Concrete and Dust: Mapping the Sexual Terrains of Los Angeles

Concrete, Exile, and Dustfocuses on the performative nature of sexualized identity in Hollywood, the people that live in its underbelly and surrounding valleys, the sexual geographies of the place, and the ways in which sexual agency is mapped on the body and in consciousness. The cultural turn in ethnography has expanded the scope of ethnographic research methods, which now include innovative techniques that recognize and value sensuous scholarship (ethnographic texts that incorporate visual, aural, and sensory texts). Hollywood has often been a focus in critical cultural theory; absent from the field is a holistic methodological perspective that collages visual image, arts-based ethnographic and autoethnographic narratives, experimental sound, poetry, and performative writing, in order to juxtapose the conflicting and complex performative nature of Hollywood, celebrity, glamour, and sexual agency.