Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader / Edition 1

by Setha M. Low

Overview

Anthropological perspectives are not often represented in urban studies, even though many anthropologists have been contributing actively to theory and research on urban poverty, racism, globalization, and architecture. The New Urban Anthropology Reader corrects this omission by presenting 12 cross-cultural case studies focusing on the analysis of space and place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813527208
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	11/01/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Setha M. Low is professor of environmental psychology and anthropology and director of the Public Space Research Group at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. She is the co-author of Children of the Urban Poor, and of many other books on urban and social issues.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments and Permissions
Introduction. Theorizing the City - Setha M. Low

Part 1 The Divided City
1 The Changing Significance of Race and Class in an African American Community - Steven M. Gregory
2 Creating Family Forms: The Exclusion of Mena and Teenage Boys from Families in the New York City Shelter System, 1987-1991 - Ida Susser
3 Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation - Teresa P. R. Caldeira

Part 2 The Contested City
4 Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space in Costa Rica - Setha M. Low
5 Landscape and Power in Vienna: Gardens of Discovery - Robert Rotenberg

Part 3 The Global City
6 Personal Relations and Divergent Economies: A Case Study of Hong Kong Investment in South China - Josephine Smart and Alan Smart
7 Wholesale Sushi: Culture and Commodity in Tokyo's Tsukiji Market - Theodore C. Bestor

Part 4 The Modernist City
8 The Modernist City and the Death of the Street - James Holston
9 The Power of Space in the Evolution of an Accra Zongo - Deborah Pellow

Part 5 The Postmodern City
10 Making Place in the Nonplace Urban Realm: Notes on the Revitalization of Downtown Atlanta - Charles Rutheiser
11 Discourses of the City: Policy and Responses in Post-Transitional Barcelona - Gary McDonogh
12 Spatial Discourses and Social Boundaries: Re-imagining the Toronto Waterfront - Matthew Cooper

Biological Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Nancy Foner

From the Nancy Foner, editor of New Immigrants in New York and professor of anthropology at SUNY-Purchase

Theorizing the City is a welcome addition to the urban anthropology literature. The informative essays make clear that anthropology has much to offer to urban theory and public debates.

Judith Goode

From Judith Goode, professor of anthoropology and urban studies, Temple University

Using rich comparative material, this volume presents an intriguing anthropological vision of how cities are shaped. A major addition to a comparative anthropology of cities, this volume demonstrates the complex structural and cultural forces that shape urban experience.

Editorial Reviews

Theorizing the City has become fundamental reading for those students of urban society and culture who wish to better understand twentieth-century city forms and spaces, as well as why certain race, gender, age, and class inequalities continue to be manifested today.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Alejandro Lugo

Theorizing the City is a collection of articles in urban anthropology focusing on the relationship between spatial environs and urban cultures from Toronto, Atlanta, and New York to Barcelona, Spo Paulo, Vienna, and Accra (Ghana). Bringing together urban theory and fieldwork, the contributors examine a number of tensions that play out in diverse urban settings. . . . The use of theory helps to bring about some rich connections between the spatial environment and the experiential elements of city life in different parts of the world.

Social Service Review

These informative essays make clear that anthropology has much to offer to urban theory and public policy debates. 

author of From Ellis Islands to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration - Nancy Foner

Taken together, this volume represents a valuable collection of essays that do well to capture the contemporary state of urban anthropology, as well as providing useful theoretical frameworks and methodological examples for understanding and writing about the city. . . . The essays collected here judiciously integrate the particular analytic powers of ethnographic and historical analysis to frame local social processes within transnational and global processes. . . . In particular, this volume—and the images of the city Low offers—may serve as an excellent resource for teachers interested in provoking students to think about and understand the cities they (may) inhabit.

H-Urban

The best 'readers' have three characteristics: the individual selections are of excellent quality, felicitous editing ensures that the selections cohere, and the whole is introduced by a majestic (or at least competent) overview of the field. By this measure, Setha Low has produced a very useful text and one which I will certainly recommend to students. . . . Without exception, the chapters are well written and are likely to provide a sound basis for discussion within class.

JRAI

Using rich comparative material, this volume presents an intriguing anthropological vision of how cities are shaped. A major addition to a comparative anthropology of cities, this volume demonstrates the complex structural and cultural forces that shape urban experience.

professor of anthropology and urban studies, Temple University - Judith Goode

Within images of the divided city, the contested city, the modernist city, and postmodern city, anthropologists report on such recent research as post-structural studies of race, class, and gender in the urban context; political economic studies of transnational culture; and studies of the symbolic meaning and social production of urban spaces. The contributors are all from North America, but the studies also consider Costa Rica, Vienna, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Barcelona. The 12 essays have been previously published. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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