Chapter 3: Contemporary Urban Sociology

Karl Marx

a sociologist who emphasized the dominance of economic considerations in analysis

Max Weber

a sociologist who sought to show how cultural and political factors affected individual behavior, social history, and economic activity

Friedrich Engels

a sociologist who used the city of Machester to study the industrial city of capitalism, and concluded that capitalims produces spatial isolation of the classes

extended conditions of capital accumulation

if problems such as poverty and homelessness become too severe, they can threaten the ability of working-class families to produce new generations of workers, which threatens the future of the capitalist system. 

problems caused by urban development

\-money from federal taxation being distrubuted unequally among certain areas

\-investors switching locations constantly to achieve a higher profit and lower cost

\-polarization betwen places that are poor, and thriving

Henri Lefebvre

an urban sociologist who argued that the city development process was a product of the capitalist system, real estate is a separate circuit of capital and a special case of the dynamics of settlement space, and that the governemt plays a large role in urban space

abstract space

the way capital investors or businesspeople and government think about space; happens in relation to its abstract qualities of dimension—size, width, area, location—and profit

social space

individuals use the space of their environment as a place to live

David Harvey

an urban sociologist who argued that the city is defined as a spatial mode that concentrates and circulates capital,

agency

involves people acting as part of social classes and class factions, or of gender, racial, and ethnic interests.

Displacement

occurs when minority populations are forced to move because real estate interests and developers want the land that blacks, Hispanics, or earlier, Native Americans currently live on.

containment

occurs when the minority population is forced to live in a specified area and can’t move out due to their skin color rather than social class.

de jure segregation

intentional segregation of racial groups through laws and policies

de facto

“unintentional” segregation of racial groups through social systems and institutions

theming

the increasing use of signs to sell experiences and commodities of the built environment via cultural motifs.

narrative analysis

how social meaning is emplotted in stories to create, challenge, or reconcile the meanings associated with places, identities, and social action

romance narratives

refers to how social actors tell stories to arrive at a specific version of the good society through the use of utopia and the existence of an already existing collective identity.

irony narratives

refers to how social actors tell stories to subvert dominant discourses found in the romance narrative.