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In an era of expanding global educational privatization and shifting policies on how to fund educational facilities in many states in the US, this study engages the lenses of critical policy analysis and fiscal sociology to examine educational privatization in the school facilities industry in California. Employing critical policy document analysis to examine approximately 40 primary and secondary source documents including propositions, bills, government and education codes, facilities reports, and state public debt data, this paper addresses the following research question: How have education finance policies shaped the system of school district facilities financing over time, specifically with regard to the field of private actors involved in the school facilities industry? This paper examines the historical policy context for privatization in school district facilities financing, evaluating how policies have evolved, been implemented, and affected stakeholders over time in the broader neoliberal context. Findings indicate that policies promoting privatization in education finance impact school districts’ abilities to provide equitable facilities to their students. Also, the complex and intermittent process of financing school facilities has facilitated the rise of specialized private actors in the school facilities industry that has now organized to engage in private-sector policy setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines taxable sales in the Los Angeles and Miami metropolitan areas to find evidence of the short- and long-run effects of the Rodney King riots and Hurricane Andrew on their respective economies. The comparison of these two events shows that the King riots had a long-term negative effect on Los Angeles' economy while Hurricane Andrew had a short-term positive effect on the Miami economy. The paper also applies the contrasting experiences of Los Angeles and Miami to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In some ways, Katrina is a hybrid of these two events since it combines elements of both a natural disaster and a social disaster. The paper examines how Katrina is similar to each of the previous incidents and how these similarities might affect the recovery of New Orleans following the storm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on sense of place suggests that people's understandings of themselves and others is closely tied to the feelings they have about the place where they reside. Solastalgia expands on this sociological concept by considering the impacts on the various benefits derived from place when a landscape is changed through acute or chronic environmental disruptions. As such, climate-related disasters affect both tangible and intangible goods. Using 24 qualitative interviews with residents of Paradise, California several months after a wildfire destroyed their town, this exploratory study examines three ways in which the solastalgia experience is socially constructed. This occurs through disruptions to coping resources found in the natural world, embeddedness of history in place, and the experience of "homesickness" for a changed landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists various developments related to sociology. The Southwest Labor Studies Association will hold its 17th annual conference on March 22-a 1991 at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. The theme will be Labor in the Era of World War II. In another development the Seventh Biennial Southern Labor Studies Conference will meet in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 10-12, 1991. Conference organizers are particularly interested in proposals involving southern textiles, black workers, and Latin American labor but papers are invited on all aspects of labor history.

The article presents a speech by Michael Burawoy of the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley and President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), delivered at the Yokohama Congress of the ISA, entitled "Sociology on the Move." Burawoy spoke on the vulnerability of sociology. He highlighted the three Ms of his global sociology programme, including media, membership and message.