The Conception of the Urban, 1800-1875

Bibliographic Data

ID6007614
AuthorsParker Daly Everett (0000-0003-4058-0663, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume51
Issue6
Pages1298-1335
Publication date2025-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Urban History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0096-1442 • E-ISSN: 1552-6771
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00961442241252141
OpenAlexW4399083939
LanguageEN
References cited51

Many writers in northwestern Europe circa 1800 to 1875 attempted to grasp the dual dynamic of industrialization and urbanization. They contributed to a genre that we would now recognize as urban sociology. They attempted to grasp new social phenomena and to develop categories adequate for them. The writers who contributed to this body of literature mediated their experience through psychological, social, and cultural understandings, but they nonetheless partially grasped their world. In so doing, they developed historically specific categories. Their writing simultaneously recognized and misrecognized their world; it both affirmed the new dynamics of capitalism and urbanization and criticized them, pointing to a different and better world beyond them. This analysis will draw out of this body of literature avant lettre foundational ideas of sociology and social theory including ones more fully developed later by Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand Tӧnnies, and Georg Simmel

Geography · Sociology · Corruption and Economic Development

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