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===Albert Camrillo===
[[File:Chicanos_in_a_Chaning_Society.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|<I>Chicanos in a Changing Society</I> by Albert Camarillo]]
Albert Camarillo became part of what he described as “the new social history that has focused on heretofore excluded from traditional historic studies” with books such as <I>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870744976/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0870744976&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=b90bbac5b79df04cc5f3b3b16950ffda Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930]</I> <ref>Albert Camarillo, <I>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870744976/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0870744976&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=b90bbac5b79df04cc5f3b3b16950ffda Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930]</I> (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press, 1979), pg 2.</ref> His book on the experiences of Mexican-Americans, or Chicanos, in Santa Barbara and Southern California was part of a larger academic effort to reclaim the history of Chicano communities from obscurity. Although he did not necessarily consider his work part of Western history, he did endeavor to establish the continuity of the Chicano historical experiences after 1848.
Pursuing a policy of “total use for greater wealth,” an alliance of capitalists, politicians and regulators constructed an economic and political structure that favored the accumulation of wealth, property and power in the hands of relatively few people.<ref>Worster, pg 262.</ref> Worster warned of the anti-democratic and ultimately anti-life implications of the Capitalist State, and urged his readers to accommodate nature instead of subduing it. Through his analysis of the powerful economic structures that enabled the accumulation of capital, Worster also exposed the social and economic constraints experienced by the inhabitants of the Southwest. He not only highlighted the importance of the region, and advocated wise stewardship of nature, but also recommended a re-examination of nature’s relationship to human history.
In 1994, work on the American West was published in The Oxford History of the American West, and the wealth and diversity of historical studies brought together in the book illustrate the multiple subjects, perspectives and processes involved in western history.<ref>Clyde Milner, ed., <I>The Oxford History of Western History</I> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).</ref> The complex history of the Southwest was featured within the Heritage section, and the article by David Weber, The Spanish-Mexican Rim, describes the Spanish influence on the region. Weber explored the interaction between native Southwesterners and Spanish, and the role that the northern portion of the Spanish American empire played in the international competitions between Spain and France. Weber followed the story through the emergence of the Mexican Empire in 1821, and its subsequent decades as a republic, and rejected the earlier interpretations that “dismissed the long Spanish-Mexican tenure in the region as a time of despotism, religious intolerance, and economic stagnation,”[9] <ref> David Weber, “The Spanish-Mexican Rim,” <I>The Oxford History of Western History</I>, pg 73.</ref> He instead integrated the Spanish heritage of the Southwest into an analysis of the West, reminding his readers of the significance of the continuity of the history of the region. Outside of the artificial constraints of the modern boundaries of nation-states, Weber conducted an analysis that connected the Spanish-Mexican heritage to Native American and colonial history.
===Matt Garcia===
Cultural historians like Matt Garcia built upon the foundations of the New Western history in attempts to uncover more about the experiences and contributions of Mexican-Americans within American history. In his 2001 book, <I>A World of its Own: Race, Labor and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970</I>, Garcia specifically investigated the political culture of Mexican-American citrus-workers.[10] <ref>Matt Garcia, <I>A World of its Own: Race Citrus, and Labor in the Making of Greater Los Angeles</I> (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). By merging analyses of Chicano cultural and community development, in a way that struck an “appropriate balance between space, time, and social being,” Garcia sought to answer certain questions about the history of the Chicano population of the suburbs around Los Angeles.[11] <ref>Garcia, pg 5.</ref> Garcia’s main query was the explanation for the lack of labor activism within Chicano communities of the San Gabriel-San Bernardino Valley. Garcia characterized Mexican-American laborers in Los Angeles as active agents engaged in less obvious forms of resistance, which they expressed through their popular culture and community cohesion. Garcia tapped into the work of social historians, like Camarillo, to show the material conditions of Chicano laborers, the racism that manifested in a dual-wage system, sub-standard living conditions, and second class status, and the “barrioization” movement that consolidated the Chicano population within enclaves.[12] <ref>Camarillo, pg 53.</ref>
Garcia used the frameworks of theorists like Edward Soja and Antonio Gramsci in order to uncover other forms of political activity within Chicano communities, and the ways geographic and cultural choices allowed Chicanos to engage in counter-hegemonic activity in response to the discrimination they faced in Los Angeles. Garcia connected theatre and dancehall culture to political activism and intercultural exchange, recognizing alternative ways Chicanos had to critique and change Los Angeles society. Garcia’s book was the product of his own extensive scholarship and oral interviews, but was also a part of the growing scholarship that was re-examining the history of the West, the experiences of the inhabitants of western communities and the relationship different groups of western inhabitants had to dominant Anglo-American culture and their own natural environment. While part of the growing scholarship on cultural history, Garcia’s book also signified the dynamic potential of New Western history, once released from the ethnocentric constraints of the Turner Thesis.
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