The promise of the city : space, identity, and politics in contemporary social thought / Kian Tajbakhsh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tajbakhsh, Kian, 1962-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology, Urban.

Marxian school of sociology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (247 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Promise of the City proposes a new theoretical framework for the study of cities and urban life. Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, Kian Tajbakhsh offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, he says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm. Tajbakhsh examines these dimensions in the work of three major critical urban theorists of recent decades: Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Ira Katznelson. He shows why the answers offered by Marxian urban theory to the questions of identity, space, and structure are unsatisfactory and why the perspectives of other intellectual traditions such as poststructuralism, feminism, Habermasian Critical Theory, and pragmatism can help us better understand the challenges facing contemporary cities.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction: Identity, Structure, and the Spaces of the City

1. Marxian Class Analysis, Essentialism, and the Problem of Urban Identity

2. Beyond the Functionalist Bias in Urban Theory

3. Toward the Historicity and the Contingency of Identity

4. Difference, Democracy, and the City

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-226) and index.

ISBN:

9786612758829

9781597348324

1597348325

9780520924642

0520924649

9781282758827

1282758829

OCLC:

475931787