Communication, Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Ritual Communication and Use Value: The South Central Farm and the Political Economy of Place
Garrett M. Broad
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

This article examines factors that led to the destruction of the South Central Farm, a 14-acre urban garden that was bulldozed after a lengthy property rights battle. The analysis is guided by 2 theoretical frameworksJ. Careys (1989) conception of the ritual and transmission views of communication, as well as J. R. Logan and H. L. Molotchs (1987) treatment of use and exchange value in the urban development growth machine. Although farm supporters blamed political corruption, this work argues that their defeat was consistent with the market-based logic of the contemporary city. While farmers demonstrated signicant use value through ritual communication, their efforts were deemed illegitimate in a political economic landscape that prioritized exchange value and was dominated by a transmission view of communication. doi:10.1111/cccr.12003

Aqui Estamos y No Nos Vamos. (We are here and we are not going away.) South Central Farmers In 2006, the South Central Farm (SCF), a 14-acre urban garden in South Los Angeles, was bulldozed at the behest of the property owner, Ralph Horowitz. More than 150 families, mostly low-income Latino1 immigrants, were evicted from the site. This act concluded another chapter in the tortuous history of a 20-year property rights battle that alternately unied and divided segments of the Los Angeles public. This article explores the historical and ideological factors that led to the destruction of the SCF, guided by two complementary theoretical frameworksJames Careys (1989) conception of the transmission and ritual views of communication and Logan and Molotchs (1987) treatment of use and exchange value (Marx, 1992) in the

Corresponding author: Garrett M. Broad; e-mail: Garrettmbroad@gmail.com

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urban growth machine. The interpretive analysis of this article draws from a review of dozens of published journalistic and governmental accounts of the case, from an archive of several years worth of blog posts on the South Central Farmers website, from printed yers and other materials distributed by the South Central Farmers, and from a textual analysis of multiple lm and video documentaries that covered the conict. The results of this work suggest that the actions of the SCFarmers were primarily characterized by ritual communication and were imbued with a depth of cultural use value. Still, this was outmatched and diminished within the contemporary political and legal domains that resolve disputes over land tenurethat is, domains that promote exchange value, growth, and prioritize a transmission view of communication. While the SCFarmers and their supporters argued that outright political corruption and back-room deals were responsible for the destruction of their urban farm, this article contends that the landowner and the politicians with whom he cooperated acted in a manner consistent with the regulations of the neoliberal American state. This neoliberal state, as theorists like Logan and Molotch (1987), David Harvey (2005, 2009) and others have outlined, is one in which the logic of markets pervades social life. In the cities of neoliberalism, political and economic power is garnered by inuential capitalists who accumulate private assets through a process in which everyday residents are dispossessed of their wealth and lands through legal processes. Indeed, contemporary cities are key strategic sites for the articulation and deployment of neoliberal practices (Brenner & Theodore, 2002). This case study of the SCFarm demonstrates this state of affairswhile residents made a claim for ownership of the land on account of their long-term urban agricultural cultivation and cultural production, the original landowners market-based claim proved to be the stronger appeal in the eyes of city courts and policymakers. This work begins with a review of the context of community gardening in urban America. It then puts Logan and Molotchs Marxist-inuenced theories of urban development in conversation with the communication theory of James Carey. In so doing, it draws from Hays (2006) spatial materialist expansion of Careys long-standing frameworkone that emphasizes the dialectical relationship between ritual and transmission communicationas a bridge between the two theories. The history, demise, and continued struggle of the SCFarm is then analyzed through these analogous theoretical lenses. Ultimately, this article continues a tradition, central to the scholarly orientation of Carey himself, of using empirical examples to investigate the role that communication plays in the production of space and in the maintenance of culture across time. It enriches this conversation by connecting theory from the eld of communication studies with literature from urban sociology; indeed, while well-regarded in a variety of disciplines, Logan and Molotchs concept of the urban growth machine has been underutilized in the work of communication scholars who are interested in the political economy of place. In addition, this work offers a new perspective for scholars of urban planning and sociology regarding the ways in which communication dynamics contribute to land-use decision-making processes
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in the neoliberal city. Concluding thoughts discuss how urban regulatory regimes might rethink their understanding of communication processes in order to grant greater legitimacy to the actions of everyday community residents, those who are involved in activities that optimize use value through acts of ritual, be it through urban agriculture or other activities that contribute to the social construction of urban spaces.
Community food security and urban community gardening

Deciencies within the contemporary American food system pose serious problems for human and environmental health. Notably, in 2010, over 17 million U.S. households (about 14.5% of Americans) experienced food insecuritythat is, at times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all of their members (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2011). Low-income communities and communities of color are far more likely to be food insecure and to live inside food deserts in which they lack access to high-quality and healthy foods (Larson, Story, & Nelson, 2009; Sloane et al., 2003). At the same time, there is increasing evidence to suggest that the contemporary food system is environmentally unsustainable in the long term. Modern agricultural practices in the United Statesthose that rely on heavy inputs of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as intensive monocultural growing practiceshave negative ramications for the viability of soil fertility, pest management, biodiversity, and broader environmental sustainability (Perfecto, Vandermeer, & Wright, 2009). Further, the food system has become de-localized, and in large part globalized, to the point that food must travel hundreds, even thousands of miles from farm to table. This process has de-linked most Americans from their food, and has endangered the self-reliance of local communities (Gussow, 1999; Kloppenburg, Hendrickson, & Stevenson, 1996). As local spaces where fresh, organic, and nutritious fruits and vegetables can be grown, community gardens have emerged as one of the methods through which these intersecting problems of the food system might be partially remedied. Urban farming and urban community gardens have a storied history in the United States. Going back to the 19th century, city-owned lots were opened up to cultivation by immigrant communities; in later decades, so-called victory gardens dotted the American landscape and provided substantial amounts of food to Americans during World War I and World War II (Gottlieb & Joshi, 2010; Saldivar-Tanak & Krasny, 2004). After decades of a consistent but minimal presence in America following these wars, community gardening experienced a resurgence. In recent years, gardens have been championed as way to improve urban community food security, what Hamm & Bellows (2003) dene as a situation in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice. Research has demonstrated that community gardens provide individuals with access
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to affordable, nutritious, and sustainably grown fruits and vegetables at the same time as they promote a variety of community-level benets. They tend to improve neighborhood safety and aesthetics, encourage positive social interaction between neighbors of different ethnicities and class backgrounds, and often serve as a site for a variety of social, educational, and cultural events (Armstrong, 2000; Baker, 2004; Saldivar-Tanak & Krasny, 2004). Further, community gardens have a special importance for many immigrant communities who are able to grow a variety of culturally signicant crops that are otherwise unavailable at local markets (Corlett, Dean, & Grivetti, 2003; Pe na, 2006). With that said, in much of the literature and public discourse about community gardens, there is a tendency to romanticize the value that these spaces can contribute to individual, community, and environmental health. Community gardens have often been raised up as places that encourage social capital formation, interaction across ethnic and linguistic difference, environmental sustainability, and food security. Absent from all but a few accounts, however, is a discussion of the limitations of community gardens, as well as of the very real conicts that can prevent the types of lofty outcomes outlined above from being achieved. Community gardens are often sites of struggle, both internal and external, and they are hardly universally recognized as an optimal use of public or private land, especially in urban areas in which space is scarce and land values are at a premium. Conicts over community garden land have emerged among and between community residents, public ofcials, and private landowners. In an analysis of these disputes, Schmelzkopf (2002) argued that contests over community garden space might be understood through Lefebvres (1996) notion of the right to the Citycommunity gardens operate as sites of resistance where community members, often ethnic minorities with little political and economic power, claim rights to a space that is contested by city ofcials and landowners who see it as an unt use of land with prime market value. However, community residents themselves are not necessarily a unied and homogenous group eitheras Bakers (2004) research demonstrated, cultural pluralism within the communities in which gardens are situated presents an additional set of challenges, as ethnic and linguistic differences (among other characteristics) contribute to the development of a heterogeneous set of interests and opinions among community gardeners and other community residents. Contestation over community garden lands, therefore, involves multiple actors whose interests can be aligned and opposed in a variety of ways. The conict over the SCF represents an ideal case study to paint a more nuanced portrait of the benets, limitations, and challenges of community gardens. As a highprole case in the global city of Los Angeles, the analysis can provide insight into how the different interests of local residents, public ofcials, and landowners interact in a value-driven dispute over community garden land. Urban development is one of the central sites of struggle between and among residents, policymakers, and developers in the contemporary city (Lefebvre, 1996), with community gardens a prime example, and is therefore a meaningful object of analysis with signicant implications for both
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communication scholarship and practice. Further, while scholarship on community gardens has increased in recent years, communication theory has been noticeably absent in these published works. This article was motivated, in part, by thinking about the ways in which communication theory might contribute to an analysis of the functioning of community gardens, as well as of the conicts that emerge when community garden space is contested. How might a communication studies perspective build upon previous critical work that has been conducted in this arena? In what ways could the inclusion of communication theory into this discussion improve our understanding of similar urban land-use conicts, beyond the domain of urban agriculture? With the use of James Careys thoughts on the role of ritual and transmission communication in society, this article introduces critical communication theory into this body of scholarship. By putting this theoretical perspective in conversation with Logan and Molotchs Marxist approach, it provides a communication-oriented analysis of how urban development operates in the contemporary American city.
Forty-rst and Alameda and the SCF

At the time of its destruction, the 14-acre SCF was generally recognized as the largest urban garden in the United States. In order to understand the broader signicance of the garden, as well as the legal, demographic, and social dynamics that made the struggle for its preservation a local and national story, it is necessary to detail the history of the land and neighborhood within which the SCF grew. The garden was located at the intersection of 41st St. and Alameda St. in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, a moniker that to many is synonymous with urban poverty and crime. In 1986, the then-vacant lot was taken over by the city of Los Angeles through an eminent domain procedure with the intention to build a power-generating waste incinerator. The Alameda-Barbara Investment Company, with Ralph Horowitz as its primary investor, was compensated a sum just under $5 million for the land. That waste incinerator, however, would never be built, thanks to the efforts of a group of residents who organized into the Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles. In what is often referred to as a triumph of environmental justice, the predominantly African American Concerned Citizens teamed up with national and grassroots environmental, slow-growth, and public interest law groups to successfully block the construction (Bullard, 1993). The land remained vacant until 1992, when in the wake of the Rodney King verdict and widespread uprisings throughout Los Angeleswith South Central as the epicenterMayor Tom Bradley was approached by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank to see if they could use the land on a temporary basis (Hoffman & Petit, 2006). The Food Bank, which was located directly across the street from the site, sent out a call to local residents and facilitated the organization of a community garden. In 1994, the city of Los Angeles, under the direction of new mayor Richard Riordan, sold the property to its own LA Harbor Department for $13.3 million. The
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Harbor Department reafrmed Mayor Bradleys agreement with the Food Bank and created a mutually revocable permit that allowed the Food Bank to continue running the site until further plans for development were made. Shortly thereafter, the Food Bank informed the gardeners that their organization would no longer be able to afford to manage the garden, but in response, the gardeners insisted that they could manage the land on their own. By that time, dozens of low-income individuals and families were cultivating the land on 360 individual plots. Primarily Mexican and Central American immigrant families, the gardeners ethnic makeup was demonstrative of the vast demographic shift that had occurred over the course of several decades in South LA, as the community went from a majority African American to a majority Latino population (Ong et al., 2008). Going by the name South Central Farmers Feeding Families, the farmers had set up an internal communal government structure, modeled off of the Mexican ejido system, that consisted of a junta council and a general assembly to make garden decisions (Hoffman & Petit, 2006). The food grown within the streets of South LA supplemented the income of many of the farmers at the same time as it provided a measure of community food security within what was otherwise a barren food landscape. As time passed, several external developments, including nearby transportation infrastructure, increased the potential economic value of the land. Former landowner Ralph Horowitzs interest in the site was renewed, but negotiations for his development corporation to repurchase the land from the city fell through (Hecht, 2006). In the late 1990s, Mayor Riordan began to discuss the conversion of the site into an industrial park as part of a broader economic development plana plan that was endorsed by the still active Concerned Citizens of South Central (Hoffman, 2006a). Still, the garden remained, and in 2002 Horowitzs new development group, Libaw-Horowitz Investment Company (LHIC), ofcially led suit against the city of Los Angeles due to breach of the original eminent domain contract. The city opted to enter into settlement negotiations with LHIC and, in 2003, agreed to sell Horowitz the property for approximately $5 million, pending the dismissal of the lawsuit and LHICs donation of 2.7 acres of the site to the city for an athletic eld. While this agreement was clearly below the market value at the time, it was approved by prominent African American Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district included the property, and was passed in a closed session of the City Council (Hecht, 2006). The move was also supported by the Concerned Citizens of South Central, who were particularly adamant about the provision of a soccer eldthey argued that this use of public space was more accessible for all members of the community than was the SCFarm (Kennedy, 2008; Morain & Chung, 2004). In January of 2004, Horowitz gave notice to the Food Bank that their revocable permit would terminate by the end of February of that year. This prompted a series of lawsuits and countersuits between the SCFarmers and Horowitz. Represented pro bono by the progressive law rm of Hadsell and Stormer, the SCFarmers argued in court that their rights had been violated due to the citys back-room closed-session negotiations with Horowitz and the below-market value settlement.
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They were granted an injunction to remain on the land until the case was resolved (Cinisomo-Lara, 2004). In late 2005, the court ruled that the sessions were legitimate and that the land must be turned over to Horowitz. Many of the 150 SCFarmer families, along with local and national allies, insisted that they would turn to civil disobedience, if necessary, to retain their adopted land. As eviction became imminent in May and June of 2006, protestors from around the region and the country, including a number of Hollywood stars, musicians, and environmental activists, joined the SCFarmers at 41st and Alameda. There were reports that Horowitz was willing to accept a sum of $16 million for the property, but attempts by politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and California Senator Barbara Boxer to negotiate with Horowitz were dead ends. So, too, were reported multimillion dollar monetary pledges from organizations like the Annenberg Foundation and the Trust for Public Land. On 13 June, 2006, bulldozers uprooted crops in order to clear a path for sheriffs deputies, who forcibly evicted hundreds of farmers and their supporters from the land and arrested 44 for obstruction (Marroquin, 2006a). Ten more protestors were arrested on 5 July, 2006, when a signicantly smaller group tried to stop bulldozers from plowing over what remained of the 14-acre garden (City News Service, 2006). A few weeks later, another judicial decision upheld the sale of the site to Horowitz, and the SCF at 41st and Alameda was ofcially no more (Hetherman, 2006b).

Ritual and transmission communication, use and exchange value

James Careys 1975 essay, A Cultural Approach to Communication, distinguished between two alternative conceptions of communication that exist within contemporary culture. The transmission view of communication, he argued, was the most commonly recognized and dominant perspective in both communication studies as a eld and throughout industrial culture. This perspective centers upon the idea of communication as the process whereby messages are transmitted and distributed in space for the control of distance and people (Carey, 1989, p 15). Hay (2006) termed this the spatial-bias of communication, a perspective that is wedded to present-minded ideas of progress through the management of space and geography. In an effort to counter this spatial-bias, Carey offered a cultural conception of communication, grounded in ritual, that he argued was, unfortunately, only a minor thread in our national thought: A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs (p.18). As outlined by Rothenbuhler (1998), ritual can be thought of as either a noun or adjective. Ritual as a noun refers to rituals as thingsrites, ceremonial events, activities, and social objectswhile ritual as an adjective refers to aspects of the everydayordinary activities, processes, and events. According to Carey, both aspects of ritual are dening elements of culture; Careys mission was to revitalize this
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notion and promote the value of ritual communication in the face of transmissions dominance. Careys work became one of the most inuential and widely used in communication studies, and is regarded as a foundation for American cultural studies. This move toward thinking of communication as ritual has proved to be useful for both empirical and theoretical scholarship. Indeed, scholars have taken notice that many acts of individuals, groups, and institutions are characterized by ritual. A recognition of this reality has had implications for the way scholars observe and study communication processes, as well as the ways that theorists make sense of the social consequences of these processes (Rothenbuhler, 2006). The concept has therefore proved to be a valuable a lens through which a variety of case studies have been conducted. Scholars have employed the ritual framework to provide insight on a range of questions, from analyses of media rituals (Couldry, 2003) to issues of human trafcking (Soderlund, 2006), among many other topics. In the more than 3 decades since its publication, researchers have also offered a variety of important critiques and additions to Careys original conception. Notably, while Careys work painted a nostalgic and nearly utopian portrait of ritual communication as the constructive binding agent of preindustrial time (Soderlund, 2006), several authors have demonstrated the ways in which ritual can be used as a tool for unjust authority and manipulation (Carey, 1998; Sella, 2007). An even more fundamental movement, perhaps, one which was actually prefaced by Carey in his original research, is that the binary conception itself is an oversimplication of reality. As Hay (2006) argued, the tensions, breakdowns, and intersections of the transmission/ritual juxtaposition represent opportunities for a new and stronger analytic framework. While this study works from the ritual/transmission separation as a guide for analysis, it is the interactive relationship between these two features that is particularly vital to a clear understanding of the events in question. Indeed, as Hay (2006) outlined in his spatial materialist expansion of Careys framework, simply countering the spatial-bias with a cultural one is not a particularly intellectually productive strategy. Rather, he argued, the two approaches should be conceived of as involved in a dialectical process, wherein space (and the spatial bias in communication research) is historically lived, practiced, and produced through bodies in motion (p. 47). This perspective is ultimately concerned with the spatial and temporal (geographic and historical) production of culture, economy and communication (p. 49). Hays intervention critiqued a practice in which transmission is dened as concerned merely with power and control, while ritual is offered as a contrast that performs a culturally restorative function in the face of transmissions dominance. Instead, his spatial materialist approach insisted that power exists in both domains, and suggested that analysts should investigate the conditions in which communicative power is exercised through time and across space. Transmission and ritual communication, therefore, while distinct, should be seen as engaged in a generative relationship.
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It is the productive capacity of the ritual/transmission dialectic that lends itself particularly well to a comparison with the Marxist political economic concept of use and exchange values, particularly as this concept was extended by urban theorists Logan and Molotch (1987). Those authors began from the foundation that urban place is a social construction that emerges as a result of intersecting searches for use and exchange values. For most local residents, use value concerns dominate their connection to place, as this relationship is, characterized by intense feelings and commitments appropriate to long-term and multifaceted social and material attachments (p. 18)these attachments, they noted, are external to the marketbased or exchange value of urban place. On the other hand, there is a consensus among politicians, land owners, and other power brokers in the modern city on a commitment to the growth machine, a concept in which real estate development is prioritized as the avenue through which these key players can continually accumulate land, wealth, and power in the city. Growth machine associates unite behind a doctrine of value-free development that prioritizes exchange values and exerts pressure on government bodies to resist residents claims for the use values that might undermine economic growth and development. The authors lamented this state of affairs, and showed that local economic growth alone does not necessarily promote the public good, largely because it does not fully exemplify the use value interests of local residents. Logan and Molotchs work should not be taken as a denitive statement that only residents can make claims in the name of the use value of urban place, and that business owners and power brokers can only seek to maximize market-based exchange value. As the authors pointed out, capitalists derive their own use values from place as well, but ultimately, their paramount interest is the protability of their operations, and their attachment to place is much weaker overall (p. 22). Similarly, homeownership gives some residents exchange value interests in addition to use value concerns, but this is usually not enough to override the interlocking community-based concerns that bring homeowners and renters together. In addition, the high proportion of renters in many low-income communities means that, for the majority of residents, the exchange value concerns that motivate growth machine advocates are not the dening aspect of residents attachment to their community. Similar to Careys framework, however, and not surprising given its Marxist foundations, it is clear that the relationship between use and exchange value is dialectical in nature, and that growth machine politics operate through the interaction of these two primary concerns. For several decades, researchers in the eld of communication and elsewhere have used Careys theories on the ritual and transmission aspects of communication to analyze a variety of aspects of social life. Similarly, Marxist concepts of use and exchange value have long been utilized in critical theory, while Logan and Molotchs extension of this work has been inuential in urban studies and geography as a theoretical tool to analyze urban development and conicts over land in urban settings. A theoretical conversation between these complementary frameworks allows
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for a communicative analysis of how value-laden land use decisions are made over contested urban places. Indeed, Logan and Molotch argue that social action largely determines the attributes of place, and Careys theory is useful as a way to explicate the communicative thrust of this spatial denition. To follow this analogy, both exchange value and a transmission view of communication have been the dominant values of industrial culture. A transmission view of communication desires to increase the speed and effect of messages as they travel in space (Carey, 1989, p. 15), while those who are committed to exchange value seek to increase the speed and effect of development and the accumulation of capital into the hands of growth machine advocates. By contrast, use value and ritual communication are inherently affective, cultural, and generally external to market concerns. Just like ritual communication, use value can be conceived of as both noun and adjectivethey both contain symbolic and functional utility for individuals in their daily practices of participating in social life. Rather than a concern with growth, residents who prioritize use value through ritual are concerned with preservation. Instead of looking to increase the speed of capital accumulation, they aim to maintain long-standing connections to cultural traditions that do not have a quantiable value. In the context of a dispute over urban place, a city that prioritizes free-market exchange values will necessarily look toward a transmission view of communicationtransmission provides a vocabulary for growth machine advocates to legitimize their control of space by capital concerns. By contrast, use values, cloaked in the language of ritual, are seen as potentially damaging to the growth machine, as they call for a legitimation of nonmarket values that are outside of the control of those interested in capital accumulation. Use value claims, while ever present in the conversation, are systematically rejected in favor of transmissiondominated discourses that support the prioritization of exchange value in land-use decision-making. The case of the SCF demonstrates how this theoretical conversation is manifested in a real-world instance of land use contestation, and it is to this topic that this article now turns.
Ritual communication and use value in the lived experience of the SCFarmers

With the establishment of the SCF, the once-vacant land was granted new and vital signicance to the surrounding community. Beyond its value as an economic or even nutritional entity, it was the cultural use value of the SCF, articulated through the language of ritual communication, that residents pointed to as its most important quality. For the more than 150 families who came to garden at the SCF, their cultivation was at heart an expression of culture and community. The SCF was almost exclusively cultivated by Latino immigrants and their rst-generation American children and families, most of whom lived within walking distance of the farm, although several traveled from miles away to participate in the project. Diverse in their own right, the gardeners included displaced Mixtec, Nahua, May,
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Seri, Yaqui, and Zapotec peoples (South Central Farmers Cooperative, n.d.), and it was clear that the SCF provided participants with a direct connection to the traditions and practices of their native lands. Pe na (2006) estimated that a range of 100150 species of plants, many with traditional Latino medicinal and nutritional signicance, were present throughout the row crops, trees, shrubs, vines, cacti, and herbaceous growth throughout the SCF. Heirloom seeds used by gardeners could be traced back 5,000 years in their origins, and the selection and arrangement of crops mirrored that of the hometown kitchen gardens, or huerto familiar, common throughout Mexico 2011). and Central America (Mares & Pena, In interviews with journalists, the SCFarmers continually referred to the farm as a site for the preservation and remembrance of ancestral customs, as well as a safe placea sanctuarywhere families could congregate and be buffered from the harsh realities of economic disadvantage and crime that often characterized South Central. This was the feeling of Tezozomoc, a farmer and spokesperson for the organization: I call it a hunger of memory. Its a place you have when you want to come back to a place and time when you felt good about your life (Kugiya, 2005). The language of community bonding and ritual permeated the remarks of the farmers, as Marylou Escobar, a Guatemalan immigrant remarked: The farmers are like one family . . . This place is like school and church for me . . . When I sit here, I forget everything (Kugiya, 2005). Indeed, the SCF was simultaneously school and churchchildren and teenagers learned traditional farming methods from friends, parents, and grandparents, while together the children, adults, and elders shared in a calming, spiritual experience that connected them to each other, to the land at 41st and Alameda, and back to the land of their home countries. Together, these activities encouraged what Pe na (2006) termed a transnationalization of a sense of place. Perhaps the greatest example of this ritual convergence and transnationalization was represented by the Mexican ejido system of governance practiced at the SCF. In Mexico, the rights of ejidos were established in Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917 as a key strategy for land reform. Formally owned by the state, ejido land was set out to be controlled by the village as a whole, with each family given the right to work portions of the collective property. Ejido land could not be sold, rented or mortgaged, either by individual families or by the collective community (Jones & Ward, 1998). While not without its problems, for decades ejidos provided some food and land security for Mexicos peasants, and was a primary site of both agricultural cultivation and decentralized, communal governance across Mexico. Up through the 1970s, more than half of Mexicos land base was transferred to ejido control, as these collectives became formidable political and economic players at the municipal level. As neoliberal market reforms took hold across Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s, Article 27 was amended to prohibit future ejido expansion and to promote the privatization of communal resources. Yet, as Perramond (2008) demonstrated, the majority of ejidos have resisted this privatization: For now, at least, the national state remains embedded in the idea of these commons (p. 368).
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Across the border in South Central Los Angeles, the 360 plots of the SCFarm were modeled off of this collective political and economic arrangement. The 14 acres were divided into eight sections, with each section represented by a captain who gathered the farmers together to hold direct democratic votes. Voting was employed when there were specic problems or issues for which a decision needed to be made, including as they developed strategies in their attempts to save the farm (Hoffman, 2006b). This system allowed an opportunity for the ritualistic procedures and values of the ejido to set the agenda for how the SCFarmers viewed their collective, in terms of both agricultural cultivation and political activism. To the SCFarmers, this exercise of traditional democracy, organized at a site of agro-ecological tribute and reclamation, was a source of signicant, if not quantiable, use value, that the farmers held in the highest regard. With that said, despite these transnational connections to native homelands, despite the intercultural and intergenerational social interaction that the farm facilitated, and despite the farms status as a site of ritualistic worship and education, the use value of the site did little to impact its ultimate value in the market. And just as the ejidos in Mexico found themselves engaged in a struggle against the neoliberal ethos of privatization, so too did the SCFarmers. Their collective was under siege by a market-based system, one that treated their ritualistic use value as an externality worth little consideration in the land-use decision-making process. This disconnect was brought into relief as they struggled to nd common ground with the landowner, Ralph Horowitz. Horowitz might have recognized that the ritualistic actions of the SCFarmers added some sort of value to the land, but this was never granted primacy over his paramount interest, which was to increase the market-based economic protability of the site. Insulated in an economic and political climate that rejected ritual communication as irrelevant to business concerns, the developer was quick to dismiss discourses that did not conform to the language of transmission as he sought to maximize economic growth. While the SCFarmers and their supporters celebrated the cultural and biological diversity on display in South LA, Horowitz patronizingly described the activities of the SCFarmers as weekend gardening on little plots of land (Laffey & Pepos, 2007). This disconnect was exacerbated by language and cultural barriers that made it even more difcult for the SCFarmers to make their case that use value gave them a right to the space. Indeed, Horowitz admitted that he had had little conversation with the gardeners on account of this language barrier. Still, this linguistic predicament was more of a symptom rather than a cause of the dispute over the SCFeven if both sides had enjoyed uent communication, it is unlikely that the SCFarmers would have been able to sway the developer to their side. Horowitzs commitment to exchange value and the growth machine meant that he was responsive to transmission-oriented discoursesin his eyes, use value concerns and the language of ritual had no place in the conversations that oversaw land use decision-making. The developer was not the only one who stood in opposition to the SCFarmers. In a twist that symbolized the intercultural conict of 21st-century South Los Angeles
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between the once-supermajority African American community and the growing majority Latino community, the Concerned Citizens of South Central, champions of environmental justice in the 1990s, opposed the preservation of the full 14-acre farm. Led by Mark Williams and, until her death in 2004, Juanita Tate, the Concerned Citizens argued that the SCFarmers disregard for property rights would make it difcult for South Central residents to obtain temporary land-use agreements in the future. They also argued that their organizationwith deep roots in the community and a storied history with that piece of landshould have more of a say in the process. The struggle between the Concerned Citizens of Los Angeles and the SCFarmers was highlighted in Scott Hamilton Kennedys (2008) documentary, The Garden, as the lmmaker clearly placed the Concerned Citizens in the role of villain. The lm, which drew from the comments of many of the SCFarmers, suggested that the Concerned Citizens teamed up with African American Councilwoman Jan Perry to cut a series of back-room deals with Horowitz in order to secure monetary gain for all involved, as well as a soccer eld on the garden site, as desired by Tate and her supporters. This conict helped to demonstrate the complex and dialectical nature of the ritual/transmission and use/exchange frameworks. For Logan and Molotch (1987), the social construction of the city takes place through the intersecting searches for use and exchange values. In this process, urban residents do not necessarily nd themselves in opposition to only government ofcials and entrepreneurs in these contests over land use; rather, through an interaction with other historical developments and the realities of economics, race, class, and gender, these efforts tend to construct a web of concerns that can lead to coalition-building among potential rivals or opposition between potential collaborators. In this instance, while the SCFarmers argued that the Concerned Citizens were seeking only monetary exchange from the land at 41st and Alameda, the Concerned Citizens earlier environmental justice victory, as well as their longstanding tenure in the community, meant that they too could claim a right to the city on the basis of use value. As Concerned Citizens spokesperson Mark Williams put it: We want to be part of the solution, but a solution that includes active recreation, passive recreation, and garden spacenot 14 acres of garden, half of it for folks who dont live in this community (Hoffman, 2006b). Using the language of ritual to assert their rights, the Concerned Citizens and Councilwoman Perry believed a soccer eld represented a valuable public space for all community members, including residents of the African American community who were generally not members of the SCFarm. This was not merely an attempt to control space for the purposes of improving its market value, but rather an attempt to preserve some of the cultural capital of the ever-diminishing African American community of South Central. The Concerned Citizens contended that the SCFarmerssome of whom were not actually from the local neighborhoodheld an illegitimate monopoly over the space, and appealed to ritualized use value as part of their demand for an alternative use of the land.
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This external strife was also matched by reports of internal conict among the SCFarmers, and together these examples demonstrate that ritual communication is not merely a salubrious antidote to the ills of transmission, but rather a more complex concept with its own negative potential (Hay, 2006; Sella, 2007). A feature story in LA Weekly in March of 2006, entitled Bushel of Complaints, painted a far different picture of the often idealized community of the SCF. There were reports of severe and sometimes violent conicts between a number of gardeners, as well as questionable authoritative actions on the part of the two primary spokespersons and leadersTezozomoc and Runa Juarez. There were allegations of unfair eviction, intimidation, forced participation in demonstrations, and mismanagement of cash contributions (Hernandez, 2006a). Around this time, Councilwoman Perry helped relocated approximately 50 families to smaller community gardens in Watts and other nearby areassome left in opposition to the leadership, while others were simply looking for greater security in land tenure (Marroquin, 2006a). Perry was repeatedly verbally attacked at LA City Council meetings by organized groups of SCFarmers, often with overtly racial epithets. In August of 2006, in response to months of sharply directed public comment, the City Council went so far as to develop new decorum rules that prohibited the use of profanity, loud or offensive comments, or any remarks addressed to a single Councilmember (Marroquin, 2006b). Another Councilmember, Dennis Zine, also claimed that he had been harassed by a large group of people when he visited the SCF (Orlov, 2006). Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa lent vocal support to the SCFarmers and worked to secure either a settlement or alternative tracts of land, but his failed efforts to save the garden over the years landed him on Tezozomoc and the farmers bad side as well (Hernandez & Zahniser, 2006). As fund-raising efforts collapsed before the destruction of the farm, Deputy Mayor Larry Frank suggested that the failure should be attributed to Tezozomoc and other SCF organizers who were never above publicly berating potential or tentative allies during the ght to save the land (Hernandez, 2006a). The most important of those potential alliesHorowitzwas repeatedly demonized by the farmers in the press, with possible anti-Semitic overtones (Hernandez, 2006c). Together, these conicts highlight the drawbacks that come from the tendency to draw strict moral binaries between use and exchange, transmission, and ritual. Neither ritual communication nor use value should not be thought of as inherently good, nor should they be seen as existing in isolation from transmission communication and exchange value, respectively. A recognition of this dialectic, however, does not suggest that the concepts are not useful at allquite the contrary, it allows for a more nuanced analysis of those moments in which ritual communication and use value concerns are outmatched in their interaction with transmission communication and exchange value. The following section demonstrates that the demise of the SCFarm was ultimately representative of how, in the context of urban land-use decisionmaking processes, growth machine advocates still nd a way for their exchange value interests to prevail, and in doing so, depend on the language of transmission to serve as their communicative rationale.
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Exchange value and transmission communication in the SCFarm decision

With the support of several inuential local and national politicians, as well as prominent entertainers and Hollywood stars, social justice and environmental activists, and innumerable members of a sympathetic broader public, the resolute SCFarmers seemed to be gaining momentum in the nal weeks before their eviction. Despite all of the hard work that went into the formation, cultivation, and protection of the SCF, as well as the signicant use value that these efforts bore, the SCFarmers were unable to preserve their space at 41st and Alameda. The SCFarmers continually cried foul and argued that the enforced land deals were illegal and unjust, but Horowitz was able to prevail nonetheless. The value of the original property ownership agreement outweighed anything that the SCFarmers, or their high-prole advocates, could bring to the legal table, and thus provided a solid manifestation of the primacy that exchange value and a transmission perspective of communication still hold in contests over urban development. There is perhaps no more concrete example of the convergence of the two theoretical frameworks utilized in this analysis than the power imbued within the written contract that ensures legal ownership of land. Property rights, which stand at the very foundation of capitalist economics and society, are solidied through legal contracts, which communicate to buyer, seller, and outside observers that authoritative control over space has been granted and must be recognized and respected by all parties. Henceforth, any claims that argue for the preservation of citizens use value hold no legal bearing, insofar as they conict with the pursuit of economic exchange. In the case of the SCF, Ralph Horowitz saw no need to offer any explanation beyond his contractual right to the land in order to reclaim the lot at 41st and Alameda. Horowitz, concerned with the dened exchange value of the site, argued in the language of transmission that the SCFarmers lacked any legitimate legal standing, and went so far as to assert that the farmers should feel indebted to him. In 2004, he argued: Theyve had approximately 12 years and 60 days for free on that landno taxes, no insurance payment, no rent, no nothing, for their own private and personal use (Flaccus, 2004). Horowitz found no reason to recognize the value that was added through the work of the SCFarmers or the value of the abundant plant life in its own right. A cultural, or ritual, view of communication did not t into his economic dealings, and this perspective was validated in the neoliberal legal processes that settled the urban development dispute. Indeed, the SCFarmers and their attorneys recognized that the legal precedent was prohibitive for their case, and they recognized as well that their cultural argument could only take them so far. Once again indicative of the interactive relationship between ritual and transmission, their strategy became multiprongedthey attempted to incorporate an argument more in line with the transmission view in order to survive in the legal arena. Were looking at what is legally right and what is morally right, the SCFarmers attorney, Dan Stormer, said (Llanos, 2006). Their argument in court focused on what they called a back-room deal, orchestrated
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by Councilwoman Jan Perry in conjunction with the City Council and Horowitz, that delivered the land to Horowitz for a price well below the current market value and closer to the original sum that Horowitz was paid during the eminent domain procedure (Kuipers, 2005). Whatever went on behind closed doors sure hurt the taxpayers, Stormer said (Hetherman, 2006a). In this sense, the SCFarmers attempted to supplement their ritualistic appeal for the use value of their farm by attacking the legal validity of the real estate exchange in the very language of transmission. Unfortunately for the SCFarmers, the courts did not agree, and saw the deal struck between Horowitz and Perry as legal, fair, and binding. Political and judicial actors were concerned only with settling the eminent domain lawsuit that had lingered on the city of Los Angeles books for over a decade. With a binding contract in hand, the judge had to rule in favor of the man who had been granted authority over that space. This perspective was crystallized in an LA Times editorial on March 11, 2006: There are lots of things that would be nice. But the land belongs to Horowitz, and he has every right to kick out the people who have been squatting there for more than a decade. The gardeners, or farmers . . . have made their plots into a special, almost magical, place. But no magic is so strong that it erases a landowners right to either his property or its fair value. (LA Gothic, 2006) Stormer wanted the court to do what was legally right and what was morally right, but he was mistaken to argue that one solution would encompass both provisions. As Councilmember Perry argued, the decision-making process boiled down to a private property dispute, and to disregard that was not dealing with the reality of the situation (Hernandez, 2006b). The case of the SCF demonstrated that, in the context of these urban development discourses and legal proceedings, the reality of the situation was that ritual communicative acts that emphasized use value were seen as inferior to the communicative acts of transmission that dened exchange value. Still, despite seemingly denitive rulings by public ofcials and the court system, years after the demolition of the SCF, the SCFarmers continued to persist, continued to farm, continued to mobilize, and continued to ght for the land at 41st and Alameda, living up to their mantra: Aqui Estamos y No Nos Vamos. Remaining grounded in a ritual ethic, a SCFarmers yer declared: The farmers of the SCF continue to seek an end to hunger and malnutrition, but their larger goal is to create a healthier diet based on respect for and revival of the cultural mores and customs that have been lost as a result of the inuence of fast food and low incomes (South Central Farmers, n.d.). Most importantly, the SCFarmers continued to tend the land, albeit in an area approximately 130 miles away from the grit of South Central LA. With the help of a large donation from an anonymous donor, the SCFarmers purchased a massive 85-acre swath of land in Buttonwillow, California, that was ofcially opened in June of 2010 (Baldwin, 2010). Although they were cultivating in a
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new location, their connection to 41st and Alameda remained, as did their opposition to the plans of developer Ralph Horowitz. Horowitzs plans to cash in on the exchange value of the land after the destruction of the SCFarm were met with steady opposition from the SCFarmers and their allies, who protested against the environmental and economic impact of several proposed developments. After a number of failed starts, in a November 2011 decision, the LA City Council voted to accept a $3.6 million contribution from Horowitz. This money would clear the way for Horowitz to sell the site to clothing manufacturers for ofce and warehouse space, and it also would waive aspects of a previous agreement in which he was required to build a park and soccer elds on the site, as the Concerned Citizens group and others demanded. Instead, that money would be placed in a general fund for city parks and recreation. The SCFarmers and other community members came out to the City Council meeting where this decision was made to voice their opinionsmany SCFarmers found themselves unied with community advocates for the park space who had once been their opposition, while other community members believed that the decision would bring much-needed jobs into the neighborhood (Tabuena-Folli, 2011). Once again, use value and ritual were shown to be multilayered concepts with different meanings for different residents. In the end, however, the interests of powerful growth machine associates dominated the discussion, as their concerns consistently outweighed those of community members. Then as before, in the struggle over the land at 41st and Alameda, communicative acts of transmission proved stronger than ritual, and the potential exchange value of the site was granted primacy over its existing use value.
Conclusion

Using the case study of the SCF, and drawing from the parallel theoretical frameworks of Carey (1989) and Logan and Molotch (1987), this essay explored the tensions between ritual communication and use value, on the one hand, and transmission communication and exchange value, on the other. It has shown the ways in which the language of ritual communication dened the use value interests of the SCFarmers. Yet, grounded in the language of transmission, the exchange value claims of the property owner were recognized as the stronger and more legitimate argument in the land use decision-making process. Drawing from Hays (2006) spatial materialist expansion, this work has also demonstrated the dialectical quality of the relationships between ritual and transmission communication, use and exchange value. Analytical work that utilizes these frameworks should keep in mind that they are most useful insofar as one recognizes that they are not strict binaries. Rather, they are engaged in a relationship, resulting in a tension that ultimately acts as a generative force in the production of space and in the maintenance of society across time. This article has provided a contribution to scholarship on community gardens, specically, and on urban development, more broadly, with the introduction of
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communication theory as a lens to analyze the political economy of urban place. By interrogating the relationship and intersections between use and exchange value, ritual and transmission communication, it offered a nuanced portrait of how community residents, government ofcials, and property owners are embedded in a complicated web of value-driven, place-based concerns. Despite this nuance, it concluded that, in this instance, transmission-oriented discourses that encouraged the accumulation of exchange value in the hands of growth machine associates remained the dominant force. Future research by communication scholars should continue to document and analyze how these key themes are manifested in other disputes over contested urban spaces. Looking forward, it seems as if the most vital question is whether the law should move to recognize ritual communication and use value on an equal footing with transmission-based discourses of exchange value. Indeed, the neoliberal conventions of growth machine politics are not a natural given, but rather are the product of a long-term and value-laden process of social construction. It is possible to imagine a city, for instance, in which natural objects within the environment are granted their own inherent legal status, as researchers like Stone (1972) and others have proffered. If this were the case, it would not have been so easy for Horowitz to order city authorities to blindly bulldoze the invaluable biodiversity that was present within the SCFarm. It is possible to imagine, as well, that the variety of other benets that the SCFarm offeredincluding its contribution to community food security and its transnationalization of a sense of placemight be considered legally recognizable items that could be levied against the exchange value interests of growth machine associates in court. If the regulatory regimes that oversee disputes over land ownership were to be reformed in such a way that the ritual communication and use value concerns of everyday residents could ourish, then urban agriculture would have a stronger opportunity to be used as a force to build bridges between cultures, generations, and ethnicities, as well as to help move society toward long-term urban environmental sustainability and community food security. Such a progressive movement would have relevance far beyond the domain of community gardens, as it could serve as the avenue through which everyday residents might legally preserve countless urban places in which use value is derived from ritual acts of communication. Communication scholars can play a role in imagining exactly what a discursive and legal space that grants more power to the ritualized use value concerns of everyday residents might look like, as well as how such drastic reforms could actually be implemented. As it stands, there is little to suggest that this radical philosophical movement is at all close to being reected in contemporary public policy. As Carey (1989) lamented decades ago, the transmission view of communication remains the dominant strain in public life. The SCFarmers may stand by their motto, Aqui Estamos y No Nos Vamos, but so, too, does their powerful opposition.
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Notes
1 I recognize that the use of the term Latino is imprecise, and that its use might raise objections from those concerned with its inability to take into account diversity with respect to gender, nationality, and ethnic background. With its use, I follow the convention of major publications like the Los Angeles Times.

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