Is there a ‘south’ perspective to urban studies

Bibliographic Data

ID20065327
AuthorsRichard Harris (0000-0001-7943-9005, corresponding author)
Year2014
Pages59-69
Publication date2014-03-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueRoutledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9780203387832-14
OpenAlexW3197077250
ISBN9780203387832
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited1

Since the late 1970s and particularly after the 1990s, the dynamics of the world have changed. At one level, the world has contracted. It has opened up possibilities of diverse kinds of trans-border f lows and movements, of capital and labour, together with signs/symbols, organized in intersecting circuits. While in some contexts and moments these attributes cooperate, at other times, these are in conf lict and contest each other. Thus, at another level, even though we all live in one global capitalist world with a dominant form of modernity, inequalities and hierarchies are increasing and so are fragmented identities. Lack of access to livelihoods, infrastructure and political citizenship now blends with exclusions relating to cultural and group identity and are organized in varied spatial and temporal zones. Fluidity of identities and their continuous expression in unstable social manifestations demand a fresh perspective to assess and examine them. Not only do contemporary social processes, sociabilities and structures need to be perceived through new and novel prisms and perspectives but it is increasingly clear that these need to be seen through new methodological protocols. As a result, many social scientists have asked whether social theory has a social science language beyond what it formulated in its foundational moment in the nineteenth and early twentieth century to comprehend this challenge (Turner 1997)

Art · Geography · Sociology · Visual arts · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · History · Management and Organizational Studies · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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