The Paradigm Shift in Urban Sociology

Gottdiener, Mark; Feagin, Joe R.

doi:10.1177/004208168802400201

Cited by 146 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…As a result, urban sociology has no distinctive feature that sets it apart from general sociology (Castells 1968(Castells , 1977. 4 Castells' critique led to a fundamental reformulation of urban sociology and the emergence of a new urban sociology (Kemeny 1982;Gottdiener and Feagin 1988;Zukin 1980Zukin , 2011. In pursuing an urban subject the new urban scholars made major inroads in bringing the city back into focus (e.g.…”

Section: Toward a Sociology Of The Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving from Urban Sociology to the Sociology of the City

2015

Am Soc

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Castell's claim that urban sociology has no subject matter has yet to be refuted. In this article, I argue that urban sociology should be understood as the sociology of the city. Rather than focusing on social problems within an urban context, urban sociologists need to treat the city as an autonomous social unit. The main task for the sociology of the city is to explain similarities and differences across individual cities and urban groups and to identify how these affect social life and collectivities. I illustrate this argument by exploring the urban production of trust. Treating the city as the unit of analysis, I show how trust matters for cities and how cities produce trust.Keywords Urban sociology . Sociology of the city . The city . TrustThere is general agreement that today's urban sociology, and North American urban sociology in particular, is in crisis. Instead of a dominant and substantive area, urban sociological study has focused on urban life around, for example, race, poverty, crime, immigration, and sexuality (Perry and Harding 2002). Without a clear research focus urban sociology will continue to lose its supremacy within urban studies (Amin 2007; Le Gales 2005; Sassen 2010). This crisis has led a number of leading urban theorists to reflect on the future of urban sociology (Castells

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Section: Toward a Sociology Of The Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving from Urban Sociology to the Sociology of the City

2015

Am Soc

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“…They overlook the political agency that emerged in the towns as a result of these very flows. Since the late 1980s, urban studies around the world have taken an active interest in agency over ecology (Gottdiener and Feagin 1988;Savage, Warde and Ward 2003). Even as the 1950s American researchers sweated in somnolent Mojokuto feeling that little was happening, people in somewhat larger towns such as Padang and Menado, in the regions beyond Java, were organizing armed revolts against Jakarta.…”

Section: Why So Influential?mentioning

confidence: 99%

In Search of Middle Indonesia

Oostindië¹,

Roitman²

2014

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“…One dominant structuralist approach to comparative urban politics is political economy. This perspective seeks to explain how the interaction of government power and private resources limits or conditions political decision making (Digaetano & Strom, 2003;Gottdiener & Feagin, 1988). Essentially, a structuralist standpoint emphasizes the need to dwell on macro-economic and political factors that influence how urban governance operates.…”

Section: Applying Social Theories To Understand Informalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Governs the 'Ungovernable'? Examining Governing Relations in Urban Informality

Recio¹

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For several decades now, Metro Manila's Baclaran district has been home to thousands of street vendors who have capitalised on its functions as a commercial centre, a transport node, and a Filipino Catholic devotional site. This presence of informal hawkers, which some government officials consider as an urban blight, has generated a range of policies that seek to manage, if not eradicate, the informal hawkers. Years of street occupancy, however, have enabled the tenacious vendors to enforce grassroots mechanisms to appropriate streetscapes. I refer to this interplay of state interventions and grassroots practices as the formal-informal interface. Seen from an urban planning perspective, the Baclaran context offers an opportunity for scholarly inquiry into how the complex spatio-political ordering and socio-economic realities unsettle the essentialist formal-versus-informal categories of work and state interventions. In sum, these findings reveal how understanding the formal-informal interface contributes to the evolving conceptual and empirical conversations on worlding cities. The Baclaran case shows how worlding practices arise from the interplay of global North-oriented planning ideals and policy approaches, the unequal socio-spatial relations, and the continuing struggle of marginalized street vendors in the global South. These issues require rethinking of policy direction and planning trajectory.iii

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The Paradigm Shift in Urban Sociology

Cited by 146 publications

References 17 publications

Moving from Urban Sociology to the Sociology of the City

Moving from Urban Sociology to the Sociology of the City

In Search of Middle Indonesia

Who Governs the 'Ungovernable'? Examining Governing Relations in Urban Informality

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