This study focuses on the musical activities and views of Iranian immigrant artists who perform, teach, and support traditional Iranian music in Los Angeles and Southern California. This geographic area and its interconnected social networks, which I refer to as Irangeles, is part of a diaspora culture industry where music is central to everyday life, but where modern Iranian pop music dominates. Given Iran's historical negative stigma attached to entertainment-oriented music making, and the popularity of entertainment and dance-driven Persian pop in contemporary Irangeles, practitioners of traditional Iranian music express frustration and face challenges in promoting their art, what they feel is an authentic form of Iranian culture. The music they make expresses both personal and cultural values: it is a form of creative expression that presents itself as interwoven with their Iranian identity, reflecting personal and cultural ideals of character in Iranian culture. My findings highlight how Iranian immigrant artists avail themselves of the socio-cultural infrastructure of Irangeles to network with like-minded artists and strategically use satellite TV, online technology and social media to find recognition for, teach, and promote diverse genres of traditional Iranian music in this particular diaspora setting.

No description available.

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-340).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-316).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-158).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 433-445).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Hamburg.

As prison abolition has made its way into the dominant discussions about mass incarceration issues in the United States, it seems that the role of abolitionist movements in the juvenile justice system has been almost entirely absent. With prison abolition energies spent on adult incarceration, incarcerated juveniles are left with incremental policy reform that fails to address fundamental problems of juvenile detention facilities. Of the 54,000 incarcerated minors, black teenagers are arrested at five times the rate of white teenagers, and Latino teenagers are arrested two to three times the rate of white teenagers. This thesis asks the research question of whether or not prison abolitionist frameworks can be applied to the juvenile justice models in Los Angeles. Unless the abolitionist movement makes a presence in the juvenile reform efforts, the system will criminalize the childhoods of black and brown youth from low-income backgrounds and the pipeline from schools to juvenile detention centers to adult prisons will continue to perpetuate. There is a need for dreams and imagination in the abolitionist movement against the juvenile prison system in Los Angeles County. The push for a future utopian alternative system will abolish the juvenile detention center system and restructure models of rehabilitation that are specifically designed for targeted communities in Los Angeles.

Exide Technologies finally closed its secondary lead-battery recycling plant on March 12, 2015. The community of primarily Hispanics around the facility had to fight many years to have the polluting facility shut down. Because government agencies, whose job is to protect citizens from polluters, were not regulating the facility properly, residents are not sure if they can trust the agencies to carry out remediation effectively and efficiently either. In this paper I explore the environmental justice issues associated with environmental remediation and what community members can do to make sure that their neighborhood is cleaned up properly. Through interviews with government agencies and environmental activists heavily involved in this case, I discovered that the main environmental justice issue in remediation is increased exposure to toxins. I argue that strong community activism and involvement are necessary for remediation to happen properly, and explore some tools that can be used in this process.