A discursive analysis of cultural images, social practices, and space adds a new level of social critique to the usual explanations of urban growth and decline. Instead of focusing on either "objective" or "subjective" factors, a discursive analysis assumes a coherence between social and spatial arrangements that is derived in and through cultural meanings attached to specific places and has a material effect on their growth and decline. Both the conscious manipulation and slow accretion of images are important, as they are diffused by mass media and interpreted by ordinary men and women. Taking the decline of Coney Island and growth of Las Vegas as examples, a discursive analysis emphasizes how these public spaces of amusement represent low-class and high-class spaces, racialized spaces, and different eras of capitalism-culminating in a national rejection of urban populism for freewheeling speculation and privatization.

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The following is an extract from our book Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege and Race (Halley et al. 2011). The book presents an exploration of the culture of whiteness that dominates social and economic life in the United States. This extract contains a brief introduction to whiteness as a cultural norm and presents the argument that whiteness itself has become a form of economic capital supporting the reproduction of dominance and intergroup inequality. We specifically look at the influence of normative whiteness on hiring decisions and employment structures.

This is the second article in a series of experimental writing exploring childhood trauma and its subject. Here, the author examines or narrates herself within the particular social context of her family history. Through this experimental writing method, the author explores a repetitive, nonlinear way of knowing and speaking the world that both complements and challenges more traditional sociological ways of knowing.