|aExplorations in urban theory / |cMichael Peter Smith.
260
|aNew Brunswick, New Jersey : |bTransaction Publishers, |cc2017.
300
|aviii, 340 p. ; |c24 cm.
504
|aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505
00
|aMachine generated contents note:|gpt. I|tIntroduction --|g1.|tExplorations in Urban Theory: A Critical Overview --|gpt. II|tClassical Perspectives on Social Theory and Urban Life --|g2.|tSocial Theory and Social Reality: A Critique --|gpt. IIIThe |tStructuralist Moment in Urban Political Economy --|g3.|tStructural Marxist Urban Theory: Class Power, the State, and Urban Crisis --|g4.|tUrban Theory Reconsidered: Production, Reproduction, and Collective Action (with Richard Tardanico) --|gpt. IVThe |tPoststructural Turn to Transnational Urbanism --|g5.|tPostmodernism, Urban Ethnography, and the New Social Space of Ethnic Identity --|g6.|tTransnationalism and the City --|g7.|tTransnational Urbanism Revisited --|g8.|tCan You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics --|gpt. V|tPolitical Transnationalism and Citizenship --|g9.|tTransnationalism, the State, and the Extraterritorial Citizen --|g10.The |tTwo Faces of Transnational Citizenship --|gpt. VI|tMulti-Scalar, Trans-Local, and Contextual Place-Making --|g11.|tPower in Place/Places of Power: Contextualizing Transnational Research --|g12.The |tGlobal Diffusion of Public Policy: Power Structures and Democratic Accountability.
520
|aFor over three decades, urban theorist Michael Peter Smith has engaged in constructing innovative theories on central research questions in urban studies. This book brings together his views on the state of urban theory, sorting out the changing strengths and weaknesses in the field. Smith refocuses attention on the cultural, social, and political practices of urban inhabitants, particularly the way in which their everyday activities have contributed to the social construction of new ethnic identities and new meanings of urban citizenship. Combining the methods of political economy and transnational ethnography, he encourages us to think about new political spaces for practicing "urban citizenship" by analyzing the connections linking cities to the web of relations to other localities in which they are embedded. Smith systematically analyzes the dynamics of "community power" and "urban change" under new globalizing trends and increased transnational mobility. Expanding on his original conceptualization of "transnational urbanism," he frames urban political life within a wider transnational context of political practice, in which an endless interplay of distinctly situated networks, social practices, and power relations are fought out at multiple scales, in an inexorable politics of inclusion and exclusion.