Miriam Greenberg is Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCSC, with emphases in urban sociology, media studies, and social theory. Her book Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World (Routledge, 2008) won the Robert Park Award for the best book in Urban Sociology in 2008-09. She is developing a collaborative project, Crisis Cities, comparing the marketing of recovery in New York post-9/11 and post-Katrina New Orleans.
Professor Greenberg focuses on the social-spatial dynamics of crisis, with particular interest in the political economy and media framing of “crisis” and “recovery” in cities over the last forty years. Her talk examines the recent turn in left circles, particularly since Obama’s victory, to “progressive branding.” She traces the emergence of this concept and points to some of its potential complications and contradictions.