Explorations in urban theory / Michael Peter Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Michael P., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology, Urban.

Urbanization.

Physical Description:

viii, 340 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, New Jersey : Transaction Publishers, [2017]

Summary:

For over three decades, urban theorist Michael Peter Smith has engaged in constructing innovative theories on central research questions in urban studies. This book brings together his views on the state of urban theory, sorting out the changing strengths and weaknesses in the field. Smith refocuses attention on the cultural, social, and political practices of urban inhabitants, particularly the way in which their everyday activities have contributed to the social construction of new ethnic identities and new meanings of urban citizenship. Combining the methods of political economy and transnational ethnography, he encourages us to think about new political spaces for practicing "urban citizenship" by analyzing the connections linking cities to the web of relations to other localities in which they are embedded. Smith systematically analyzes the dynamics of "community power" and "urban change" under new globalizing trends and increased transnational mobility. Expanding on his original conceptualization of "transnational urbanism," he frames urban political life within a wider transnational context of political practice, in which an endless interplay of distinctly situated networks, social practices, and power relations are fought out at multiple scales, in an inexorable politics of inclusion and exclusion. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Introduction

1 Explorations in Urban Theory: A Critical Overview 3

Part II Classical Perspectives on Social Theory and Urban Life

2 Social Theory and Social Reality: A Critique 21

Part III The Structuralist Moment in Urban Political Economy

3 Structural Marxist Urban Theory: Class Power, the State, and Urban Crisis 75

4 Urban Theory Reconsidered: Production, Reproduction, and Collective Action / Richard Tardanico Tardanico, Richard 97

Part IV The Poststructural Turn to Transnational Urbanism

5 Postmodernism, Urban Ethnography, and the New Social Space of Ethnic Identity 123

6 Transnationalism and the City 157

7 Transnational Urbanism Revisited 175

8 Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics 185

Part V Political Transnationalism and Citizenship

9 Transnationalism, the State, and the Extraterritorial Citizen 207

10 The Two Faces of Transnational Citizenship 243

Part VI Multi-Scalar, Trans-Local, and Contextual Place-Making

11 Power in Place/Places of Power: Contextualizing Transnational Research 265

12 The Global Diffusion of Public Policy: Power Structures and Democratic Accountability 287.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Smith, Michael P., author. Explorations in urban theory

ISBN:

9781412864251

1412864259

OCLC:

957455109