Talk:Mike Davis (scholar)

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An important issue in Ecology of Fear was that of fires... now that LA is on fire (well, part of it...) and some controversial hypotheses by Davis seem to have just come true, shouldn't this entry be updated?--213.140.21.227 08:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I find this article far too subjective and critical of its subject. By including quotes from such a questionable and low grade source as the 'New Times' i feel that the work of Mike Davis is being completely undermined. Please refer to writings including that of Nation contributor Jon Wiener which address the issue of Davis' credibility. Because Davis is a prominent left-wing thinker, he has been the subject of a ridiculous campaign to mar both his sense of honesty and intellectual validity. Opinions such as that currently expressed in this article are heavily biased and distract from the importance of Davis' work.

The reason that 'New Times LA' is defunct is because they offerred poor factually unsupported criticisms. Anyone can critique a person for being a liberal or a conservative, but to me an effective critique of a writer is an effective critique of his books, and thus far I have failed to see an effective negative critique of the books written by Dr. Mike Davis. On the other hand I have seen multiple praise of the books by Dr. Davis by such non-defunct organizations as Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle and The Nation.

New Times LA is defunct because it got bought out by its competitor, the LA Weekly (owned by Village Voice), in an exchange that raised more than a few eyebrows in LA's journalism community. It had nothing to do with Davis. (And, IMHO, New Times was a far more interesting paper than LA Weekly). The paper's criticism of Davis was lame, I agree -- in their obsession with scandal, writers Jill Stewart and Rick Barrs ("the Finger"), picked up on then-Malibu real estate agent and amateur fact-checker Brady Westwater's 20-page screed attacking Davis based on dubious analysis of alleged errors in Davis' footnotes. Some of the errors were indeed errors; some were simply not; none of them were as significant as Westwater claimed and the whole thing was blown ridiculously out of proportion first by Westwater and then by a series of articles in New Times LA. Joel Kotkin was thrilled, but everyone with an academic background familiar with Davis' work knew it was BS. Westwater, a real estate agent in Malibu, was irate for pretty obvious reasons when the chapter from Ecology of Fear showed up in the LA Weekly, with a photo of a Malibu fire on the cover, and the title "LET MALIBU BURN." So he devoted his life to combing through every footnote in Davis' books and trying to destroy his credibility. Apparently, he is still obsessed with undermining Davis' credibility, to no avail. Anyway, the point is, New Times LA's undoing had nothing to do with its Davis criticism, and it was actually an excellent alternative paper in its day -- what it lacked in comprehensiveness it more than made up for in irreverence. And no LA paper since - not the Weekly and none of the alternative papers that have cropped up in its wake - has produced a column as cool as "the Finger."--csloat 09:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Commodore Sloat makes a good point that there is two sided debate regarding Davis' veracity. The Los Angeles trilogy has been shown to contain factual errors, as well as a politically biased theme. Davis is a self-avowed Marxist and his work regards the inequities of Los Angeles real estate politics. The debate itself deserves mention so those reading Davis' work are aware that it is political in nature and is not uniformly acknowledged. While Westwater's work is also not above critism the Salon article linked in the biography provides a useful counterpoint. Pchoate 18:45, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me clarify: Westwater's "work" is a joke. True, by combing the footnotes carefully he found some errors and exaggerations, as one could with just about any academic manuscript. But he did not find evidence that Davis was a fraud or that there was a systematic attempt to distort things, as he claimed. There is only a two-sided debate about this because one "side" is populated by ideologues like Westwater and Jill Stewart and... well, not really anyone else. I don't know of any credentialed academic who takes the claims seriously. Don't get me wrong - everyone knows Davis has a literary flair, and there is hyperbole in his work; in addition, I don't think he has ever tried to hide or disavow his politics. But the claims made by Stewart and Westwater that he has been discredited are ridiculous.--csloat 20:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so worried about Westwater or Stewart, but the NPOV of this article regarding Davis' work as a scholar. "Literary flair" and "hyperbole" are understatements, his reporting selectively supports his thesis, and contains well established overstatements and logical fallacies. Davis makes minimal effort to balance his arguments or present them in a larger context and thus are more political than scientific. His work certainly is eye-opening and interesting, but his books are classic examples of confirmation bias. Regards - Pchoate 16:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

But Westwater and Stewart are pretty much the only published sources that can back up your claims. The "well established overstatements and logical fallacies" that Westwater claimed to have found were mostly themselves overblown exaggerations. If you got this information from elsewhere, let us know, but this isn't the place for original research. Also, let's not confuse an inability (or perhaps an unwillingness) to understand particular methods or claims with "confirmation bias." As I've said, I don't know of a single credentialed academic who takes these claims about Davis seriously. If you know of one, please share (and, of course, feel free to add their published research to the article). But if there is none, we are left with the likes of Jill Stewart and Brady Westwater.--csloat 20:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess I have a problem with the level of hyperbole in his writing. I do find several references confirming academic acceptance of his work. The NationRadical Urban Theory Pchoate 23:01, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I could certainly understand that - as I said, he has a literary flair; some passages are hilarious if read out of context. (As an example, look for his comment in Ecology of Fear that mountain lions and coyotes have become an integral part of the Los Angeles street scene.) But I think the criticism that came from Stewart et al had its origins in Westwater's screed. It was provoked by the LA Weekly publishing "Let Malibu Burn" (along with a lurid photo of a Malibu fire on the cover), and my sense is that certain people in the press -- people already known for digging up sensationalism -- picked it up because they wanted to bring down a scholar who had just won a "genius" award. The criticism died down since then, and if you look at academic sources, his work is no more controversial than it was before the flap. I'm going to try to edit the sentence again to reflect this; see what you think.--csloat 00:30, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The change I made was pretty minor; it would not be a bad idea, if this article is expanded at some point, to include more information about the controversy; as I said, I think that controversy was very limited in time and that it had as its main source Brady Westwater's obviously invested screed. Some indication that it was a time-bound event is probably necessary here.--csloat 00:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Angotti's and other detractors' criticisms of Davis's alleged "anti-urbanism" are without foundation. The pejorative "anti-urban" was often used by centrist, pro-metropolitan, pro-market capitalist writers in the 1960s--authors such as Jane Jacobs, in the introduction to her The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Morton White and his wife Lucia White, in their The Intellectual vs. the City, so as to demagogically dismiss as "suburbany," (Jacobs) "patrician," and/or "pastoralist" (the Whites), the powerful criticisms of the unsustainability of the big city form, made by such authors as Davis, Lewis Mumford, Garrett Eckbo, all the way back to Marx and Engels themselves, and their proposals for decentralization. Angotti, Andy Merrifield, and Marshall Berman, from a left-liberal standpoint, today follow in the footsteps of Jane Jacobs and the Whites, in detracting critics of the metropolis like Davis and Mumford. The implication, which Angotti makes explicit, is that such "anti-urban" writers are actually indifferent or hostile to the plight of the poor and the workers who happen now to LIVE in these cities--as if they CHOSE to live in these "slums," as if to call them "slums" and decry the poor conditions under which the poor live there, was an insult to them, rather than an analysis which might serve toward their liberation from those conditions. In addition, these "metropolitans" brand the "anti-urbanists" insufficiently cognizant of the capacity of the lower classes to somehow reform the big city to make it livable. To be critical of the contemporary, overcongested, polluted, fossil fuel dependent metropolis, and to seek radical alternatives to it, however, is obviously not equivalent to being against any and all urban forms or urbanity, in general. To accuse a powerful Marxist writer like Davis, who has always been solidly on the side of the working class and the poor, of being "elitist," is to say the least, misdirected. The difference between these two schools is not that the "MetroMarxism" and "Dialectical Urbanism" championed by Merrifield and co. is populist, while mega-urban critics like Davis are elitist. Rather, the former are reformist, Davis and his co-thinkers, revolutionary. It is reformist, in the tradition of Edward Bernstein and Martynov, to argue that local (at their largest, citywide) groups of poor and workers can reform, piece by piece, existing institutions like the metropolis for the better, while leaving their fundamental contours in place. It is revolutionary, as Davis insists upon pointing out time and time again, in the tradition of Marx and Engels, Luxemburg, and Lenin, to insist that all such capitalist institutions are contradictory, crisis-bound, and in need of fundamental transformation, and that this must be done by an organized, conscious, global, socialist working class movement. Davis should be congratulated, not racist-baited, for keeping the latter revolutionary tradition alive today..--[[User:|Tomsword]] 4 December 2007

Weasel wording

The article as drafted included a sentence claiming that a Salon article had cited 'several' people accusing Davis of making up facts, 'including' a realtor and a journalist. On reviewing the Salon article, I found just one such person - the realtor, whose case was then 'taken up by' (Salon wording) the journalist cited. This is a pretty sneaky piece of weasel wording - deliberately misrepresenting an article which was already weasel-worded, in that none of the rest of the criticisms of Davis made in the article were in any way substantive, merely interpretive - and I have fixed the sentence to reflect what the article actually said, as opposed to what the WP contributor seems to have wanted it to say. Lexo (talk) 23:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Excellent work; thanks for fixing that. csloat (talk) 00:22, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

POV check

As other posts before on this page have said, it seems like the Criticisms and reviews section might be a bit unbalanced. As written the article provides very little support for Davis' views while quoting many people who disagree with them. Also, I'm concerned that some of the quotes might not contradict this: "Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone." This might be a problem with [WP:UNDUE].

Also, there seem to be some weasel words here that could be a problem with [WP:AVOID]. The section uses alleged, however, and allegation. I dont know if including the 'attacks' by Jacobs on Mumford are an appropriate introduction to Merrifield's 'attacks' on Davis. Also, the phrasing that Stannard has 'argued for the defense' is appropriate in the context it's used here. Svenna (talk) 15:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd have to agree the Criticism section is poorly written and quite frankly is larger in scale compared to the rest of the article. It reads like a TMZ listicle. Overhere2000 (talk) 01:49, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Enough already

I am a socialist myself and love Mike Davis's stuff. I don't see any problems, however, with the section on Critiques and reviews. The general tone of the paragraph is accurate: it is expected that a hefty socialist writer will be attacked. I have added a few sentences summing up and will remove the neutrality warning. Bdubay (talk) 06:12, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Mike Davis - title - requested change

I suggest title "Mike Davis - Scholar" be changed to "Mike Davis - Writer and Political Activist" -- more accurate and recognizable. not all of his writing is scholarly, and his work as a political activist is significant -- among both fans and critics.Jonwiener (talk) 05:37, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

--- Another reason for this change is that there is a famous (within the field) neurobiology scholar named Mike Davis, who studies the fear circuitry in the brain. I googled "Mike Davis Fear" and because this person wrote a book with the word "fear" in the title, I was brought here. http://med.emory.edu/facultyprofiles/profile_research.cfm?id=1688 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.183.4.6 (talk) 18:47, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

broken link

He is a self-defined international socialist and "Marxist-Environmentalist" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 (talk) 11:33, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

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