A new frontier in the analysis of urban nightlife establishments
July 9, 2010 at 2:57 pm | Posted in amenities, cities, consumption, culture, geography, race, reading list, social capital, what to read | 1 Comment
In “The Nightly Round: Space, Social Capital, and Urban Black Nightlife,” sociologist Marcus Hunter uses participant observation and semistructured interviews to consider the ways in which nightlife is used to mitigate the effects of social and spatial isolation, complementing the accomplishment of the daily round. Through an analysis of the nightly round—a process encompassing the social interactions, behaviors, and actions involved in going to, being in, and leaving the club—Hunter demonstrates that understanding the ways in which urban blacks use space in the nightclub to mediate racial segregation, sexual segregation, and limited social capital expands our current understanding of the spatial mobility of urban blacks as well as the important role of extra-neighborhood spaces in such processes. Further, the article highlights the ways that urban blacks use space in the nightclub to leverage socioeconomic opportunities and enhance social networks. While Hunter found that black heterosexual and lesbian and gay patrons used space in similar ways, black lesbians and gays were more likely to use the club as a space to develop ties of social support. The article can be found in the June 2010 issue of City and Community (volume 9, number 2).
Why scholars of urban poverty should take culture seriously again
May 10, 2010 at 11:24 pm | Posted in culture, neighborhoods, poverty, reading list, what to read | Leave a comment
A new volume of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences reexamines the relationship between culture and poverty. The volume takes contemporary researchers on poverty to task for largely abandoning the study of culture. At the same time, it challenges dated and discredited perspectives that suggest that the poor are poor because of their cultural values. Instead, it calls for scholars and policy makers to take advantage of new research in anthropology and cultural sociology that forces us to broaden our understanding of culture, poverty, and anti-poverty policy. See the uncorrected proofs of the introductory article by Mario L Small, David Harding, and Michele Lamont.
New book examines the historical mechanisms behind residential exploitation
February 24, 2010 at 3:31 pm | Posted in housing, neighborhoods, new books, race, reading list, what to read | Leave a comment
Rutgers University History Professor Beryl Satter, highlights the financial mechanisms of residential segregation in her new book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America. The daughter of Mark Satter, a Chicago lawyer who uncovered redlining tactics in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Satter highlights the history that is buried in the minds of so many Chicago families, especially hers. Placing the story of a young African American couple, Albert and Sallie Bolton, at the center of the book, Satter provides personal examples of the hardship endured by African Americans during the Great Migration. The book goes into depth about contract selling, the practice in which landlords sold African Americans overpriced homes, kept the titles until black homeowners paid them off, and charged excessive interest rates to insure they never could. Contract selling cost thousands of migrating blacks their livelihoods and solidified many of the economic disparities in housing and access to credit that social scientists are working to understand today.
Michael McQuarrie and Nicole Marwell publish new paper on “The Missing Organizational Dimension in Urban Sociology”
August 22, 2009 at 9:14 am | Posted in reading list, what to read | 1 CommentUrbanOrgs members Michael McQuarrie and Nicole Marwell have a new paper coming out in the September issue of the journal City and Community. The paper, “The Missing Organizational Dimension in Urban Sociology,” takes issue with the treatment of organizations in much urban sociology. The authors argue that both Marxian political economists and Chicagoan ethnographers and quantitative analysts treat organizations as derivative rather than productive of urban social relations. McQuarrie and Marwell do not see this problem as epistemological or methodological. Instead, they argue that it is rooted in the objects of analysis that urban sociologists choose. Drawing on key elements of structuration theory, these scholars attempt to lay the groundwork for improving the treatment of organizations in urban sociology by flagging some of the key insights in the sociology of organizations. They do not view this intellectual borrowing as a one-way street and emphasize that urbanists have a contribution to make to sociological thinking about organizations. Correcting these problems, the authors point out, is essential if we are to understand the link between contemporary institutional transformations and urban neighborhoods. The article appears in the September 2009 issue of City and Community (Volume 8, Issue 3).
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