Ecology of Fear

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

In this brilliant and revealing work, meatcutter-turned-MacArthur Fellow Davis picks up where he left off in City of Quartz and trains his sights on the spectacular disaster of Los Angeles. This bold work claims that the “flood, fire, and earthquake tragedies” of L.A. and Southern California “were as avoidable, as unnatural, as the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing explosion in the streets.” With meticulous research and a vigorous style, Davis backs up his proposition, giving particular attention to how socially irresponsible policies have enforced an increasingly hostile ecology (natural, cultural, and racial). Whether explicating the alarmingly recurrent deaths by tenement fires or investigating ideologies expressed in L.A.-based “Aryan-versus-Alien” postcatastrophic fiction and film, Davis renovates urban theory with the prophetic insight of a modern-day Cassandra.