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For the bibliography, I am organizing it around
several categories which help frame my thinking on urbanization. My interests are related
to using urban sociological theory as a backdrop for theorizing about urbanization on
the micro, meso, and macro levels--though each of these three levels interconnect
with all other areas. Please e-mail me
if there is another subsection which you would like to see mentioned, or some individual
works which you think deserve posting. My draw to
Sociology in the first place was the desire to utilize sociologial theory (particularly
urban sociological theory) to address and look for historical and comparative
commonalities in different places, especially dealing with socioeconomic change. The more
I think about it, the more useful it is to discuss world systems both in terms of a long
term urbanization process and in terms of an urbanization process's relationships with
pastoral/nomadic groups, village agriculturalists, and hunter/gather groups. Instead of
reifying 'the urban' as strictly the urban, it should be discussed in terms of how we know
what is urban and what is unrelated, and the political economic relationships inbetween,
otherwise we are unable to discuss exactly what urbanization entails if we only
concentrate on empirical information dealing with groups already pulled into an urban
episteme. An urban approach to world history has been attempted in a few books I have
read, but there are scathingly inadequate when it comes to the machinations of politics,
whether in urban areas and the state, or along the lines above--between different forms of
human political economy and their interelationships. They become very
functionalistic/reductionist indeed (Diamond [1997]; Ponting [1991]). Others get at the
more complex 'it's a big mess' philosophy of competing interests along tangential or
interlinked paths. [Schnaiberg, though with definite qualifications, he can be seen as
only discussing 'the urban' instead of 'urbanization' as a process, though his model is
processural]. A book on Amazonia which escapes me presently deals with this overarching
sense of urbanization as a multi-actor process in the sense described above.
My caveat for this bibliography: this is far from an exhaustive
list. Please add to it as you see fit by contacting me.
For the curious, I have not read them all, but I am familiar with
many of the historical and theoretical aspects mentioned. Networking them will allow me to
carry this list wherever I may be, as well as share it more readily with others.
Hopefully, you will think of it as your personal resource as well. Please, if you would
like to contribute a short precis for a particular piece, or know of a review of
the article/book, tell me and I will either include a link to the review if it is
webpublished, or if it is not, I will merely add the associated review citation. With
the very ephemeral links of the internet, we will have to see how this works in practice.
My interests concerning urbanization is to facilitate
interdisciplinary appraisals concerning peoples' personal experiences or scholastic
backgrounds on the topic. I established this list for a very specific
purpose, and I am sure that its membership is as equally rarefied, eclectic, and
critically unsatisfied in their theoretical interests as they relate to urbanization.
One of my more pragmatic interests which has led me into
theoretical portrayals of urbanization, is that I see a crisis moment building with the
rather historical novelty which has crept up upon us: a lack of an expansive hinterland.
As Colin Tudge, award winning English science writer puts it, "The party is
over." Urbanization is about to get all the costs which it has been externalizing as
a process of its development/underdevelopment for the past 10000 years thrown back in its
face.
What could happen? In the long term I would argue, the social,
political, and technological dynamic of urbanization as we have come to experience it is
about have a wrench thrown into the works. We live in a watershed era. Perhaps the
political pressures will reverse the urbanization process as urbanization adapts (however
fitfully) to a different dynamic of systemic pressures. Will it be as boring as Fukuyama's
Hegelian visions of everybody "Westernizing happily?" I seriously discount that.
If there was one prediction for the next century I would feel safe in venturing, it is
that there will be more bloodshed and warfare than even the 20th century has seen--with
the frissioning of capitalism; and it won't be because, as Fukuyama writes, people are
just rebelling/fighting off their boredom. This is a very out-of-touch
"Why Don't They Eat Cake?" philosophy. The cake may be bigger, but the
slices are bigger.
The entire world has "Europeanized" (in the sense of
becoming economically multi-locused, or nationally oriented towards social
competition). I am watching Pakistan/India/China with concern. They are already pressing
jingoistically against each other. Pakistan has nuclear warheads aimed at India. India has
its own nuclear test capabilities--all that and 40 million unemployed. In addition, China
and India are already getting into political arguments and name calling.
So, there is this increase of a more endemic background level of
world violence. Commentators on war strategy have been talking about this for years.
Whether one looks at the (ex)First World areas which are rapidly experiencing an increase
of Third World traits, the Fourth World (indigenous peoples) political mobilizations in
the nation-state arena of politics, or the Fifth World of increasing refugees being
branded as the 'problem', what the postmodernists talk about as a heterotopia
has arrived. As mentioned above, I would pose that this is
related with the lack of anywhere else for urbanization
to externalize its costs. I do have some pragmatic moments where I see
a call for an increasing 'socioarchitectural' solution to environmental degradation
and distrubutive justice, working within political solutions of course. What I call
the 'socioarchitectural' solutions arise out of the globalization of techniques
developed in the 'Third World' for poverty alleviation and political participation.
Examples I am thinking of:
- rural finance institutionalization (like Grameen and maany
South-East Asian government run banks), co-operative credit and ROSTA's,
- community management of environmental resources (when elites are
unable to feasibly control them),
- networked production facilities (becoming more sustainable (sic
politically unopposed) with the disintegration of the strategy of mass production methods
of manufacture),
- and 'affirmative democracy' (the extension
of institutionalized forms of citizen input on determining the budgets and
fiscal priorities of urban sites, becoming popular in Brazil in the 1990's.
Another example for the barrel: I have penned something to
facilitate coalitional grass roots formation. It's an institutional form, which operates
in a 'cultural' sense of getting people to know each other, as well as developing
widely recognized local elites for later political pressure (or just faster
reaction time response when local interests are challenged. It's structure is
designed with social feedbacks in mind. It's been accepted for potential publication in a
book dealing with political response to economic globalization. It's called the Civic
Democratic Institution (CDI).
Let's go to work. |
