed in the Netflix series Marvel’s Luke Cage. Based on the comic book character, Luke Cage, who was created in response to the popularity of the 1970s blaxploitation films, and the Black Power movement, the television series portrays a Black superhero who defends contemporary Harlem and its people from crime and exploitation. Critically recognized and widely watched during its first airing from 2016 to 2018, Luke Cage was a breakthrough television series that not only centered a Black superhero but directed itself to Black experience and public dialogue during the time of Black Life Matters. The Harlem portrayed in Luke Cage is both a specific community, and a virtual invocation of Black community aspiration, and the structural violence of gentrification. The violent emotions and displacement of gentrification that are presented in the series represent a form of intramural dialogue between the Black creatives working on the show and the broader Black public that is engaging with the long-time debates around the meaning and future of Harlem.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

Antipode, 2019

Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”,... more Financial coaching is intensive, long‐term counselling intended to foster “financial capability”, defined as a state of heightened self‐efficacy and knowledge that facilitates the exercise of financial agency. Coaching is a behaviourist technology intended to intervene in the cognition and affect of subjects, and that relates to neoliberal imperatives to fashion disciplined market‐oriented subjects. However, it can also be understood as a contested element of envisioned financial agencements used by local organisations to shield vulnerable financial consumers from financial predation. Analysis of policy documents and interviews is used to capture the meanings attached to financial coaching by local actors, and to offer a more textured, affectively complex description of the dilemmas of inclusion confronting financial consumers who experience the terrain of everyday consumer finance as predatory.

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000

This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York exami... more This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of movement framing by activists in their struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. In repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners successfully de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves, and the city. This process of re-framing urban development helped activists to compensate for their disempowered political status, and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens. Focusing on framing by movement activists demonstrates the purposive and strategic character of neighborhood identity. Emphasizing the strategy of neighborhood identities is a useful corrective to the many studies of community movements that emphasize their emergence from a relational, presumably nonstrategic, local reality.

Sociological Forum, 1999

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate enviro... more Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the “rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support” (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but “out of the way” of predefined norms and practices.