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Urban sociology, capitalism and modernity
Book reviews novation'. From this standpoint old settlements have a big advantage over new settlements and any useful evaluation of planned new technopoles must wait for about 20 years. In the last three pages the policy maker is provided with 12 guidelines covering a remarkably wide range of subject matter - technical, spatial, financial, social, organizational, etc - all of it rather general in nature. The authors claim these frameworks for policy can be ignored only at their peril and it is for each city or region to turn them into effective strategies. This book is brave because it explores a complex territory but must also be judged provocative because it does so in a highly judgmental manner. As the authors themselves put it ' . . . the difference between the Paris and the Tokyo millieux, in some respects so apparently similar, will bear deep reflection for the serious reader of this book'. D R Diamond London School of Economics and Political Science Houghton Street London, UK
Urban Sociology, Modernity
Capitalism
and
Mike Savage and Alan Warde Macmillan, Basingstoke (1993) 221 pp £10.99 paperback ISBN 0 333 49164 5 Urban sociology has had a fitful history. In the 1920s, as developed in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, it was at the leading edge of the discipline's evolution as an empirically grounded social science, closely allied to the movement for urban reform in US cities. Again, in the 1970s, as 'the new urban sociology', the subdiscipline was central to the growth of neo-Marxist social theory and analysis. On this occasion its relationship to urban policies was almost wholly critical. In between these two periods, and since the 1970s, urban sociology has reverted to a less dramatic role and doubts about its utility, or even its existence, have reappeared. Its role within urban studies as a whole has been similarly
Cities 1994 Volume 11 Number 5
varied and in the last 15 or so years it has been the geographers rather than the sociologists (or economists, or political scientists) that have made much of the running. However, Savage and Warde's book, besides providing an excellent overview of urban sociology, contains an interesting attempt to place this varied body of work within a broader sociological and societal context and assert its continued relevance and vitality. What unites much urban sociology, they argue, is a concern with the relationship between modernity and capitalism. By modernity they mean 'a particular mode of existence' - that combination of personal autonomy and opportunity, on the one hand, and disintegration and insecurity, on the other hand, which seems to many observers to typify the culture and society in which we live. Cities have been key sites where the relationship between capitalism and modernity have been played out. Therefore, the continuing engagement of sociologists with urban research has had a rationale which is less concerned with the city per se than with what the city represents or exemplifies. In fact Savage and Warde are less concerned to argue that urban sociologists have in any conscious way been pursuing this wider agenda (here they would have difficulties) than to use their suggestion as a framework for the organization of the rest of their book. This they do to good effect. First, they provide a brief history of urban sociology from the Chicago School of the 1920s to the new urban sociology of the 1970s. The chapter contains a brief and fairly redundant section on early U K urban sociology presumably there because the book is part of a series which focuses on aspects of UK sociology. More generally, here and elsewhere, the book is mainly concerned to discuss AngloAmerican urban sociology, even when dealing with the 1970s, when some reference to French Marxism is essential, it ignores some key non-English sources and gives too much prominence to some US and UK authors. The following chapter, which deals with the topic of cities and uneven economic development, is prefaced by
the comment that urban sociologists have concentrated on cities as sites of modernity and been largely uninterested in how these cities need to be placed in the broader context of the world capitalist system. While this claim is exaggerated (some of the best known recent work on global cities, for example, has come from sociologists), Savage and Warde do show that most of the theoretical innovation has been provided by geographers, with evolutionary theories giving way to Marxist influenced theories of uneven development in the 1970s and 1980s. However, as the book notes, these theories throw little light on social processes and social inequalities within cities. Here, as one would expect, sociological work is to the fore and in the next chapter Savage and Warde review various aspects of inequality and social organization within cities. They summarize and critically analyse work on segregation, suburbanization and gentrification and their interrelationship with class and gender divisions (reflecting the UK orientation of the book, 'race' is covered more tangentially, with a particularly weak and partial account of the ~urban underclass' debate). This is followed by a rather loosely organized chapter entitled 'Perspective on urban culture'. As Savage and Warde note, there has been an abiding interest in 'urban culture' since the Chicago period but 'this legacy has been a difficult one for later urban sociologists to utilise'. As they show, once the idea that there was a distinctive 'urban way of life' had been dispatched, notably by Herbert Gans, the field got lost in a morass of individual 'community studies' and studies of 'sub-cultures'. More recently, writing on urban culture has come from a variety of non-sociological sources. However, they conclude, 'attempts to develop an understanding of the generic meaning of living in cities have had only limited success'. In the next chapter, they turn to the issue of the culture of cities, rather than culture in cities, and to the various Marxist and post-modern writings on this topic, including some of the feminist work. In some ways much of this work, which examines how
345
Book reviews cities develop particular social meanings, or social images, is abstruse and difficult to grasp. However, as Savage and Warde usefully remind us, such images and their manipulation have very real consequences, whether through the built forms produced by architects or through the increasingly frequent attempts to boost the economic and social fortunes of cities by place marketing. The last substantive chapter of the book deals with urban politics, concentrating on more recent work in this field by discussing four different views of the local state - as provider of welfare, as local economic regulator, as a base for the formation of collective identity and as an agent of social order. Some important debates are glossed over in the process but the analysis is tied together by suggesting that the agenda of urban political research has shifted between these perspetives as the agenda of urban politics itself has been transformed in the transition from the post-war welfare state to the New Right politics of the 1980s and beyond. The authors' conclusion that the core concerns of urban sociology have involved 'a contextualised investigation of capitalist modernity' will be of considerable interest to those involved in the subdiscipline. But the book succeeds on other levels as well. It provides a crisp and lucid introduction to the field for students. At the same time it is readily accessible to nonsociologists with an interest in understanding the relationship between cities and social change.
Michael Harloe Department of Sociology University of Essex Colchester, Essex C04 3SQ UK
European Urban History: Prospect and Retrospect Richard Rodger (ed)
Leicester University Press Leicester UK (1993) 198 pp £35 hardback ISBN 071851 4327 The thrust of urban history has followed two main tracks, following stu-
346
dies which are either 'descriptive' or 'interactional'. Descriptive urban history has focused on case studies of single places, urban biographies providing an empirical bedrock for the systematic analysis of towns and cities. Interactional urban history has emphasized more the process of change, highlighting causes and consequences, and relating changes in the urban fabric to those in the social sphere. It is not a case of 'either/or'; urban history has been a combination of both the descriptive and the interactional with social, political and economic boundaries crossed repeatedly. All this Richard Rodger acknowledges in his introduction to a collection of essays which review developments in seven European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany) plus the Nordic countries. Given the title of the book it is curious that the UK is excluded, as are Ireland, Greece, the Balkans, Austria, Russia and the former satellite countries. It is a pity that the opportunity to reflect a fuller European comprehensiveness has not been taken. However, all chapters are extensively referenced and there is no doubt that they form valuable 'state of the art' reviews. Rodger's introduction is a scholarly overview of the scene as a whole. He acknowledges the considerable advances achieved by European urban history, but recognizes reservations and criticisms. The extent of truly disciplinary work has disappointed; urban history (particularly the descriptive genre) has lacked theory; and cohesion in the subject field has been weak. There have been temporal splits between medieval, early modern and contemporary periods. There has also been disciplinary fragmentation between historians, geographers and anthropologists. Finally, there is an uncomfortable overlap with the concerns of social history. These are general points. Variations are suggested from the national chapters, where there have been different agendas and different academic strengths and traditions on which to draw. Questions posed in Mediterranean countries, for example, have differed from those in Nordic countries.
However, there are common denominators of which the search for a comparative framework is perhaps the most insistent. The University of Leicester is an acknowledged leader in urban history. Rodger's historiographical review, somewhat limited by its geographical scope, is still a revealing portrait of achievement. As a source of reference it will help to unify the field and further stimulate its practitioners.
Gordon E Cherry School of Geography University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT UK
Progress in Rural Policy and Planning, Vol 3 A W Gilg, M Blacksell, R S Dilley, O Furuseth and G McDonald (eds)
Belhaven Press London (1993) 392 pp £49.00 hardback 1SBN 1 85293 1086 This volume is the most recent of an annual series, commencing with the UK Countryside Planning Yearbook, (edited by Andrew Gilg) between 1980 and 1986 followed by three years of the International Yearbook of Rural Planning, and thence to the current title now in its third cycle, which maintains the international perspective from five countries/regions. The volume, and indeed the series, which is designed to provide a regular review of rural policy and implementation, is a curious mix. In part, certainly, it provides an annual review of the rural scene in each country, but there are also a large number of free standing papers from various contributors that give the volume more of the flavour of an annual journal than of an orchestrated and interrelated yearbook. Most of the papers bear little relation one to another, and are very variable in written style (from 'academic' to chatty) and length: Furuseth's summary of the US statistical report, Resi-
dents of Farms and Rural Areas 1990, and
Blacksell's translation of the
Permanent Assembly of the French Chambers of Agriculture 25 point declaration constitute only brief notes. Indeed the logic of embracing con-
Cities 1994 Volume 11 Number 5
Urban Sociology, Modernity
Capitalism
and
Mike Savage and Alan Warde Macmillan, Basingstoke (1993) 221 pp £10.99 paperback ISBN 0 333 49164 5 Urban sociology has had a fitful history. In the 1920s, as developed in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, it was at the leading edge of the discipline's evolution as an empirically grounded social science, closely allied to the movement for urban reform in US cities. Again, in the 1970s, as 'the new urban sociology', the subdiscipline was central to the growth of neo-Marxist social theory and analysis. On this occasion its relationship to urban policies was almost wholly critical. In between these two periods, and since the 1970s, urban sociology has reverted to a less dramatic role and doubts about its utility, or even its existence, have reappeared. Its role within urban studies as a whole has been similarly
Cities 1994 Volume 11 Number 5
varied and in the last 15 or so years it has been the geographers rather than the sociologists (or economists, or political scientists) that have made much of the running. However, Savage and Warde's book, besides providing an excellent overview of urban sociology, contains an interesting attempt to place this varied body of work within a broader sociological and societal context and assert its continued relevance and vitality. What unites much urban sociology, they argue, is a concern with the relationship between modernity and capitalism. By modernity they mean 'a particular mode of existence' - that combination of personal autonomy and opportunity, on the one hand, and disintegration and insecurity, on the other hand, which seems to many observers to typify the culture and society in which we live. Cities have been key sites where the relationship between capitalism and modernity have been played out. Therefore, the continuing engagement of sociologists with urban research has had a rationale which is less concerned with the city per se than with what the city represents or exemplifies. In fact Savage and Warde are less concerned to argue that urban sociologists have in any conscious way been pursuing this wider agenda (here they would have difficulties) than to use their suggestion as a framework for the organization of the rest of their book. This they do to good effect. First, they provide a brief history of urban sociology from the Chicago School of the 1920s to the new urban sociology of the 1970s. The chapter contains a brief and fairly redundant section on early U K urban sociology presumably there because the book is part of a series which focuses on aspects of UK sociology. More generally, here and elsewhere, the book is mainly concerned to discuss AngloAmerican urban sociology, even when dealing with the 1970s, when some reference to French Marxism is essential, it ignores some key non-English sources and gives too much prominence to some US and UK authors. The following chapter, which deals with the topic of cities and uneven economic development, is prefaced by
the comment that urban sociologists have concentrated on cities as sites of modernity and been largely uninterested in how these cities need to be placed in the broader context of the world capitalist system. While this claim is exaggerated (some of the best known recent work on global cities, for example, has come from sociologists), Savage and Warde do show that most of the theoretical innovation has been provided by geographers, with evolutionary theories giving way to Marxist influenced theories of uneven development in the 1970s and 1980s. However, as the book notes, these theories throw little light on social processes and social inequalities within cities. Here, as one would expect, sociological work is to the fore and in the next chapter Savage and Warde review various aspects of inequality and social organization within cities. They summarize and critically analyse work on segregation, suburbanization and gentrification and their interrelationship with class and gender divisions (reflecting the UK orientation of the book, 'race' is covered more tangentially, with a particularly weak and partial account of the ~urban underclass' debate). This is followed by a rather loosely organized chapter entitled 'Perspective on urban culture'. As Savage and Warde note, there has been an abiding interest in 'urban culture' since the Chicago period but 'this legacy has been a difficult one for later urban sociologists to utilise'. As they show, once the idea that there was a distinctive 'urban way of life' had been dispatched, notably by Herbert Gans, the field got lost in a morass of individual 'community studies' and studies of 'sub-cultures'. More recently, writing on urban culture has come from a variety of non-sociological sources. However, they conclude, 'attempts to develop an understanding of the generic meaning of living in cities have had only limited success'. In the next chapter, they turn to the issue of the culture of cities, rather than culture in cities, and to the various Marxist and post-modern writings on this topic, including some of the feminist work. In some ways much of this work, which examines how
345
Book reviews cities develop particular social meanings, or social images, is abstruse and difficult to grasp. However, as Savage and Warde usefully remind us, such images and their manipulation have very real consequences, whether through the built forms produced by architects or through the increasingly frequent attempts to boost the economic and social fortunes of cities by place marketing. The last substantive chapter of the book deals with urban politics, concentrating on more recent work in this field by discussing four different views of the local state - as provider of welfare, as local economic regulator, as a base for the formation of collective identity and as an agent of social order. Some important debates are glossed over in the process but the analysis is tied together by suggesting that the agenda of urban political research has shifted between these perspetives as the agenda of urban politics itself has been transformed in the transition from the post-war welfare state to the New Right politics of the 1980s and beyond. The authors' conclusion that the core concerns of urban sociology have involved 'a contextualised investigation of capitalist modernity' will be of considerable interest to those involved in the subdiscipline. But the book succeeds on other levels as well. It provides a crisp and lucid introduction to the field for students. At the same time it is readily accessible to nonsociologists with an interest in understanding the relationship between cities and social change.
Michael Harloe Department of Sociology University of Essex Colchester, Essex C04 3SQ UK
European Urban History: Prospect and Retrospect Richard Rodger (ed)
Leicester University Press Leicester UK (1993) 198 pp £35 hardback ISBN 071851 4327 The thrust of urban history has followed two main tracks, following stu-
346
dies which are either 'descriptive' or 'interactional'. Descriptive urban history has focused on case studies of single places, urban biographies providing an empirical bedrock for the systematic analysis of towns and cities. Interactional urban history has emphasized more the process of change, highlighting causes and consequences, and relating changes in the urban fabric to those in the social sphere. It is not a case of 'either/or'; urban history has been a combination of both the descriptive and the interactional with social, political and economic boundaries crossed repeatedly. All this Richard Rodger acknowledges in his introduction to a collection of essays which review developments in seven European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany) plus the Nordic countries. Given the title of the book it is curious that the UK is excluded, as are Ireland, Greece, the Balkans, Austria, Russia and the former satellite countries. It is a pity that the opportunity to reflect a fuller European comprehensiveness has not been taken. However, all chapters are extensively referenced and there is no doubt that they form valuable 'state of the art' reviews. Rodger's introduction is a scholarly overview of the scene as a whole. He acknowledges the considerable advances achieved by European urban history, but recognizes reservations and criticisms. The extent of truly disciplinary work has disappointed; urban history (particularly the descriptive genre) has lacked theory; and cohesion in the subject field has been weak. There have been temporal splits between medieval, early modern and contemporary periods. There has also been disciplinary fragmentation between historians, geographers and anthropologists. Finally, there is an uncomfortable overlap with the concerns of social history. These are general points. Variations are suggested from the national chapters, where there have been different agendas and different academic strengths and traditions on which to draw. Questions posed in Mediterranean countries, for example, have differed from those in Nordic countries.
However, there are common denominators of which the search for a comparative framework is perhaps the most insistent. The University of Leicester is an acknowledged leader in urban history. Rodger's historiographical review, somewhat limited by its geographical scope, is still a revealing portrait of achievement. As a source of reference it will help to unify the field and further stimulate its practitioners.
Gordon E Cherry School of Geography University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT UK
Progress in Rural Policy and Planning, Vol 3 A W Gilg, M Blacksell, R S Dilley, O Furuseth and G McDonald (eds)
Belhaven Press London (1993) 392 pp £49.00 hardback 1SBN 1 85293 1086 This volume is the most recent of an annual series, commencing with the UK Countryside Planning Yearbook, (edited by Andrew Gilg) between 1980 and 1986 followed by three years of the International Yearbook of Rural Planning, and thence to the current title now in its third cycle, which maintains the international perspective from five countries/regions. The volume, and indeed the series, which is designed to provide a regular review of rural policy and implementation, is a curious mix. In part, certainly, it provides an annual review of the rural scene in each country, but there are also a large number of free standing papers from various contributors that give the volume more of the flavour of an annual journal than of an orchestrated and interrelated yearbook. Most of the papers bear little relation one to another, and are very variable in written style (from 'academic' to chatty) and length: Furuseth's summary of the US statistical report, Resi-
dents of Farms and Rural Areas 1990, and
Blacksell's translation of the
Permanent Assembly of the French Chambers of Agriculture 25 point declaration constitute only brief notes. Indeed the logic of embracing con-
Cities 1994 Volume 11 Number 5