Setha Low
Biographic Data
| ID | 3638265 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Setha Low |
| GIVEN NAMES | Setha |
| FAMILY NAME | Low |
| SIGNATURE | LOW S |
| AFFILIATIONS | City University of New York |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 134 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Security Inside Out: The Danger of 'Interiority' in a World of Inequality
Why Public Space Matters
Why Public Space Matters examines how public space contributes to individual and societal flourishing. Based on thirty-five years of ethnographic fieldwork on plazas, walkways, parks, markets, and beaches in the United States, Costa Rica, Argentina, India, Kenya, and France, it presents a new understanding of the role of social contact, public culture, and affective atmosphere in the creation of places essential to everyday urban life. This multi…
Domesticating Security: Gated Communities and Cooperative Apartment Buildings in New York City and Long Island, New York
Spaces of Security: Ethnographies of Securityscapes, Surveillance, and Control
This volume represents the efforts of anthropologists and others to explore to spaces of security. Today, security is one of the most prominent topics in anthropology. Spatial metaphors and images saturate research on security, yet anthropology has not developed a coherent approach to this important dimension of security. This volume draws together ethnographic research on spaces of security from different regions and scales, range from blast-pro…
Thoughts on Public Space and Flourishing during Covid-19
Public space offers the places, circuits and networks used for contact with the diverse people and different activities that make up our social and psychological world. There is 35 years of ethnographic research evidence that public space is a major contributor to a flourishing society by promoting social justice and democratic practices, informal work and social capital, play and recreation, cultural continuity and social cohesion, as well as he…
Thoughts about Public Space During Covid-19 Pandemic
The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and the City
Within urban anthropology, scholars working on fear of crime have shed light on how measures taken in the name of security shape contemporary cities and the experiences of their inhabitants. Walls and gates, alongside other markers of socio-spatial separation, have featured prominently in the literature concerned with urban insecurity. Drawing on our research in the cities of Kingston, Jamaica, and Recife, Brazil, this chapter aims to add to thes…
The resurgence of public space: From the Charter of Athens to the New Urban Agenda
This paper serves as an introduction to the December 2018 edition of The Journal of Public Space, and a reflection on the new importance of public space in international research, policy and practice. Nowhere is that more evident than in the New Urban Agenda, the ambitious new international agreement for the normative goals of urban development in the next two decades and beyond. In that document, public space is treated in no fewer than nine par…
Public Space and the Public Sphere: The Legacy of Neil Smith
This article attempts to untangle two threads of the intellectual and political legacy of Neil Smith. The first concerns the work that Neil and I did together on the The Politics of Public Space (Low and Smith , Routledge) on public space and the public sphere and then explains how our paths diverged. I elaborate some of the ways that the public space and public sphere have been expanded by later researchers and that left me with a sense of optim…
Problems, publicity and public space: A resurgent debate
Urban public space is once again high on the agenda of social science researchers across disciplines.The reasons for this renewed interest include a range of dramatic events that are redefining its importance as a centre for social encounter and interaction, forum for discussion and dissent, interface of virtual and material connections and stage for the reinstatement of democratic practice and resistance in the face of state repression.Beginning…
Security at home: How private securitization practices increase state and capitalist control
The impact of the security state is not only seen in the political and spatial restrictions on public space and the public sphere or inscribed in militarized national borders and cities, but also in the increasing penetration of the domestic and private realm of home. These securitization practices and how they work can be exposed through an ethnographic analysis of formal institutional structures as well as the affective, discursive and bodily p…
A sociospatial framework for the anthropology of security
Sunta's Senior Scholar/Lifetime Award: Reflections on My Career and Urban Anthropology
Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place
This book demonstrates the value of ethnographic theory and methods in understanding space and place, and considers how ethnographically-based spatial analyses can yield insight into prejudices, inequalities and social exclusion as well as offering people the means for understanding the places where they live, work, shop and socialize. In developing the concept of spatializing culture, Setha Low draws on over twenty years of research to examine s…
The People, Place, and Space Reader
The Politics of Public Space
Shoestring Democracy: Gated Condominiums and Market-Rate Cooperatives in New York
This article develops the concept of shoestring democracy as a way to characterize the resulting social relations of private governance structures embedded in two types of collective housing schemes found in New York City and the adjoining suburbs: gated condominium communities (gated condominiums) and market-rate cooperative apartment complexes (co-ops). Drawing from ethnographies of gated condominiums and co-ops in New York City and neighboring…
A multi-disciplinary framework for the study of private housing schemes: Integrating anthropological, psychological and political levels of theory and analysis
A Farewell Message
Anthropology and Its Publics: The Role of the AAA
Conversations on World Anthropologies: Chilean Perspectives
Supporting World Anthropologies: A Report on 2008 Initiatives and Dialogue
Anthropology on the World Stage in China
Maintaining Whiteness: The Fear of Others and Niceness
This article links two ways of maintaining whiteness and white privilege employed by gated communities residents in the surrounding suburbs of New York City and San Antonio, Texas. The first, the fear of others, is well documented in the anthropological literature but not as a strategy for maintaining whiteness in the built environment, while the second, the desire for “niceness,” is a relatively new construct that focuses on the way people make …
Pursuing an International Initiative: Report from the World Council of Anthropological Associations
A sociospatial framework for the anthropology of security
Thoughts about Public Space During Covid-19 Pandemic
Maintaining Whiteness: The Fear of Others and Niceness
This article links two ways of maintaining whiteness and white privilege employed by gated communities residents in the surrounding suburbs of New York City and San Antonio, Texas. The first, the fear of others, is well documented in the anthropological literature but not as a strategy for maintaining whiteness in the built environment, while the second, the desire for “niceness,” is a relatively new construct that focuses on the way people make …
Shoestring Democracy: Gated Condominiums and Market-Rate Cooperatives in New York
This article develops the concept of shoestring democracy as a way to characterize the resulting social relations of private governance structures embedded in two types of collective housing schemes found in New York City and the adjoining suburbs: gated condominium communities (gated condominiums) and market-rate cooperative apartment complexes (co-ops). Drawing from ethnographies of gated condominiums and co-ops in New York City and neighboring…
Security at home: How private securitization practices increase state and capitalist control
The impact of the security state is not only seen in the political and spatial restrictions on public space and the public sphere or inscribed in militarized national borders and cities, but also in the increasing penetration of the domestic and private realm of home. These securitization practices and how they work can be exposed through an ethnographic analysis of formal institutional structures as well as the affective, discursive and bodily p…
Spaces of Security: Ethnographies of Securityscapes, Surveillance, and Control
This volume represents the efforts of anthropologists and others to explore to spaces of security. Today, security is one of the most prominent topics in anthropology. Spatial metaphors and images saturate research on security, yet anthropology has not developed a coherent approach to this important dimension of security. This volume draws together ethnographic research on spaces of security from different regions and scales, range from blast-pro…
Public Space and the Public Sphere: The Legacy of Neil Smith
This article attempts to untangle two threads of the intellectual and political legacy of Neil Smith. The first concerns the work that Neil and I did together on the The Politics of Public Space (Low and Smith , Routledge) on public space and the public sphere and then explains how our paths diverged. I elaborate some of the ways that the public space and public sphere have been expanded by later researchers and that left me with a sense of optim…
Housing, Organization, and Social Change: A Comparison of Programs for Urban Reconstruction in Guatemala
This analysis compares two policy approaches to the provision of post-earthquake housing in a community near Guatemala City. Two separate housing programs were implemented: 1) a sites and services program that gave new residents an improved lot; and 2) a minimum unit program that provided shelter and a lot. The presentation evaluates the history, social organization, physical improvement, and social change related to each housing program, and dis…
Problems, publicity and public space: A resurgent debate
Urban public space is once again high on the agenda of social science researchers across disciplines.The reasons for this renewed interest include a range of dramatic events that are redefining its importance as a centre for social encounter and interaction, forum for discussion and dissent, interface of virtual and material connections and stage for the reinstatement of democratic practice and resistance in the face of state repression.Beginning…
A multi-disciplinary framework for the study of private housing schemes: Integrating anthropological, psychological and political levels of theory and analysis
Culture, Politics and Medicine in Costa Rica: An Anthropological Study of Medical Change
Part 4: Family context and illness behavior in Costa Rica
Part 4: Family context and illness behavior in Costa Rica
Culture, Politics and Medicine in Costa Rica: An Anthropological Study of Medical Change
Housing, Organization, and Social Change: A Comparison of Programs for Urban Reconstruction in Guatemala
This analysis compares two policy approaches to the provision of post-earthquake housing in a community near Guatemala City. Two separate housing programs were implemented: 1) a sites and services program that gave new residents an improved lot; and 2) a minimum unit program that provided shelter and a lot. The presentation evaluates the history, social organization, physical improvement, and social change related to each housing program, and dis…
Acknowledging the Anthony Leeds Prize in Urban Anthropology, 2001
Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America
In the last twenty years, thousands upon thousands of the upper and middle classes have retreated into gated communities. In 2002 it is estimated that one in eight Americans will live in these exclusive neighborhoods. What has sparked this alarming trend?Behind the Gates is Low's revealing account of what life is like inside these suburban fortresses. After years researching and interviewing families in Long Island, New York and San Antonio, Texa…
Insecurity
Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity
Urban parks such as New York City's Central Park provide vital public spaces where city dwellers of all races and classes can mingle safely while enjoying a variety of recreations. By coming together in these relaxed settings, different groups become comfortable with each other, thereby strengthening their communities and the democratic fabric of society. But just the opposite happens when, by design or in ignorance, parks are made inhospitable t…
Long Range Planning Committee Met in San Jos
Pursuing an International Initiative: Report from the World Council of Anthropological Associations
An Organizational Culture of Transparency
Looking Ahead to San Francisco
Democracy Now: Procedural and Distributive Justice
Democracy in Practice: The Executive Board in Action
Spring Governance Update: The Exceptional and Mundane
A Farewell Message
Anthropology and Its Publics: The Role of the AAA
Conversations on World Anthropologies: Chilean Perspectives
Supporting World Anthropologies: A Report on 2008 Initiatives and Dialogue
Anthropology on the World Stage in China
Maintaining Whiteness: The Fear of Others and Niceness
This article links two ways of maintaining whiteness and white privilege employed by gated communities residents in the surrounding suburbs of New York City and San Antonio, Texas. The first, the fear of others, is well documented in the anthropological literature but not as a strategy for maintaining whiteness in the built environment, while the second, the desire for “niceness,” is a relatively new construct that focuses on the way people make …
A multi-disciplinary framework for the study of private housing schemes: Integrating anthropological, psychological and political levels of theory and analysis
Shoestring Democracy: Gated Condominiums and Market-Rate Cooperatives in New York
This article develops the concept of shoestring democracy as a way to characterize the resulting social relations of private governance structures embedded in two types of collective housing schemes found in New York City and the adjoining suburbs: gated condominium communities (gated condominiums) and market-rate cooperative apartment complexes (co-ops). Drawing from ethnographies of gated condominiums and co-ops in New York City and neighboring…
The Politics of Public Space
The People, Place, and Space Reader
Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place
This book demonstrates the value of ethnographic theory and methods in understanding space and place, and considers how ethnographically-based spatial analyses can yield insight into prejudices, inequalities and social exclusion as well as offering people the means for understanding the places where they live, work, shop and socialize. In developing the concept of spatializing culture, Setha Low draws on over twenty years of research to examine s…
Sociology (29 works) · Political science (20 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Law (14 works) · Citation (13 works) · Library science (11 works) · Politics (9 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Law (7 works)