Moving from Urban Sociology to the Sociology of the City

Wu, Cary

doi:10.1007/s12108-015-9277-6

Cited by 14 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Treating cities as an essential institution entails not just focusing on the social problems at hand but the social and historical features of individual cities that have given rise to these problems. As with other critiques about urban sociology's subject matter (Castells, 2002;Gans, 2009;Wu, 2016;Zukin, 2011), this critique is an acknowledgement of the lack of clear subject matter, and a call to draw clear empirical and theoretical connections between the city itself and the problems that arise within it. There are two simultaneous needs for urban sociology and the study of inequality within cities in response to these challenges and opportunities.…”

Section: A Site or Institution?mentioning

confidence: 97%

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Finding the City in Sociology: Broadening and Deepening the Geographic Scope of the Urban and Inequality Literatures

Prener¹

2020

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Cities have long been the object of fascination within sociology. Key portions of sociological literatures on inequality and globalization, for instance, have focused on urban spaces as essential sites for the production and reproduction of social life, and urban sociology itself is one of the oldest fields in the discipline. For all of this prominence, however, locating the city itself in these literatures can be difficult. Much of our understanding of urban life and urban social problems is derived from a relatively small number of American cities. Moreover, cities are often relegated to a supporting role as a research site rather than an institution worthy of interrogation. This article reviews the path that has brought a specific set of cities to the fore of American sociological analyses. In response, broadening literatures to cities in the literal and figurative American South and producing deeper literatures of specific cities can give sociology the opportunity to produce more representative and contextually rich analyses of inequalities, urban social life, and urban form. The literature on St. Louis, Missouri, is presented as an example of what such a broader and deeper literature could encompass.

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Section: A Site or Institution?mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The goal of this article is not to provide yet another vision piece in the tradition of Casells (2002), Wu (2016), or Zukin (2011). Nor is it to establish yet another "school" in the tradition of the "Los Angeles School" (see Dear, 2002a for an overview).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding the City in Sociology: Broadening and Deepening the Geographic Scope of the Urban and Inequality Literatures

Prener¹

2020

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“…Similarly, Cary Wu (2016) has argued that urban sociology should give way to the sociology of the city, treating settlements as "autonomous social units" because "modern society is now de facto an urbanized society" (p. 110). Rural sociologists would no doubt disagree (e.g.…”

Section: Small Cities Wirthian Urbanism and The Urban-rural Interfacementioning

confidence: 99%

Small-City Gay Bars, Big-City Urbanism

Mattson¹

2019

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Despite the widely hailed importance of gay bars, what we know about them in the U.S. comes from outliers: gay neighborhoods in four big cities. This essay explores the similarities of 52 small-city gay bars to each other, and their differences from big-city gayborhood bars. Small-city gay bars are surprisingly integrated with straight people in their often red-state communities and are as racially diverse than the counties in which they reside. They are subcultural amenities not just for LGBT people but for straights as well, fostering cosmopolitan lifestyles for large geographical regions. I conclude with an argument for the importance of small cities to understand urbanism generally. Small cities are a key analytic object to disentangle urban effects from modern life generally. They reveal the way in which contemporary urban scholars often implicitly define urbanism in terms of commercial diversity at the expense of the reasons why many people prefer to live in small cities: proximity to kin or nature, and the fact that most big-city pleasures can be found everywhere. Studying small cities provides one way of integrating studies along the urban-rural interface and developing a more holistic, empirically rich, and theoretically sound sociology of place.

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“…Urban life and its discontents are omnipresent in many corners of sociology, particularly within the fields of inequality, urban sociology, and race. Despite the widespread presence of cities in sociological research, however, urban sociology itself has faced crises of identity (Castells, , ; Walton, ; Wu, ; Zukin, ) and sometimes visceral theoretical debates (A. Abbott, ; Dear, ; Molotch, ; Sampson, ), as it has morphed largely into the study of inequalities and social problems in urban spaces (Castells, ; Gans, ; Wu, ; Zukin, ). Institutional pressures have helped shape this shift, both by deemphasizing urban life in graduate curriculums and discouraging faculty from pursuing “local” research (Zukin, ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal of this article is not to provide yet another vision piece in the tradition of Castells (), Wu (), or Zukin (). Nor is it to establish yet another “school” in the tradition of the “Los Angeles School” (see Dear, for an overview).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%