Ira Katznelson
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780198279242
- eISBN:
- 9780191601910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198279248.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The most important urban studies within Marxism since the 1960s are examined by looking at the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells, the three most influential recent students of ...
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The most important urban studies within Marxism since the 1960s are examined by looking at the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells, the three most influential recent students of Marxism and the city, who, through the study of the city, have introduced space into the core of one or more of Marxism's three projects. By examining their work, it is possible to assess the current status of the respatialized Marxism they have tried to fashion, and this post‐1960s Marxism of the city has shown how Marxist social theory can powerfully illuminate things urban, and also how an explicitly urban focus can strengthen Marxism as social and empirical theory. The work accomplished in the past quarter‐century has treated Marx's project of understanding epochal change mainly as background to more current events, although it has successfully elaborated and deepened his project of the analysis of capitalism as an economic system. However, in spite of much effort, it has contributed only unsteadily to Marx's project of a social theory for capitalist societies. The limitations of these Marxist urban studies are identified as being due principally to a certain narrowness of subject matter, a lack of engagement with history, and a restrictive treatment of the issues central to, but difficult for, Marxist social theory: base and superstructure, structure and agency, and causal determination, which neither Harvey nor Castells tackled persuasively in their later work in the 1980s.Less
The most important urban studies within Marxism since the 1960s are examined by looking at the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells, the three most influential recent students of Marxism and the city, who, through the study of the city, have introduced space into the core of one or more of Marxism's three projects. By examining their work, it is possible to assess the current status of the respatialized Marxism they have tried to fashion, and this post‐1960s Marxism of the city has shown how Marxist social theory can powerfully illuminate things urban, and also how an explicitly urban focus can strengthen Marxism as social and empirical theory. The work accomplished in the past quarter‐century has treated Marx's project of understanding epochal change mainly as background to more current events, although it has successfully elaborated and deepened his project of the analysis of capitalism as an economic system. However, in spite of much effort, it has contributed only unsteadily to Marx's project of a social theory for capitalist societies. The limitations of these Marxist urban studies are identified as being due principally to a certain narrowness of subject matter, a lack of engagement with history, and a restrictive treatment of the issues central to, but difficult for, Marxist social theory: base and superstructure, structure and agency, and causal determination, which neither Harvey nor Castells tackled persuasively in their later work in the 1980s.
Ira Katznelson
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780198279242
- eISBN:
- 9780191601910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198279248.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This introductory chapter starts by discussing the vast array of definitions and typologies of the city and the many specifications of the objects of urban studies (geography, sociology, politics, ...
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This introductory chapter starts by discussing the vast array of definitions and typologies of the city and the many specifications of the objects of urban studies (geography, sociology, politics, urban economics, etc.) that are symptomatic of uncertainty not only as to whether the social sciences possess the necessary tools to analyse cities, but also as to whether the city, both as an empirical and theoretical concept, constitutes a coherent entity. It is suggested that a critique is needed of the tradition in Western social theory that tries to apprehend the partial elements of the city within an approach that treats modernity in terms of differentiation, and that Marxism's claim that it can illuminate studies of the city is precisely because it uses wide‐spanning and comprehensive concepts and hypotheses about the shape of history. The next section of the chapter looks at the differences between Marxism and the differentiation approaches to cities in the company of Max Weber, whose analysis was grounded in the large‐scale processes that underpin urban development; it also discusses the views of some of his contemporaries. The final section examines the specific content of Marxist social theory/analysis that stresses social processes and relationships, and counterposes the differentiation problematic in the analysis of cities. It also discusses the urban omissions within Marxism, and work done later (in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells, and David Harvey) that reinvigorated the urban conversation within Marxism.Less
This introductory chapter starts by discussing the vast array of definitions and typologies of the city and the many specifications of the objects of urban studies (geography, sociology, politics, urban economics, etc.) that are symptomatic of uncertainty not only as to whether the social sciences possess the necessary tools to analyse cities, but also as to whether the city, both as an empirical and theoretical concept, constitutes a coherent entity. It is suggested that a critique is needed of the tradition in Western social theory that tries to apprehend the partial elements of the city within an approach that treats modernity in terms of differentiation, and that Marxism's claim that it can illuminate studies of the city is precisely because it uses wide‐spanning and comprehensive concepts and hypotheses about the shape of history. The next section of the chapter looks at the differences between Marxism and the differentiation approaches to cities in the company of Max Weber, whose analysis was grounded in the large‐scale processes that underpin urban development; it also discusses the views of some of his contemporaries. The final section examines the specific content of Marxist social theory/analysis that stresses social processes and relationships, and counterposes the differentiation problematic in the analysis of cities. It also discusses the urban omissions within Marxism, and work done later (in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells, and David Harvey) that reinvigorated the urban conversation within Marxism.
Ira Katznelson
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780198279242
- eISBN:
- 9780191601910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198279248.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The previous chapter showed that neither David Harvey nor Manuel Castells in the early 1980s tackled the limitations of Marxist urban studies persuasively, each in his own way abandoning the project ...
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The previous chapter showed that neither David Harvey nor Manuel Castells in the early 1980s tackled the limitations of Marxist urban studies persuasively, each in his own way abandoning the project of Marxist social theory, whose central questions concern the joining together of structure and agency in a single hand. This chapter presents an analysis of the route taken by Friedrich Engels in his early work on cities in The Condition of the Working Class in England; in his compressed discussion of Manchester and other early industrial revolution urban centres, Engels blazed a road that has not been travelled either by Marxism or by students of the city, and identified mechanisms that connect structure and agency. The provocative union of Marxism and the city proposed by Engels had nothing to say about the history, character, and activities of national states. His contribution, rather, lies in the way he raised fundamental questions in three dimensions that correspond to each of Marx's theoretical projects: (1) questions about the linkages between large‐scale processes, principally the development of capitalism, and the emergence of the modern capitalist city; (2) questions about the linkages between the city as a point in the accumulation process and its internal forms; and (3) questions about the linkages between these forms and the development of class and group consciousness. These are the tasks entailed in joining Marxism and the city, and these are the questions explored in the remaining chapters of the book.Less
The previous chapter showed that neither David Harvey nor Manuel Castells in the early 1980s tackled the limitations of Marxist urban studies persuasively, each in his own way abandoning the project of Marxist social theory, whose central questions concern the joining together of structure and agency in a single hand. This chapter presents an analysis of the route taken by Friedrich Engels in his early work on cities in The Condition of the Working Class in England; in his compressed discussion of Manchester and other early industrial revolution urban centres, Engels blazed a road that has not been travelled either by Marxism or by students of the city, and identified mechanisms that connect structure and agency. The provocative union of Marxism and the city proposed by Engels had nothing to say about the history, character, and activities of national states. His contribution, rather, lies in the way he raised fundamental questions in three dimensions that correspond to each of Marx's theoretical projects: (1) questions about the linkages between large‐scale processes, principally the development of capitalism, and the emergence of the modern capitalist city; (2) questions about the linkages between the city as a point in the accumulation process and its internal forms; and (3) questions about the linkages between these forms and the development of class and group consciousness. These are the tasks entailed in joining Marxism and the city, and these are the questions explored in the remaining chapters of the book.
Diane Singerman and Paul Amar
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789774162893
- eISBN:
- 9781617970269
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774162893.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This introductory chapter presents some collective findings on the novelty and complexity of globalizing Cairo. It launches a set of questions that will lead to more productive, critical, and ...
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This introductory chapter presents some collective findings on the novelty and complexity of globalizing Cairo. It launches a set of questions that will lead to more productive, critical, and democratic approaches for producing knowledge about the Middle East. It lays out the specificities of the Cairo School of Urban Studies' agenda and methods, and, in particular, the book's critique and careful appropriation of cosmopolitanism. In brief, the chapter recognizes that cosmopolitanism has often been imbedded in transnationalist, normative, universalist, and imperialist discourses. Nevertheless, when reworked through critical scholarship and public action, cosmopolitanism may inform an emancipatory counter-ethic beyond the limits of nationalism, fear, and narrow identity politics, one that complements the Cairo School's experiments with post-positivist research methodologies. However, first, the chapter returns to the events that confirmed Cairo's reemergence as a critical site for action and inquiry, and which made the release of this book timely.Less
This introductory chapter presents some collective findings on the novelty and complexity of globalizing Cairo. It launches a set of questions that will lead to more productive, critical, and democratic approaches for producing knowledge about the Middle East. It lays out the specificities of the Cairo School of Urban Studies' agenda and methods, and, in particular, the book's critique and careful appropriation of cosmopolitanism. In brief, the chapter recognizes that cosmopolitanism has often been imbedded in transnationalist, normative, universalist, and imperialist discourses. Nevertheless, when reworked through critical scholarship and public action, cosmopolitanism may inform an emancipatory counter-ethic beyond the limits of nationalism, fear, and narrow identity politics, one that complements the Cairo School's experiments with post-positivist research methodologies. However, first, the chapter returns to the events that confirmed Cairo's reemergence as a critical site for action and inquiry, and which made the release of this book timely.
Jenny Lin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132604
- eISBN:
- 9781526139047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai ...
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Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai offers the first in-depth examination of turn of the twenty-first century Shanghai-based art and design – from state-sponsored exhibitions to fashionable cultural complexes to cutting edge films and installations. This book offers a counter-touristic view of one of the world’s fastest developing megacities that penetrates the contradictions and buried layers of specific locales and artifacts of visual culture. Informed by years of in-situ research including interviews with artists and designers, the book looks beyond contemporary art’s global hype to reveal persistent socio-political tensions accompanying Shanghai’s explosive transitions from semi-colonial capitalism to Maoist socialism to Communist Party-sponsored capitalism. Analyses of exemplary design projects such as Xintiandi and Shanghai Tang, and artworks by Liu Jianhua, Yang Fudong, Gu Wenda and more reveal how Shanghai’s global aesthetics construct glamorizing artifices that mask historically-rooted cross-cultural conflicts between vying notions of foreign-influenced modernity versus anti-colonialist nationalism, and the city’s repressed socialist past versus consumerist present. The book focuses on Shanghai-based art and design from the 1990s-2000s, the decades of the city’s most rapid post-socialist development, while also attending to pivotal Republican and Mao Era examples. Challenging the “East-meets-West” clichés that characterize discussions of urban Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art, this book illuminates critical issues facing today’s artists, architects, and designers, and provides an essential field guide for students of art, design, art history, urban studies, and Chinese culture.Less
Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai offers the first in-depth examination of turn of the twenty-first century Shanghai-based art and design – from state-sponsored exhibitions to fashionable cultural complexes to cutting edge films and installations. This book offers a counter-touristic view of one of the world’s fastest developing megacities that penetrates the contradictions and buried layers of specific locales and artifacts of visual culture. Informed by years of in-situ research including interviews with artists and designers, the book looks beyond contemporary art’s global hype to reveal persistent socio-political tensions accompanying Shanghai’s explosive transitions from semi-colonial capitalism to Maoist socialism to Communist Party-sponsored capitalism. Analyses of exemplary design projects such as Xintiandi and Shanghai Tang, and artworks by Liu Jianhua, Yang Fudong, Gu Wenda and more reveal how Shanghai’s global aesthetics construct glamorizing artifices that mask historically-rooted cross-cultural conflicts between vying notions of foreign-influenced modernity versus anti-colonialist nationalism, and the city’s repressed socialist past versus consumerist present. The book focuses on Shanghai-based art and design from the 1990s-2000s, the decades of the city’s most rapid post-socialist development, while also attending to pivotal Republican and Mao Era examples. Challenging the “East-meets-West” clichés that characterize discussions of urban Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art, this book illuminates critical issues facing today’s artists, architects, and designers, and provides an essential field guide for students of art, design, art history, urban studies, and Chinese culture.
Christine Hentschel
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694310
- eISBN:
- 9781452952475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694310.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
The introductory chapter charts the rediscovery of space as a prime strategy of security governance and city making in post-apartheid urban South Africa and other cities around the world. It suggests ...
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The introductory chapter charts the rediscovery of space as a prime strategy of security governance and city making in post-apartheid urban South Africa and other cities around the world. It suggests how to write Durban, a South African city with a dramatic history of spatial ordering, into urban and political theory – hence challenging the divisions still dominant in urban studies between cities of the North and cities of the South.Less
The introductory chapter charts the rediscovery of space as a prime strategy of security governance and city making in post-apartheid urban South Africa and other cities around the world. It suggests how to write Durban, a South African city with a dramatic history of spatial ordering, into urban and political theory – hence challenging the divisions still dominant in urban studies between cities of the North and cities of the South.
Kacper Pobłocki
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199827657
- eISBN:
- 9780199950461
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827657.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter focuses on urban change, and the social tensions it triggered, in the Polish city of Łódź. Kacper Pobłocki embeds the discussion in the feature film, Knife in Water, by Roman Polanski, ...
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This chapter focuses on urban change, and the social tensions it triggered, in the Polish city of Łódź. Kacper Pobłocki embeds the discussion in the feature film, Knife in Water, by Roman Polanski, casting it against the urban realities of 1960s socialist Łódź. Urban collective consumption lay at the very heart of an emergent postwar Eastern Europe, and in the case of Łódź, Poland’s famous textile center, water was central to social conflict. Pobłocki links public grievances over social mobility with concurrent displays of conspicuous consumption (particularly centered on private leisure) as well as the overconsumption of urban (and “public”) amenities such as water. In Poland, he argues, the struggles over urban space and collective consumption led to the dramatic events of 1968, and left an indelible mark on contemporary Polish society. Poland’s trajectory, in fact, should be understood as a different version of the same “urban Keynesianism” emerging on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Ultimately, Pobłocki concludes, there are reasons to see the events of 1968 East and West as related: in both cases, the “urban crisis” of the 1960s was a clash between conflicting visions of what constituted meaningful urban life.Less
This chapter focuses on urban change, and the social tensions it triggered, in the Polish city of Łódź. Kacper Pobłocki embeds the discussion in the feature film, Knife in Water, by Roman Polanski, casting it against the urban realities of 1960s socialist Łódź. Urban collective consumption lay at the very heart of an emergent postwar Eastern Europe, and in the case of Łódź, Poland’s famous textile center, water was central to social conflict. Pobłocki links public grievances over social mobility with concurrent displays of conspicuous consumption (particularly centered on private leisure) as well as the overconsumption of urban (and “public”) amenities such as water. In Poland, he argues, the struggles over urban space and collective consumption led to the dramatic events of 1968, and left an indelible mark on contemporary Polish society. Poland’s trajectory, in fact, should be understood as a different version of the same “urban Keynesianism” emerging on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Ultimately, Pobłocki concludes, there are reasons to see the events of 1968 East and West as related: in both cases, the “urban crisis” of the 1960s was a clash between conflicting visions of what constituted meaningful urban life.
Ursula K. Heise
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335637
- eISBN:
- 9780199869022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335637.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity ...
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Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity and community through portrayals of population growth and urban spaces. Works from the 1960s and 1970s represent “overpopulation” in the form of urban crowding that forces individuals to remain confined to the local. Works from the 1990s, by contrast, such as David Brin’s science fiction novel Earth or John Cage’s poem “Overpopulation and Art,” imagine in sometimes utopian fashion how digital technologies open up virtual spaces that span the globe and enable new kinds of identity and community. The more recent texts highlight how the experience of virtual spaces has come to form part of living in local places, and thereby highlight the necessity of integrating such mediated experiences into environmentalist theories of inhabitation. They also provide innovative narrative and lyrical solutions to the formal problem of how to represent global connectedness in literary texts.Less
Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity and community through portrayals of population growth and urban spaces. Works from the 1960s and 1970s represent “overpopulation” in the form of urban crowding that forces individuals to remain confined to the local. Works from the 1990s, by contrast, such as David Brin’s science fiction novel Earth or John Cage’s poem “Overpopulation and Art,” imagine in sometimes utopian fashion how digital technologies open up virtual spaces that span the globe and enable new kinds of identity and community. The more recent texts highlight how the experience of virtual spaces has come to form part of living in local places, and thereby highlight the necessity of integrating such mediated experiences into environmentalist theories of inhabitation. They also provide innovative narrative and lyrical solutions to the formal problem of how to represent global connectedness in literary texts.
Ronald L. Grimes
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195301441
- eISBN:
- 9780199850952
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195301441.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter is a dialogue about two ritually significant places, a rural performance barn and an urban ritual studies lab. This chapter, along with Susan L Scott, contemplate the possibilities for ...
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This chapter is a dialogue about two ritually significant places, a rural performance barn and an urban ritual studies lab. This chapter, along with Susan L Scott, contemplate the possibilities for ritual and performance in starkly contrasting spaces: a barn near Walkerton, Ontario, site of devastating, tainted-water scandal in 2000, and the Ritual Studies Lab, a workshop housed in a university town. The Lab was a site of experimentation and research on ritual for thirty years.Less
This chapter is a dialogue about two ritually significant places, a rural performance barn and an urban ritual studies lab. This chapter, along with Susan L Scott, contemplate the possibilities for ritual and performance in starkly contrasting spaces: a barn near Walkerton, Ontario, site of devastating, tainted-water scandal in 2000, and the Ritual Studies Lab, a workshop housed in a university town. The Lab was a site of experimentation and research on ritual for thirty years.
Rowland Atkinson and Sarah Blandy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784995300
- eISBN:
- 9781526121035
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784995300.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Domestic Fortress offers a critical analysis of the contemporary home and its close relationship to fear and security. It considers the important connection between the private home, political life ...
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Domestic Fortress offers a critical analysis of the contemporary home and its close relationship to fear and security. It considers the important connection between the private home, political life and the economy that we term tessellated neoliberalism. The book considers the nucleus of the domestic home as part of a much larger archipelago frontline of homes and gated communities that appear as a new home front set against diverse sources of social anxiety. These range from questions of invasion (such as burglary or identity theft) to those of security (the home as a financial resource in retirement and as a place of refuge in an unpredictable world). A culture of fear has been responded to through increasingly emphatic retreats by homeowners into fortified dwellings, palatial houses, concealed bunker pads and gated developments. Many feature elaborate security measures; alarms, CCTV systems, motion-sensing lights and impregnable panic rooms. Domestic Fortresslocates the anxieties driving these responses to the corporate and political manufacturing of fear, the triumph of neoliberal models of homeownership and related modes of social individualisation and risk that permeate society today. Domestic Fortress draws on perspectives and research from criminology, urban studies and sociology to offer a sense of the private home as a site of wavering anxiety and security, exclusion and warmth, alongside dreams of retreat and autonomy that mesh closely with the defining principles of neoliberal governance.
Even as the home is acknowledged to play a vital role in sheltering us from the elements so it has now come to be a locus around which many anxieties are shut-out. The home allows us to lock out the daily hardships of life, but is also a site from which we witness a wide range of troubling phenomena: the insecurities of the workplace, plans for our future welfare, internationalized terror, geo-political warfare, ecological catastrophes, feelings of loss and uncertainty around identity, to say nothing of the daily risks of flood, fire and other disasters.
The home now plays a complex dual role that slips between offering us protection from these worries while also offering the nightmare of its own possible invasion, erosion or destruction. On top of these concerns entire industries have been built that sell a war against strangers, dirt and disaster. This of course includes the insurance industry itself, but also the use of technologies that both protect the home and make it effectively more impregnable to casual social contact as well as the proliferation of products devoted to domestic cleanliness. Domestic Fortress considers the fantasies and realities of dangers to the contemporary home and its inhabitants and details the wide range of actions taken in the pursuit of total safety.Less
Domestic Fortress offers a critical analysis of the contemporary home and its close relationship to fear and security. It considers the important connection between the private home, political life and the economy that we term tessellated neoliberalism. The book considers the nucleus of the domestic home as part of a much larger archipelago frontline of homes and gated communities that appear as a new home front set against diverse sources of social anxiety. These range from questions of invasion (such as burglary or identity theft) to those of security (the home as a financial resource in retirement and as a place of refuge in an unpredictable world). A culture of fear has been responded to through increasingly emphatic retreats by homeowners into fortified dwellings, palatial houses, concealed bunker pads and gated developments. Many feature elaborate security measures; alarms, CCTV systems, motion-sensing lights and impregnable panic rooms. Domestic Fortresslocates the anxieties driving these responses to the corporate and political manufacturing of fear, the triumph of neoliberal models of homeownership and related modes of social individualisation and risk that permeate society today. Domestic Fortress draws on perspectives and research from criminology, urban studies and sociology to offer a sense of the private home as a site of wavering anxiety and security, exclusion and warmth, alongside dreams of retreat and autonomy that mesh closely with the defining principles of neoliberal governance.
Even as the home is acknowledged to play a vital role in sheltering us from the elements so it has now come to be a locus around which many anxieties are shut-out. The home allows us to lock out the daily hardships of life, but is also a site from which we witness a wide range of troubling phenomena: the insecurities of the workplace, plans for our future welfare, internationalized terror, geo-political warfare, ecological catastrophes, feelings of loss and uncertainty around identity, to say nothing of the daily risks of flood, fire and other disasters.
The home now plays a complex dual role that slips between offering us protection from these worries while also offering the nightmare of its own possible invasion, erosion or destruction. On top of these concerns entire industries have been built that sell a war against strangers, dirt and disaster. This of course includes the insurance industry itself, but also the use of technologies that both protect the home and make it effectively more impregnable to casual social contact as well as the proliferation of products devoted to domestic cleanliness. Domestic Fortress considers the fantasies and realities of dangers to the contemporary home and its inhabitants and details the wide range of actions taken in the pursuit of total safety.
Isabelle Anguelovski
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262026925
- eISBN:
- 9780262322188
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262026925.003.0001
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
This chapter briefly presents the experience of refugees and youth engaged in The Food Project urban farm and greenhouse in Boston and sets the stage for exploring processes and dynamics that allow ...
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This chapter briefly presents the experience of refugees and youth engaged in The Food Project urban farm and greenhouse in Boston and sets the stage for exploring processes and dynamics that allow residents of historically marginalized neighborhoods to overcome long-term environmental degradation, trauma, and damage. It also argues for the importance of bringing in questions of loss, place, and community in urban environmental justice scholarship, which have been traditional overlooked. Last, it introduces the three neighborhoods around which this study is built: Dudley (a Capeverdean, West African, African American, and Latino neighbourhood) in Boston, CayoHueso (a traditionally Afro-Cuban neighbourhood) in Habana, and Casc Antic (a Latino, North African, and Pakistani neighbourhood) in Barcelona. It ends with an overview of the qualitative research design, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, and chapter and argument overview of the book.Less
This chapter briefly presents the experience of refugees and youth engaged in The Food Project urban farm and greenhouse in Boston and sets the stage for exploring processes and dynamics that allow residents of historically marginalized neighborhoods to overcome long-term environmental degradation, trauma, and damage. It also argues for the importance of bringing in questions of loss, place, and community in urban environmental justice scholarship, which have been traditional overlooked. Last, it introduces the three neighborhoods around which this study is built: Dudley (a Capeverdean, West African, African American, and Latino neighbourhood) in Boston, CayoHueso (a traditionally Afro-Cuban neighbourhood) in Habana, and Casc Antic (a Latino, North African, and Pakistani neighbourhood) in Barcelona. It ends with an overview of the qualitative research design, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, and chapter and argument overview of the book.
Kevin T. Smiley
Michael Oluf Emerson (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479856794
- eISBN:
- 9781479882922
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479856794.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities ...
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Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities (such as Houston) are dedicated to an unfettered free market ethos, individualism, and tolerance of high levels of inequality and decentralized governance, among other characteristics. By contrast, People Cities (such as Copenhagen) have a much greater collective ideal that drives the city toward attenuating inequality, strengthening government, and sanctioning “people-focused” policies and urban form. The first four chapters of the book showcase “how it happens” by introducing the perspective and studying the histories of the cities. We also showcase how government deeply shapes each type of city as well as the critical role that residents play in underpinning or contesting their city. The second part of the book (chapters 5 through 9) investigates “why it matters.” We discuss the implications of living in a Market City or People City for transportation, land-use planning, the environment, diversity, inequality, segregation, crime, and immigration. We also extend our perspective to a wider range of cities, making suggestions on how to apply the ideas presented in the book. Finally, we conclude by discussing how social change within the city might occur and best be accomplished.Less
Cities are diverging in our contemporary era. Specifically, we use our analysis of Copenhagen and Houston to argue that cities exist for one of two reasons: for markets or for people. Market Cities (such as Houston) are dedicated to an unfettered free market ethos, individualism, and tolerance of high levels of inequality and decentralized governance, among other characteristics. By contrast, People Cities (such as Copenhagen) have a much greater collective ideal that drives the city toward attenuating inequality, strengthening government, and sanctioning “people-focused” policies and urban form. The first four chapters of the book showcase “how it happens” by introducing the perspective and studying the histories of the cities. We also showcase how government deeply shapes each type of city as well as the critical role that residents play in underpinning or contesting their city. The second part of the book (chapters 5 through 9) investigates “why it matters.” We discuss the implications of living in a Market City or People City for transportation, land-use planning, the environment, diversity, inequality, segregation, crime, and immigration. We also extend our perspective to a wider range of cities, making suggestions on how to apply the ideas presented in the book. Finally, we conclude by discussing how social change within the city might occur and best be accomplished.
Xuefei Ren
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529205473
- eISBN:
- 9781529205510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529205473.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
The Chicago School of urban sociology was not only influential in the U.S., but also instrumental for introducing sociology to China in the early 20th century. Drawing upon archival materials from ...
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The Chicago School of urban sociology was not only influential in the U.S., but also instrumental for introducing sociology to China in the early 20th century. Drawing upon archival materials from the University of Chicago’s special collection, this chapter examines Robert Park’s connections to China in the 1930s and highlights the pivotal role of the Chicago School in the education of the first generation of Chinese sociologists. The chapter argues that there is still much to be learned from the Chicago School, such as its effort to formulate a reflective research agenda in The City (1925), and Robert Park’s gesture of comparing cities across time and places. It suggests reviving Park’s comparative spirit and engaging comparison in the next course of urban China studies.Less
The Chicago School of urban sociology was not only influential in the U.S., but also instrumental for introducing sociology to China in the early 20th century. Drawing upon archival materials from the University of Chicago’s special collection, this chapter examines Robert Park’s connections to China in the 1930s and highlights the pivotal role of the Chicago School in the education of the first generation of Chinese sociologists. The chapter argues that there is still much to be learned from the Chicago School, such as its effort to formulate a reflective research agenda in The City (1925), and Robert Park’s gesture of comparing cities across time and places. It suggests reviving Park’s comparative spirit and engaging comparison in the next course of urban China studies.
Koompong Noobanjong
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888208333
- eISBN:
- 9789888313471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208333.003.0005
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural Theory and Criticism
Created in 1782, the Royal Field—or Sanam Luang—is a large open space located at the heart of Bangkok, occupying a prominent space both in the urban fabric of the city and in the collective psyche of ...
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Created in 1782, the Royal Field—or Sanam Luang—is a large open space located at the heart of Bangkok, occupying a prominent space both in the urban fabric of the city and in the collective psyche of Thai people. Apart from serving the monarchy and existing power holders, this polysemic landscape has functioned as a site where major contestants to power and authority in modern Thailand had collided in making their marks, claims, demands, and representations. Via the concept of urban palimpsest, this chapter first examines the Royal Field in terms of a symbolic device for ruling authority to manifest, legitimize, and maintain power. The scholarly focus then shifts to the topic of a contested space, where different groups of contenders had re-appropriated Sanam Luang to perform their social and political activities as well as to create their modern identities. The analytical and critical inquiries on the Royal Field essentially argue that it is in fact a dynamic urban palimpsest, whose meanings have: 1) coexisted, converged, contradicted, and contested with one another; 2) been subjected to further appropriations and contentions; and 3) resulted in slippage of public memories, thus generating even more complex and vibrant interpretations.Less
Created in 1782, the Royal Field—or Sanam Luang—is a large open space located at the heart of Bangkok, occupying a prominent space both in the urban fabric of the city and in the collective psyche of Thai people. Apart from serving the monarchy and existing power holders, this polysemic landscape has functioned as a site where major contestants to power and authority in modern Thailand had collided in making their marks, claims, demands, and representations. Via the concept of urban palimpsest, this chapter first examines the Royal Field in terms of a symbolic device for ruling authority to manifest, legitimize, and maintain power. The scholarly focus then shifts to the topic of a contested space, where different groups of contenders had re-appropriated Sanam Luang to perform their social and political activities as well as to create their modern identities. The analytical and critical inquiries on the Royal Field essentially argue that it is in fact a dynamic urban palimpsest, whose meanings have: 1) coexisted, converged, contradicted, and contested with one another; 2) been subjected to further appropriations and contentions; and 3) resulted in slippage of public memories, thus generating even more complex and vibrant interpretations.
Swati Chattopadhyay
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679317
- eISBN:
- 9781452947266
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679317.001.0001
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural Theory and Criticism
Cities are more than concrete and steel infrastructure. But modern urban theory does not have the language to describe and debate the vital component of urban life that is lived on the streets of ...
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Cities are more than concrete and steel infrastructure. But modern urban theory does not have the language to describe and debate the vital component of urban life that is lived on the streets of cities and towns. This book presents a nuanced argument for a new vocabulary of the city, proposing a way of analyzing the materiality of the urban that captures the ever-changing element of human experience. Urban life is intrinsically messy and usually refuses to conform to the rigid views laid down in much of urban studies theory. The book looks at urban life in India with a fresh perspective that incorporates the everyday and the unstructured. As the first to apply the theories of subalternity for an understanding of urban history, the book provides an in-depth study of vehicular art, street cricket, political wall writing, and religious festivities that links the visual and spatial attributes of these popular cultural forms with the imagination and practices of the city. She contends that these practices have a direct impact on the configuration and knowledge of public space, and the political potential of the people inhabiting cities.Less
Cities are more than concrete and steel infrastructure. But modern urban theory does not have the language to describe and debate the vital component of urban life that is lived on the streets of cities and towns. This book presents a nuanced argument for a new vocabulary of the city, proposing a way of analyzing the materiality of the urban that captures the ever-changing element of human experience. Urban life is intrinsically messy and usually refuses to conform to the rigid views laid down in much of urban studies theory. The book looks at urban life in India with a fresh perspective that incorporates the everyday and the unstructured. As the first to apply the theories of subalternity for an understanding of urban history, the book provides an in-depth study of vehicular art, street cricket, political wall writing, and religious festivities that links the visual and spatial attributes of these popular cultural forms with the imagination and practices of the city. She contends that these practices have a direct impact on the configuration and knowledge of public space, and the political potential of the people inhabiting cities.
Michael Dear and Nicholas Dahmann
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665754
- eISBN:
- 9781452946559
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665754.003.0004
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural Theory and Criticism
Over the past two decades, critical engagements with the L.A. School have become increasingly common in geography, sociology, and urban studies as well as in American studies, anthropology, ...
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Over the past two decades, critical engagements with the L.A. School have become increasingly common in geography, sociology, and urban studies as well as in American studies, anthropology, architecture, history, and international relations. However, the discipline of urban politics remains relatively untouched. This chapter brings urban politics, urban political economy, and the L.A. school of urbanism into the same discursive space. It discusses the L.A. School’s account of postmodern urbanism, which offers an especially productive template for generating alternative urban theories. In postmodern urbanism, the evacuated city core no longer dominates its region; instead the hinterlands organize what is left of the center. This means that urban space, time, and causality have been altered. The remainder of the chapter explores some consequences of this fundamental realignment.Less
Over the past two decades, critical engagements with the L.A. School have become increasingly common in geography, sociology, and urban studies as well as in American studies, anthropology, architecture, history, and international relations. However, the discipline of urban politics remains relatively untouched. This chapter brings urban politics, urban political economy, and the L.A. school of urbanism into the same discursive space. It discusses the L.A. School’s account of postmodern urbanism, which offers an especially productive template for generating alternative urban theories. In postmodern urbanism, the evacuated city core no longer dominates its region; instead the hinterlands organize what is left of the center. This means that urban space, time, and causality have been altered. The remainder of the chapter explores some consequences of this fundamental realignment.
Hannah Knox
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526100733
- eISBN:
- 9781526132376
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526100733.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
We know from recent work in urban studies that the role of local government in administering cities has changed significantly in recent years. The provision of local public services has gradually ...
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We know from recent work in urban studies that the role of local government in administering cities has changed significantly in recent years. The provision of local public services has gradually been moving out of local government control, becoming the responsibility of networks of charities, volunteers and private organisations, which now have to work in partnership with local authorities to deliver metropolitan public services. This chapter explores the effects of this shift in urban governance on political practice by exploring ethnographically the experience of governing a city under such changing conditions. The analysis takes as its focus environmental policymaking and approaches this set of practices from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective. Building on this ethnography the chapter illustrates how the work of doing politics in Manchester hinges on a tension between a desire for inclusion in decision-making and a parallel resistance to incorporation into specific political networks and regimes.Less
We know from recent work in urban studies that the role of local government in administering cities has changed significantly in recent years. The provision of local public services has gradually been moving out of local government control, becoming the responsibility of networks of charities, volunteers and private organisations, which now have to work in partnership with local authorities to deliver metropolitan public services. This chapter explores the effects of this shift in urban governance on political practice by exploring ethnographically the experience of governing a city under such changing conditions. The analysis takes as its focus environmental policymaking and approaches this set of practices from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective. Building on this ethnography the chapter illustrates how the work of doing politics in Manchester hinges on a tension between a desire for inclusion in decision-making and a parallel resistance to incorporation into specific political networks and regimes.
Matthew L. Reznicek
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781942954323
- eISBN:
- 9781786944320
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954323.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This is the first book to explore Irish women’s novels and the representation of Paris, which draws these writers into a recognizably European literary tradition. By reasserting the centrality of ...
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This is the first book to explore Irish women’s novels and the representation of Paris, which draws these writers into a recognizably European literary tradition. By reasserting the centrality of Paris, this book draws connections between Irish women writers and European writers, forging new points of contact between Irish literature and canonical figures like Goethe, Balzac, and Zola through the shared interest in the socio-economic development of modernity. The European Metropolis not only expands the map of Irish Studies, but also to expand the canon of and the critical framework in which scholars situate these novels. Moreover, this book expands our critical understanding of the urban and female spheres of the modern metropolis.Less
This is the first book to explore Irish women’s novels and the representation of Paris, which draws these writers into a recognizably European literary tradition. By reasserting the centrality of Paris, this book draws connections between Irish women writers and European writers, forging new points of contact between Irish literature and canonical figures like Goethe, Balzac, and Zola through the shared interest in the socio-economic development of modernity. The European Metropolis not only expands the map of Irish Studies, but also to expand the canon of and the critical framework in which scholars situate these novels. Moreover, this book expands our critical understanding of the urban and female spheres of the modern metropolis.
Lindsey Dillon and Julie Sze
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479894567
- eISBN:
- 9781479822447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479894567.003.0011
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter brings an interdisciplinary and social justice perspective to the concept and practices of "sustainability" by foregrounding the work of anti-racist struggles in U.S. cities, like Black ...
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This chapter brings an interdisciplinary and social justice perspective to the concept and practices of "sustainability" by foregrounding the work of anti-racist struggles in U.S. cities, like Black Lives Matter. It asserts that anti-racist struggles have always been struggles about life-sustaining environments, at least as "the environment" is defined by the environmental justice movement as the place where people "live, work, and play. It suggests an alternative notion of sustainability, as it has long been theorized by and lived through black and brown lives, focusing on breath and breathing as an intimate geography of race and toxic exposure. In so doing it contributes to the challenge to sustainability practitioners to rethink their ideologies and practices through a politics of difference.Less
This chapter brings an interdisciplinary and social justice perspective to the concept and practices of "sustainability" by foregrounding the work of anti-racist struggles in U.S. cities, like Black Lives Matter. It asserts that anti-racist struggles have always been struggles about life-sustaining environments, at least as "the environment" is defined by the environmental justice movement as the place where people "live, work, and play. It suggests an alternative notion of sustainability, as it has long been theorized by and lived through black and brown lives, focusing on breath and breathing as an intimate geography of race and toxic exposure. In so doing it contributes to the challenge to sustainability practitioners to rethink their ideologies and practices through a politics of difference.
Victor Valle and Rodolfo D. Torres
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814784044
- eISBN:
- 9780814724705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814784044.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This concluding chapter makes the general case for grounding a twenty-first-century critical Latina/o urbanism in something provisionally called the “cultural political economy” in an attempt to ...
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This concluding chapter makes the general case for grounding a twenty-first-century critical Latina/o urbanism in something provisionally called the “cultural political economy” in an attempt to resolve lingering theoretical tensions between socioeconomic (structural) and culture-based (semiotic) approaches to the neoliberal present. This postdisciplinary interpretation reaffirms the centrality of capitalist formations in the study of the Latino urban question by embedding social and cultural categories in the lived spaces of the macroeconomic order. Using this approach, the chapter sketches a few strategic lines to confront changing class formations and deindustrialization in neoliberal capitalism's period of indefinitely prolonged crisis. It then explores the ways the current economic crisis implicates the scholarly projects of Latina/o and Chicana/o urban studies and how these interpretations of cultural political economy might reconfigure these projects to answer the continued attacks from the populist Right.Less
This concluding chapter makes the general case for grounding a twenty-first-century critical Latina/o urbanism in something provisionally called the “cultural political economy” in an attempt to resolve lingering theoretical tensions between socioeconomic (structural) and culture-based (semiotic) approaches to the neoliberal present. This postdisciplinary interpretation reaffirms the centrality of capitalist formations in the study of the Latino urban question by embedding social and cultural categories in the lived spaces of the macroeconomic order. Using this approach, the chapter sketches a few strategic lines to confront changing class formations and deindustrialization in neoliberal capitalism's period of indefinitely prolonged crisis. It then explores the ways the current economic crisis implicates the scholarly projects of Latina/o and Chicana/o urban studies and how these interpretations of cultural political economy might reconfigure these projects to answer the continued attacks from the populist Right.
