Modern American History, on behalf of the prize committee Lauren Jane Guterman and Leslie Paris, is delighted to award the inaugural Brooke L. Blower and Sarah T. Phillips Essay Prize to Julia Brown-Bernstein, the author of “Bring ‘The Plant’ to Life: Imagining Community Revitalization in the Neoliberal Era.” This richly researched and engaging essay explores local policy responses to deindustrialization in 1990s Los Angeles. Efforts to revitalize deindustrialized sectors of the city were marked by what Brown-Bernstein terms “neo-recovery partnerships,” or public-private partnerships focused on urban revitalization. These partnerships, Brown-Bernstein contends, were part of a broader economic and political realignment, the rise of the neo-liberal order as industrial production declined. Proponents of this new system promised that deregulated commerce and service-sector development could restore deindustrialized communities, but the Los Angeles Revitalization Zone and the Earthquake Recovery Zone of the 1990s were neither revitalizing nor emancipatory.

By grounding the broader concept of neo-liberalism in a case study focused on the fate of deindustrialized sectors of Los Angeles, Brown-Bernstein balances an investigation of broader social changes with detailed and moving human stories. This article persuasively demonstrates how the neoliberal order gained hegemony: not merely through the actions of national or international elites, but also through local political action promising “revitalization”. Drawing on archival research and original oral history interviews, “Bring ‘The Plant’ to Life” makes an important intervention into late-twentieth century history, specifically the histories of deindustrialization and neoliberalism. Scholars frequently use the term “neoliberal”; here the Brown-Bernstein shows in concrete, fine-grained detail the political consequences of the transformation of urban space in an era of deindustrialization.

Essay to appear in a forthcoming issue of MAH.

Julia Brown-Bernstein is a PhD candidate in the department of History at the University of Southern California. Her work focuses on the impact of neoliberalism, as a set of economic policies and a political ideology, on civil society. Her dissertation, "Deregulating Suburbia: Space, Labor, and Belonging in the East San Fernando Valley," explores how  regional deindustrialization, the retrenchment of social services, and mass migrations in the latter twentieth century led residents to assert their place in society regardless of formal citizenship or legal status. Julia has received a number of awards and fellowships, including the USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World Doctoral Fellowship, The Haynes Lindley Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, the  J. William Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship and the Lois W. Banner award. She has published in the Journal of American Ethnic History. Before pursuing her PhD, Julia was a public school teacher in the San Fernando Valley. She holds an M.Ed. from UCLA and a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College.