Stefano Emanuel Bloch

Interests

Research

Place-making and contestation, crime, policing, subcultures, auto-ethnography, research methods.

Teaching

Spatial theory, cultural geography, criminology, history of geographic thought, qualitative methods.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Bloch, S. E. (2019). Going All City. University of Chicago Press.
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  Book published, with excellent reviews from across the social sciences and popular media.

Chapters

• Bloch, S. E. (2023). (Auto)ethnographies of Displacement. In Geographies of Displacement/s(pp 180-201). Routledge.
• Bloch, S. E. (2023). Stefano Bloch: Bombing. In Provocations on Media Architecture.
• Bloch, S. E., & Philips, S. (2021). A Legacy of Mapping Gang Neighborhoods in LA. In Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies(p. 752). Routledge. doi:https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429462443
• Bloch, S. E., & Phlips, S. (2021). Graffiti, Crime, and Street Culture. In Routledge Handbook of Street Culture(p. 748). Routledge. doi:978-0367248734
• Bloch, S. E. (2019). Insurgent Artscapes. In Urban Design Companion, 2.. Routledge.
• Bloch, S. E. (2016). Challenging the defense of graffiti, in defense of graffiti. In Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art(p. 440). Routledge.

Journals/Publications

• Bloch, S. E. (2022). Mapping and making gangland: A legacy of redlining and enjoining gang neighbourhoods in Los Angeles. Urban Studies, 1-13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211010426
• Bloch, S. E. (2021). Concerning community, with Lynn Staeheli. Political Geography, 1-3.
• Bloch, S. E. (2020). Are You In A Gang Database?. New York Times.
• Bloch, S. E. (2020). Cops Are Also Shooting Pets in Black and Brown Communities at Much Higher Rates. Slate.com.
• Bloch, S. E. (2020). Covid Graffiti. Crime, Media, Culture. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659020946204
• Bloch, S. E. (2020). Policing Car Space and the Legal Liminality of the Automobile. Progress in Human Geography. doi:10.1177/0309132519901306
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  The car is a primary locus for police-civilian interaction as measured by routine legal intrusion into the lives of vulnerable populations – communities of color, undocumented immigrants, and those experiencing homelessness in particular. It is the car’s ability to transport bodies as well as its legal liminality as a hybrid public-private space that facilitates such coercive and carceral contact. I therefore argue for the increased inclusion of the car and contact made with its operators and occupants within studies of policing by geographers. In this article, I provide a review of how car space and the automobile have been discussed by social scientists more broadly, followed by a call for geographers to take the lead in centering the car in research looking at everyday policing and routinized state control of people occupying and moving through public space.
• Bloch, S. E., & Martinez, D. E. (2020). Canicide by Cop: A Critical Geographical Analysis of Dog Shootings by Police in Los Angeles. Geoforum.
• Bloch, S. E. (2019). An Autoethnographic Account of Urban Restructuring in a San Fernando Valley Neighborhood, 1992–1996. Cultural Geographies. doi:10.1177/0263775819832315
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  As part of our theorization of the place-making conduct of new residents living in a gentrifying neighborhood of Los Angeles, we identify a curious paradox in which white liberals openly disavow overtly punitive policing practices, yet continue to actively call for or tacitly accept police action taken against individuals they perceive to be “out of place.” We examine this seeming contradiction in the context of a contemporary legal mechanism called a civil gang injunction, which allows for the banishment of purported “gang members” from parts of the city even in the absence of actual criminal activity—that is, on the basis of subjective perceptions about what and who constitutes a nuisance. Diverging from traditional approaches to revanchism rooted in vengeful intent, we argue that the direct and tacit endorsement of gang injunctions is motivated by what we call “implicit revanchism”—a no less harmful phenomenon that reflects the persistent and potent effects of implicit racial bias in processes of urban place-making.
• Bloch, S. E. (2019). An On-the-Ground Challenge to Uses of Spatial Big Data in Conducting Audits of Neighborhood Disorder.. Geographical Review. doi:10.1111/gere.12357
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  While big spatial data is certainly useful as a means of getting to know a place, to get closer to actually understanding a place, the rigorous and sometimes slow process of conducting on‐the‐ground ethnographic fieldwork cannot be replaced, no matter the admittedly seductive size, speed, and simplicity offered by big data. In this article, I caution against the overreliance on Google Street View (GSV) and municipal call‐for‐service, or 311, data when assessing neighborhood character and conducting research on visual disorder. Visual and municipal spatial big data such as GSV and 311 calls are increasingly relied upon given twenty‐first century computational technologies and mixed methods research proclivities. However, as I argue with examples of personally producing and researching the placement of illegal graffiti in Los Angeles and Providence’s terrains vague, there is simply no proxy for qualitative data that is collected on the ground.
• Bloch, S. E. (2019). Broken Windows Ideology and the (Mis)Reading of Graffiti. Critical Criminology. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09444-w
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  In this article, I discuss the misreading of graffiti and misidentification of graffiti writers as part of anti-gang policing informed by broken windows ideology. Based on personal observation and autoethnographic reflection, analysis of gang identification protocol, and interviews with graffiti writers who negatively define themselves against gang members as part of constructive identity formation, I argue that relying on graffiti as an indicator of gang activity calls into question the merits and efficacy of anti-gang policing. I situate this discussion within a cultural criminological framework and critique of broken windows policing.
• Bloch, S. E., & Meyer, D. (2019). Implicit Revanchism: Gang Injunctions and the Security Politics of White Liberalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. doi:10.1177/1367549417708437
• Bloch, S. E. (2018). Hardening the Border. Journal of Latin American Geography, 17(3), 264. doi:10.1353
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  This is an invited op-ed-style piece published as part of a special commentary organized by Margaret Wilder.
• Bloch, S. E. (2018). Double Take. Rhode Island School of Design Out of Line Magazine.
• Bloch, S. E. (2016). Place-Based Elicitation: Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.
• Bloch, S. E. (2016). Why do graffiti writers write on murals? The birth, life, and slow death of freeway murals in Los Angeles. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 20(2), 451-471.

Reviews

• Bloch, S. E. (2020. No Single Source, No Simple Solution: A Young Mother’s Homelessness in New York City.

Creative Productions

• Bloch, S. E. (2017. Exhibition materials. University of Arizona Museum of Art. University of Arizona Museum of Art.
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  Along with Taylor Miller, I wrote the exhibition reviews and wall-mounted descriptions for an exhibition on maps at the UA Museum of Art.