Let’s set the scene: there’s a regular on his barstool, beer in hand. He’s watching a young coupl... more Let’s set the scene: there’s a regular on his barstool, beer in hand. He’s watching a young couple execute a complicated series of moves on the dance floor, while at the table in the corner the DJ adjusts his headphones and slips a new beat into the mix. These are all experiences created by a given scene—one where we feel connected to other people, in places like a bar or a community center, a neighborhood parish or even a train station. Scenes enable experiences, but they also cultivate skills, create ambiances, and nourish communities.
In Scenescapes, Daniel Aaron Silver and Terry Nichols Clark examine the patterns and consequences of the amenities that define our streets and strips. They articulate the core dimensions of the theatricality, authenticity, and legitimacy of local scenes—cafes, churches, restaurants, parks, galleries, bowling alleys, and more. Scenescapes not only reimagines cities in cultural terms, it details how scenes shape economic development, residential patterns, and political attitudes and actions. In vivid detail and with wide-angle analyses—encompassing an analysis of 40,000 ZIP codes—Silver and Clark give readers tools for thinking about place; tools that can teach us where to live, work, or relax, and how to organize our communities.
The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international
experts to cr... more The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international
experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental
entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies
directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of
case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book
advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and
political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban
cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and
influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural
policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative
outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective
policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities
for building effective cultural policy coalitions.
Modern data-oriented applications often require integrating data from multiple heterogeneous sour... more Modern data-oriented applications often require integrating data from multiple heterogeneous sources. When these datasets share attributes, but are otherwise unlinked, there is no way to join them and reason at the individual level explicitly. However, as we show in this work, this does not prevent probabilistic reasoning over these heterogeneous datasets even when the data and shared attributes exhibit significant mismatches that are common in real-world data. Different datasets have different sample biases, disagree on category definitions and spatial representations, collect data at different temporal intervals, and mix aggregate-level with individual data. In this work, we demonstrate how a set of Bayesian network motifs allows all of these mismatches to be resolved in a composable framework that permits joint probabilistic reasoning over all datasets without manipulating, modifying, or imputing the original data, thus avoiding potentially harmful assumptions. We provide an open source Python tool that encapsulates our methodology and demonstrate this tool on a number of real-world use cases.
When sociologists examine the content of sociological knowledge, they typically engage in textual... more When sociologists examine the content of sociological knowledge, they typically engage in textual analysis. Conversely, this paper examines the relationship between theory figures and causal claims. Analyzing a random sample of articles from prominent sociology journals, we find several notable trends in how sociologists both describe and visualize causal relationships, as well as how these modes of representation interrelate. First, we find that the modal use of arrows in sociology are as expressions of causal relationship. Second, arrow-based figures are connected to both strong and weak causal claims, but that strong causal claims are disproportionately found in U.S. journals compared to European journals. Third, both causal figures and causal claims are usually central to the overarching goals of articles. Lastly, the strength of causal figures typically fits with the strength of the textual causal claims, suggesting that visualization promotes clearer thinking and writing about causal relationships. Overall, our findings suggest that arrow-based figures are a crucial cognitive and communicative resource in the expression of causal claims.
Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes ... more Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes for individuals from diverse backgrounds to find opportunities to learn from and interact with others different from themselves. This optimism quickly waned as social media seemed to breed ideological homophily marked by "filter bubbles" or "echo chambers." A typical response to the sense of fragmentation has been to encourage exposure to more cross-partisan sources of information. But do outlets that reach across partisan lines in fact generate more civil discourse? And does the civility of discourse hosted by such outlets vary depending on the political context in which they operate? To answer these questions, we identified bubble reachers, users who distribute content that reaches other users with diverse political opinions in recent presidential elections in Brazil, where populism has deep roots in the political culture, and Canada, where the political culture is comparatively moderate. Given that background, this research studies unexplored properties of content shared by bubble reachers, specifically the quality of conversations and comments it generates. We examine how ideologically neutral bubble reachers differ from ideologically partisan accounts in the level of uncivil discourse they provoke, and explore how this varies in the context of the two countries considered. Our results suggest that while ideologically neutral bubble reachers support less uncivil discourse in Canada, the opposite relationship holds in Brazil. Even non-political content by ideologically neutral bubble reachers elicits a considerable amount of uncivil discourse in Brazil. This indicates that bubble reaching and incivility are moderated by the national political context. Our results complicate the simple hypothesis of a universal impact of neutral bubble reachers across contexts.
Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
Urban research has long recognized that neighbourhoods are dynamic and relational. However, lack ... more Urban research has long recognized that neighbourhoods are dynamic and relational. However, lack of data, methodologies, and computer processing power have hampered a formal quantitative examination of neighbourhood relational dynamics. To make progress on this issue, this study proposes a graph neural network (GNN) approach that permits combining and evaluating multiple sources of information about internal characteristics of neighbourhoods, their past characteristics, and flows of groups among them, potentially providing greater expressive power in predictive models. By exploring a public large-scale dataset from Yelp, we show the potential of our approach for considering structural connectedness in predicting neighbourhood attributes, specifically to predict local culture. Results are promising from a substantive and methodologically point of view. Substantively, we find that either local area information (e.g. area demographics) or group profiles (tastes of Yelp reviewers) give the best results in predicting local culture, and they are nearly equivalent in all studied cases. Methodologically, exploring group profiles could be a helpful alternative where finding local information for specific areas is challenging, since they can be extracted automatically from many forms of online data. Thus, our approach could empower researchers and policy-makers to use a range of data sources when other local area information is lacking.
This article examines the dynamics of inter-referencing between cities and develops the concept o... more This article examines the dynamics of inter-referencing between cities and develops the concept of the 'Urban Referencing Network' as a representation of the references made by cities to one another in policy documents. The study employs public art policies, specifically the Percent for Art policy, to investigate the structure of inter-referencing within the urban referencing network. Using a corpus of policy documents from 26 Anglophone cities with over one million residents, we analyse 150 documents containing 2178 inter-references. Combining network measurements and regressions, we explore the emergence of central nodes and the mechanisms influencing their formation. The broader field of arts and cultural policies, with its extensive inter-urban connections and professional networks, provides fertile ground for studying urban referencing networks. By integrating literature on policy mobility and urban networks, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the circulation of urban ideas and the interplay between cities in policy-making processes. The results demonstrate that only a few cities, including New York, Chicago, London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Montreal, emerge as central nodes, attracting the other cities' attention. Attributes of the referenced cities, like economic importance, iconicity and early adoption, determine to a great extent who are the most central nodes.
Research on the relationship between categorical unconventionality and popularity has produced mi... more Research on the relationship between categorical unconventionality and popularity has produced mixed results. While many accounts suggest that unconventionality is penalized, much sociological theorizing indicates that success comes from a delicate balancing act between conventional and unconventional offerings. Using data on the genre selfclassifications of over 2 million musicians and bands across the United States, the authors find broad support for this balancing act. Yet the shape it takes is also conditioned on local contexts, across both high-order complexes of musical genres and geographic space. The authors highlight the local metropolitan area characteristics that shift the relationship between unconventionality and popularity. They also create a typology of cities based on how their unconventional offerings are rewarded and punished. An online visualization tool enables further investigation of these relationships. The authors close by proposing an agenda for how to study local heterogeneity in the relationship between unconventionality and popularity.
Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger ... more Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., "reaching the bubbles". This study investigates whether this holds in the context of nationwide elections in Brazil and Canada. We collected politics-related tweets shared during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election and the 2019 Canadian federal election. Next, we proposed an updated centrality metric that enables identifying highly central bubble reachers, nodes that can distribute content among users with diverging political opinions-a fundamental metric for the proposed study. After that, we analyzed how users engage with news content shared by bubble reachers, its source, and its topics, considering its political orientation. Among other results, we found that, even though news media disseminate content that interests different sides of the political spectrum, users tend to engage considerably more with content that aligns with their political orientation, regardless of the topic.
This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to thi... more This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to this as the "4 D's" of scene change: development, differentiation, defense, and diffusion. Each posits somewhat distinct change processes, and has its own tradition of theory and empirical research, which we briefly review. After summarizing some major trends in scenes and amenities in the US context, for each change model, we present some initial findings, discussing data and methods throughout. Our overall goal is to point toward new research arcs on change models of scenes, and to give some clear examples and directions for how to think about and collect data to understand what makes some scenes change, others not, why, and in what directions.
In this study, we articulate a functional model of neighbourhood change and continuity, adapted f... more In this study, we articulate a functional model of neighbourhood change and continuity, adapted from a classical model proposed by Stinchcombe in 1968. We argue this model provides a relatively simple way to capture key aspects of the complex causal structure of neighbourhood change that are implicit in much neighbourhood change research but rarely formulated explicitly. To evaluate the model, we formulate six testable propositions, which we empirically test with large-scale data from Yelp.com. We illustrate our approach with the case of Toronto, but find broad support for all propositions in an analysis of six cities. A conclusion reflects on the value of incorporating functionalist models into neighbourhood research and policy.
How should we read and understand Georg Simmel’s famous essay, “How Is Society Possible?” How and... more How should we read and understand Georg Simmel’s famous essay, “How Is Society Possible?” How and how well does Simmel answer his main question? What bearing, if any, does the essay have on the study of forms of interaction, in his own work or in modern scholarship? The exchange below addresses such questions in the form of an article, extended commentary, and response. With the support of the editors of Simmel Studies, we present the trio of items as a single unit to illustrate to fellow Simmel scholars the possibilities of divergent readings and critiques. The exchange began when Lechner sent a draft of his paper “How Is Society Possible?” to Silver, who responded with detailed comments. It occurred to us that rather than simply submitting a paper revised in light of those comments, or letting further revision occur behind the scenes through peer review, it might be worthwhile to make our contrasting views public as a stimulus to further reflection on a classic essay. Since we have both been inspired by the work and thought of the great Simmel scholar Donald Levine, we also offer this joint effort as an instance of the dialogical approach to theory he advocated.
In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same' policy ideas,... more In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same' policy ideas, their local translations can be substantially different. Yet, urban studies have not provided sufficient tools to compare such translations among a wide number of cities. We develop a methodological program that operationalizes into a quantitative analysis the rich Policy Assemblage framework often used to compare selected cases. We distinguish between assemblage as a process and assemblage as an outcome, and argue that both are important for urban policy mobility studies. While assemblage as a process is often seen as the thicker description, assemblage outcomes provide central snapshots that reveal the broader process and make its concrete configurations evident. Using the case of public art policies and the mechanism of the Percent of Public Art, we compare the assemblage outcome of the idea in 26 cities with more than one million residents in the Anglosphere. We ask, how do cities assemble policy discourses, and what is the logic that differentiates cities from one another? We find cities use multiple discourses which refer to the socioeconomic , cultural identity and the spatial dimensions of public art in cities. Nevertheless, when cities assemble these discourses, the socioeconomic dimension tends to define a central cleavage between cities. To examine how such a cleavage is constructed, we examine the assembly process of Toronto more closely.
The concepts of contradiction and dialogue are crucial to Hermann Goldschmidt's Contradiction Set... more The concepts of contradiction and dialogue are crucial to Hermann Goldschmidt's Contradiction Set Free. In this paper, I place Goldschmidt into dialogue with two social thinkers for whom similar ideas were equally crucial: Georg Simmel and Donald Levine. In the case of Simmel, I highlight his theory of con ict speci cally, but more generally his commitment to duality and ambiguity. In the case of Levine, I feature his attempt to articulate what he calls a "dialogic" narrative of the sociological tradition. I seek to evaluate Goldschmidt's own thinking by his own criteria, by asking whether the sociological and the philosophical approaches to these questions are parallel, in opposition, or an instance of a contradiction in Goldschmidt's sense.
This paper adds to a vital international tradition of discussing the history of sociological theo... more This paper adds to a vital international tradition of discussing the history of sociological theory by empirically investigating its structure, dynamics, and relationships. Our primary contribution to this tradition is to bring to the conversation a greater level of comparative and historical scope, a more systematic quantitative methodology, and a degree of reflexivity and synthesis. To do so, we examine some 670 editions of sociological-theory books geared toward students, published in English, German, and French between 1950 and 2020. Our empirical analysis highlights patterns, trends, and relationships among the theorists featured in these books, the narratives and approaches that define their visions of sociological theory, and the characteristics of the authors who wrote them. Our findings reveal some key intellectual as well as sociological factors associated with the changing composition of the canon.
In this article, we study neighborhood preferences among residents of highly diverse, lower incom... more In this article, we study neighborhood preferences among residents of highly diverse, lower income suburban neighborhoods in Toronto, Ontario. By extending the typical application of conjoint designs to the urban domain, we show techniques for measuring place alienation—a sense of disconnec-tion from place—and its impact on neighborhood satisfaction. We find that residents in lower SES neighborhoods share many of the same priorities as residents in higher SES neighborhoods when it comes to safety, transit, school quality, neighborliness, public spaces, and building types. However, differences appear across a range of preferences including bike usage, local commercial spaces, and cultural and recreation facilities. When considering place alienation and neighborhood satisfaction, we find a consistent, robust inverted relationship—as place alienation decreases, neighborhood satisfac-tion increases. Moreover, this relationship is not mitigated by socioeconomic factors, neighborhood conditions, or even attitudinal and experiential fac-tors. We end with suggestions for future research
This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Ur... more This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Urban Evolution Model (TUEM) can be used to encode city data, illuminate key features, demonstrate how formetic distance can be used to discover how spatial areas change over time, and identify similar spatial areas within and between cities. The data used in this study are reviews from Yelp. Each review can be interpreted as a formeme where the category of the business is a form, the reviewer is a group and the review is an activity. Yelp data from neighbourhoods in both Toronto and Montreal are encoded. A method for aggregating reviewers into groups with multiple members is introduced. Longitudinal analysis is performed for all Toronto neighbourhoods. Transversal analysis is performed between neighbourhoods within Toronto and between Toronto and Montreal. Similar neighbourhoods are identified validating formetic distance.
This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of (1) sources of variations; (2) ... more This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of (1) sources of variations; (2) principles of selection; and (3) mechanisms of retention. More specifically, regarding (1) it defines local and environmental sources of variation and identifies some of their generative processes, such as recom-bination, migration, mutation, extinction, and transcription errors. Regarding (2), it outlines a series of selection processes as part of an evolutionary ecology of urban forms, including density dependence, scope dependence, distance dependence, content dependence, and frequency dependence. Regarding (3), it characterizes retention as a combination of absorption and restriction of novel variants, defines mechanisms by which these can occur, including longevity, fidelity, and fecundity, and specifies how these processes issue in trajectories define by properties such as stability, pace, convergence, and divergence. A conclusion reviews the effort and looks forward to computer simulation and data-driven applications , as well as focused theoretical extensions of parts of the model. This paper builds on Parts I and II and is part of the Urban Genome Project, about which more information can be found here.
This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the S... more This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of the information encoded in that space. This information consists of: an urban genome, which captures ideas regarding the groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) to which a space’s physical forms are oriented; ideas among human actors regarding who (users) and how (uses) to utilize the space and its forms; and the signals that are communicated within and among urban spaces. Central to the model is the notion of the formeme, which provides the building blocks for a Signature. Formemes are units of urban information regarding physical forms, groups, and activities, which may be encoded in physical artifacts, signals, or human actors, and circulate among them. We then show how various metrics can define an urban area based on its Signature, and that these metrics can be used to measure similarity of urban spaces. The Signature, and its underlying formemes capture the sources of variations in urban evolution.
Let’s set the scene: there’s a regular on his barstool, beer in hand. He’s watching a young coupl... more Let’s set the scene: there’s a regular on his barstool, beer in hand. He’s watching a young couple execute a complicated series of moves on the dance floor, while at the table in the corner the DJ adjusts his headphones and slips a new beat into the mix. These are all experiences created by a given scene—one where we feel connected to other people, in places like a bar or a community center, a neighborhood parish or even a train station. Scenes enable experiences, but they also cultivate skills, create ambiances, and nourish communities.
In Scenescapes, Daniel Aaron Silver and Terry Nichols Clark examine the patterns and consequences of the amenities that define our streets and strips. They articulate the core dimensions of the theatricality, authenticity, and legitimacy of local scenes—cafes, churches, restaurants, parks, galleries, bowling alleys, and more. Scenescapes not only reimagines cities in cultural terms, it details how scenes shape economic development, residential patterns, and political attitudes and actions. In vivid detail and with wide-angle analyses—encompassing an analysis of 40,000 ZIP codes—Silver and Clark give readers tools for thinking about place; tools that can teach us where to live, work, or relax, and how to organize our communities.
The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international
experts to cr... more The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy brings together a range of international
experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental
entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies
directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of
case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book
advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and
political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban
cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and
influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural
policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative
outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective
policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities
for building effective cultural policy coalitions.
Modern data-oriented applications often require integrating data from multiple heterogeneous sour... more Modern data-oriented applications often require integrating data from multiple heterogeneous sources. When these datasets share attributes, but are otherwise unlinked, there is no way to join them and reason at the individual level explicitly. However, as we show in this work, this does not prevent probabilistic reasoning over these heterogeneous datasets even when the data and shared attributes exhibit significant mismatches that are common in real-world data. Different datasets have different sample biases, disagree on category definitions and spatial representations, collect data at different temporal intervals, and mix aggregate-level with individual data. In this work, we demonstrate how a set of Bayesian network motifs allows all of these mismatches to be resolved in a composable framework that permits joint probabilistic reasoning over all datasets without manipulating, modifying, or imputing the original data, thus avoiding potentially harmful assumptions. We provide an open source Python tool that encapsulates our methodology and demonstrate this tool on a number of real-world use cases.
When sociologists examine the content of sociological knowledge, they typically engage in textual... more When sociologists examine the content of sociological knowledge, they typically engage in textual analysis. Conversely, this paper examines the relationship between theory figures and causal claims. Analyzing a random sample of articles from prominent sociology journals, we find several notable trends in how sociologists both describe and visualize causal relationships, as well as how these modes of representation interrelate. First, we find that the modal use of arrows in sociology are as expressions of causal relationship. Second, arrow-based figures are connected to both strong and weak causal claims, but that strong causal claims are disproportionately found in U.S. journals compared to European journals. Third, both causal figures and causal claims are usually central to the overarching goals of articles. Lastly, the strength of causal figures typically fits with the strength of the textual causal claims, suggesting that visualization promotes clearer thinking and writing about causal relationships. Overall, our findings suggest that arrow-based figures are a crucial cognitive and communicative resource in the expression of causal claims.
Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes ... more Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes for individuals from diverse backgrounds to find opportunities to learn from and interact with others different from themselves. This optimism quickly waned as social media seemed to breed ideological homophily marked by "filter bubbles" or "echo chambers." A typical response to the sense of fragmentation has been to encourage exposure to more cross-partisan sources of information. But do outlets that reach across partisan lines in fact generate more civil discourse? And does the civility of discourse hosted by such outlets vary depending on the political context in which they operate? To answer these questions, we identified bubble reachers, users who distribute content that reaches other users with diverse political opinions in recent presidential elections in Brazil, where populism has deep roots in the political culture, and Canada, where the political culture is comparatively moderate. Given that background, this research studies unexplored properties of content shared by bubble reachers, specifically the quality of conversations and comments it generates. We examine how ideologically neutral bubble reachers differ from ideologically partisan accounts in the level of uncivil discourse they provoke, and explore how this varies in the context of the two countries considered. Our results suggest that while ideologically neutral bubble reachers support less uncivil discourse in Canada, the opposite relationship holds in Brazil. Even non-political content by ideologically neutral bubble reachers elicits a considerable amount of uncivil discourse in Brazil. This indicates that bubble reaching and incivility are moderated by the national political context. Our results complicate the simple hypothesis of a universal impact of neutral bubble reachers across contexts.
Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
Urban research has long recognized that neighbourhoods are dynamic and relational. However, lack ... more Urban research has long recognized that neighbourhoods are dynamic and relational. However, lack of data, methodologies, and computer processing power have hampered a formal quantitative examination of neighbourhood relational dynamics. To make progress on this issue, this study proposes a graph neural network (GNN) approach that permits combining and evaluating multiple sources of information about internal characteristics of neighbourhoods, their past characteristics, and flows of groups among them, potentially providing greater expressive power in predictive models. By exploring a public large-scale dataset from Yelp, we show the potential of our approach for considering structural connectedness in predicting neighbourhood attributes, specifically to predict local culture. Results are promising from a substantive and methodologically point of view. Substantively, we find that either local area information (e.g. area demographics) or group profiles (tastes of Yelp reviewers) give the best results in predicting local culture, and they are nearly equivalent in all studied cases. Methodologically, exploring group profiles could be a helpful alternative where finding local information for specific areas is challenging, since they can be extracted automatically from many forms of online data. Thus, our approach could empower researchers and policy-makers to use a range of data sources when other local area information is lacking.
This article examines the dynamics of inter-referencing between cities and develops the concept o... more This article examines the dynamics of inter-referencing between cities and develops the concept of the 'Urban Referencing Network' as a representation of the references made by cities to one another in policy documents. The study employs public art policies, specifically the Percent for Art policy, to investigate the structure of inter-referencing within the urban referencing network. Using a corpus of policy documents from 26 Anglophone cities with over one million residents, we analyse 150 documents containing 2178 inter-references. Combining network measurements and regressions, we explore the emergence of central nodes and the mechanisms influencing their formation. The broader field of arts and cultural policies, with its extensive inter-urban connections and professional networks, provides fertile ground for studying urban referencing networks. By integrating literature on policy mobility and urban networks, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the circulation of urban ideas and the interplay between cities in policy-making processes. The results demonstrate that only a few cities, including New York, Chicago, London, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Montreal, emerge as central nodes, attracting the other cities' attention. Attributes of the referenced cities, like economic importance, iconicity and early adoption, determine to a great extent who are the most central nodes.
Research on the relationship between categorical unconventionality and popularity has produced mi... more Research on the relationship between categorical unconventionality and popularity has produced mixed results. While many accounts suggest that unconventionality is penalized, much sociological theorizing indicates that success comes from a delicate balancing act between conventional and unconventional offerings. Using data on the genre selfclassifications of over 2 million musicians and bands across the United States, the authors find broad support for this balancing act. Yet the shape it takes is also conditioned on local contexts, across both high-order complexes of musical genres and geographic space. The authors highlight the local metropolitan area characteristics that shift the relationship between unconventionality and popularity. They also create a typology of cities based on how their unconventional offerings are rewarded and punished. An online visualization tool enables further investigation of these relationships. The authors close by proposing an agenda for how to study local heterogeneity in the relationship between unconventionality and popularity.
Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger ... more Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., "reaching the bubbles". This study investigates whether this holds in the context of nationwide elections in Brazil and Canada. We collected politics-related tweets shared during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election and the 2019 Canadian federal election. Next, we proposed an updated centrality metric that enables identifying highly central bubble reachers, nodes that can distribute content among users with diverging political opinions-a fundamental metric for the proposed study. After that, we analyzed how users engage with news content shared by bubble reachers, its source, and its topics, considering its political orientation. Among other results, we found that, even though news media disseminate content that interests different sides of the political spectrum, users tend to engage considerably more with content that aligns with their political orientation, regardless of the topic.
This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to thi... more This paper elaborates a multi-model approach to studying how local scenes change. We refer to this as the "4 D's" of scene change: development, differentiation, defense, and diffusion. Each posits somewhat distinct change processes, and has its own tradition of theory and empirical research, which we briefly review. After summarizing some major trends in scenes and amenities in the US context, for each change model, we present some initial findings, discussing data and methods throughout. Our overall goal is to point toward new research arcs on change models of scenes, and to give some clear examples and directions for how to think about and collect data to understand what makes some scenes change, others not, why, and in what directions.
In this study, we articulate a functional model of neighbourhood change and continuity, adapted f... more In this study, we articulate a functional model of neighbourhood change and continuity, adapted from a classical model proposed by Stinchcombe in 1968. We argue this model provides a relatively simple way to capture key aspects of the complex causal structure of neighbourhood change that are implicit in much neighbourhood change research but rarely formulated explicitly. To evaluate the model, we formulate six testable propositions, which we empirically test with large-scale data from Yelp.com. We illustrate our approach with the case of Toronto, but find broad support for all propositions in an analysis of six cities. A conclusion reflects on the value of incorporating functionalist models into neighbourhood research and policy.
How should we read and understand Georg Simmel’s famous essay, “How Is Society Possible?” How and... more How should we read and understand Georg Simmel’s famous essay, “How Is Society Possible?” How and how well does Simmel answer his main question? What bearing, if any, does the essay have on the study of forms of interaction, in his own work or in modern scholarship? The exchange below addresses such questions in the form of an article, extended commentary, and response. With the support of the editors of Simmel Studies, we present the trio of items as a single unit to illustrate to fellow Simmel scholars the possibilities of divergent readings and critiques. The exchange began when Lechner sent a draft of his paper “How Is Society Possible?” to Silver, who responded with detailed comments. It occurred to us that rather than simply submitting a paper revised in light of those comments, or letting further revision occur behind the scenes through peer review, it might be worthwhile to make our contrasting views public as a stimulus to further reflection on a classic essay. Since we have both been inspired by the work and thought of the great Simmel scholar Donald Levine, we also offer this joint effort as an instance of the dialogical approach to theory he advocated.
In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same' policy ideas,... more In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same' policy ideas, their local translations can be substantially different. Yet, urban studies have not provided sufficient tools to compare such translations among a wide number of cities. We develop a methodological program that operationalizes into a quantitative analysis the rich Policy Assemblage framework often used to compare selected cases. We distinguish between assemblage as a process and assemblage as an outcome, and argue that both are important for urban policy mobility studies. While assemblage as a process is often seen as the thicker description, assemblage outcomes provide central snapshots that reveal the broader process and make its concrete configurations evident. Using the case of public art policies and the mechanism of the Percent of Public Art, we compare the assemblage outcome of the idea in 26 cities with more than one million residents in the Anglosphere. We ask, how do cities assemble policy discourses, and what is the logic that differentiates cities from one another? We find cities use multiple discourses which refer to the socioeconomic , cultural identity and the spatial dimensions of public art in cities. Nevertheless, when cities assemble these discourses, the socioeconomic dimension tends to define a central cleavage between cities. To examine how such a cleavage is constructed, we examine the assembly process of Toronto more closely.
The concepts of contradiction and dialogue are crucial to Hermann Goldschmidt's Contradiction Set... more The concepts of contradiction and dialogue are crucial to Hermann Goldschmidt's Contradiction Set Free. In this paper, I place Goldschmidt into dialogue with two social thinkers for whom similar ideas were equally crucial: Georg Simmel and Donald Levine. In the case of Simmel, I highlight his theory of con ict speci cally, but more generally his commitment to duality and ambiguity. In the case of Levine, I feature his attempt to articulate what he calls a "dialogic" narrative of the sociological tradition. I seek to evaluate Goldschmidt's own thinking by his own criteria, by asking whether the sociological and the philosophical approaches to these questions are parallel, in opposition, or an instance of a contradiction in Goldschmidt's sense.
This paper adds to a vital international tradition of discussing the history of sociological theo... more This paper adds to a vital international tradition of discussing the history of sociological theory by empirically investigating its structure, dynamics, and relationships. Our primary contribution to this tradition is to bring to the conversation a greater level of comparative and historical scope, a more systematic quantitative methodology, and a degree of reflexivity and synthesis. To do so, we examine some 670 editions of sociological-theory books geared toward students, published in English, German, and French between 1950 and 2020. Our empirical analysis highlights patterns, trends, and relationships among the theorists featured in these books, the narratives and approaches that define their visions of sociological theory, and the characteristics of the authors who wrote them. Our findings reveal some key intellectual as well as sociological factors associated with the changing composition of the canon.
In this article, we study neighborhood preferences among residents of highly diverse, lower incom... more In this article, we study neighborhood preferences among residents of highly diverse, lower income suburban neighborhoods in Toronto, Ontario. By extending the typical application of conjoint designs to the urban domain, we show techniques for measuring place alienation—a sense of disconnec-tion from place—and its impact on neighborhood satisfaction. We find that residents in lower SES neighborhoods share many of the same priorities as residents in higher SES neighborhoods when it comes to safety, transit, school quality, neighborliness, public spaces, and building types. However, differences appear across a range of preferences including bike usage, local commercial spaces, and cultural and recreation facilities. When considering place alienation and neighborhood satisfaction, we find a consistent, robust inverted relationship—as place alienation decreases, neighborhood satisfac-tion increases. Moreover, this relationship is not mitigated by socioeconomic factors, neighborhood conditions, or even attitudinal and experiential fac-tors. We end with suggestions for future research
This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Ur... more This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Urban Evolution Model (TUEM) can be used to encode city data, illuminate key features, demonstrate how formetic distance can be used to discover how spatial areas change over time, and identify similar spatial areas within and between cities. The data used in this study are reviews from Yelp. Each review can be interpreted as a formeme where the category of the business is a form, the reviewer is a group and the review is an activity. Yelp data from neighbourhoods in both Toronto and Montreal are encoded. A method for aggregating reviewers into groups with multiple members is introduced. Longitudinal analysis is performed for all Toronto neighbourhoods. Transversal analysis is performed between neighbourhoods within Toronto and between Toronto and Montreal. Similar neighbourhoods are identified validating formetic distance.
This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of (1) sources of variations; (2) ... more This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of (1) sources of variations; (2) principles of selection; and (3) mechanisms of retention. More specifically, regarding (1) it defines local and environmental sources of variation and identifies some of their generative processes, such as recom-bination, migration, mutation, extinction, and transcription errors. Regarding (2), it outlines a series of selection processes as part of an evolutionary ecology of urban forms, including density dependence, scope dependence, distance dependence, content dependence, and frequency dependence. Regarding (3), it characterizes retention as a combination of absorption and restriction of novel variants, defines mechanisms by which these can occur, including longevity, fidelity, and fecundity, and specifies how these processes issue in trajectories define by properties such as stability, pace, convergence, and divergence. A conclusion reviews the effort and looks forward to computer simulation and data-driven applications , as well as focused theoretical extensions of parts of the model. This paper builds on Parts I and II and is part of the Urban Genome Project, about which more information can be found here.
This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the S... more This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of the information encoded in that space. This information consists of: an urban genome, which captures ideas regarding the groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) to which a space’s physical forms are oriented; ideas among human actors regarding who (users) and how (uses) to utilize the space and its forms; and the signals that are communicated within and among urban spaces. Central to the model is the notion of the formeme, which provides the building blocks for a Signature. Formemes are units of urban information regarding physical forms, groups, and activities, which may be encoded in physical artifacts, signals, or human actors, and circulate among them. We then show how various metrics can define an urban area based on its Signature, and that these metrics can be used to measure similarity of urban spaces. The Signature, and its underlying formemes capture the sources of variations in urban evolution.
This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four ... more This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four major sections. First, we review prior adumbrations of an evolutionary model in urban theory, noting their potential and their limitations. Second, we turn to the general sociocultural evolution literature to draw inspiration for a fresh and more complete application of evolutionary theory to the study of urban life. Third, building upon this background, we outline the main elements of our proposed model, with special attention to elaborating the value of its key conceptual innovation, the “formeme”. Last, we conclude with a discussion of what types of research commitments the overall approach does or does not imply, and point toward the more formal elaboration of the model that we undertake in “Towards a Model of Urban Evolution, Part II” and “Towards a Model of Urban Evolution, Part III”. In “Towards a Model of Urban Evolution, Part IV” we demonstrate the application of the model to Yelp data.
Cities have established official neighborhood boundaries for targeted social policy in recent dec... more Cities have established official neighborhood boundaries for targeted social policy in recent decades. The authors propose that a sociological conception of neighborhoods sensitizes us to the potential consequences of imposing categorical divisions onto a largely continuous urban space. The authors specify this idea in three steps. First, they argue that designations affect people's behavior toward target neighborhoods. Second, the heterogeneity within official boundaries may lead to informational distortion; disadvantaged areas are denied benefits solely because of location. Third, designations may generate negative reputations for targeted areas or extend existing stigma to new areas. To examine these processes, the authors study Toronto's Priority Area Program (2006-2013). Difference-indifference models show significant negative effects of the designation on rent, home value, and building permits. The authors provide evidence of informational distortion through income distribution analysis. An analysis of policy documents, newspaper reports, and secondary literature illustrates the stigmatizing aspects that local community members and observers interpreted about the designation.
The urban policy mobility literature describes the widespread circulation of policy ideas while h... more The urban policy mobility literature describes the widespread circulation of policy ideas while highlighting their mutations along the way. At the same time, the literature often analyzes the localization of such ideas by examining their adoption in one or several cities. To better understand policy replications and mutations, we develop theoretical and methodological strategies that provide sensitivity to both local distinctiveness and global variability. We build on the Urban Policy Mobility literature and combine it with ecological theories of conceptual spaces to develop the concept of Urban Model Spaces – a matrix of discursive possibilities evolving from the accumulated replications and localizations of a model. We articulate it via three core properties central to Urban Policy Mobility - Temporality, Scale, and Position and test how they shape the emergence of policy discourses. To demonstrate the concept we analyze public art policy and the funding mechanism of the Percent for Art ordinance from 26 cities combining Structural Topic Modeling and regression analysis
The New Pragmatist Sociology Inquiry, Agency, and Democracy, 2022
This chapter asks what it would mean to place John Dewey’s theory of art and aesthetics at the ve... more This chapter asks what it would mean to place John Dewey’s theory of art and aesthetics at the very center of a sociological formulation of his ideas. It proceeds in three steps. First, I elaborate why it has been understandably difficult to integrate Dewey's philosophy of art and aesthetics into sociology, by contrasting two sociological efforts to take seriously Dewey's aesthetics, one by Cesar Graña and the other by John Levi Martin. Second, I develop an original interpretation of the sociological significance of Dewey's aesthetics through a critical engagement with Martin's writings about "social aesthetics.” In particular, I contrast Dewey's conception of aesthetic experience with Martin's field-theoretic version, highlighting three crucial differences in how they conceptualize aesthetics, and thus experience: the centrality of judgment, the significance of sociality, and the relation between aesthetics and art. All these differences arise from a fundamental disagreement about the developmental character of experience. Third and finally I articulate what sociological investigation in a Deweyan mode is like through an interpretation of the Chicago School's maps.
NOTE: the pdf appears garbled if viewed on the academia site, but if you download it should be le... more NOTE: the pdf appears garbled if viewed on the academia site, but if you download it should be legible. This chapter discusses a new approach to the study of urban place, "the scenes ap proach." While this approach is not exclusively applicable to cities, this chapter is focused on urban areas. Businesses and institutions, people and practices join to produce areas with distinct aesthetics-hip, edgy, refined, glamorous, etc. These qualities make it possi ble to move about a city as if it were a scenic route, to discover the styles of life each has to offer. This chapter is intended as a first effort to extend scenes thinking to historic preservation and public heritage practice (and vice versa) and we invite critical dialogue and collaboration. Keywords: historic preservation, scenes approach, cultural heritage, urban, built environment, practice
This chapter builds on past work to examine the distinctive ways in which ethnic restaurants help... more This chapter builds on past work to examine the distinctive ways in which ethnic restaurants help to define the contemporary scenescape in US cities. It uses the example of restaurants to illustrate how to apply and extend a scenes approach. Restaurants in general and ethnically themed restaurants are crucial components of many cities and communities' consumer offerings. They often make the scene. After briefly reviewing some general principles of the scenes perspective, the authors discuss ethnic neighborhoods and the role of consumption venues such as restaurants in defining their identity. The authors stress multiple ways that ethnically themed amenities and local populations may overlap in various contexts, as well as how they can join with other dimensions of local scenes. These ideas are illustrated by examining multiple types of ethnic restaurants across all US zip codes, paying particular attention to the degree to which they correspond with coethnic residential populations, and how this varies by group and city. The authors also investigate the types of scenes typical of cosmopolitan areas that offer diverse ethnic cuisines.
In this introductory chapter, we first discuss in brief the factors that account for the rise and... more In this introductory chapter, we first discuss in brief the factors that account for the rise and expansion of urban cultural policy. We then highlight the politicized nature of the field, describing some of the new relationships, coalitions, and conflicts that have emerged in the urban 4 context. Synthesizing the array of factors that influence the processes and politics behind urban cultural policy, we suggest, helps to see how urban cultural policy and analysis is moving beyond the now familiar creative city script. We conclude this introduction by presenting the organization of the book.
Toronto, like many cities worldwide, has significantly grown and changed in recent decades. But t... more Toronto, like many cities worldwide, has significantly grown and changed in recent decades. But the transformation in Toronto has been especially sudden and dramatic. Its historic Victorian political culture, averse to public amusement and supportive of bourgeois virtues like thrift, family, and homogenous community, has been joined by new themes of individuality, public personal expression, and cultural diversity (Lemon 1984). Traditional self-conceptions like “Toronto the Good” and “Hogtown” now jostle and merge with “Toronto the Could,” “Creative City,” and “Visit Toronto, See the World.” This chapter uses two case studies to explore how local politics have been affected by these changes. One highlights the politics at stake in cultural work and consumption. In the case of the West Queen West Triangle, a vibrant independent art scene, supported by city officials, politicians, and influential media figures and professionals, sought to resist and alter proposed condominium developments that threatened to turn one of the city’s core post-industrial employment districts into a “bedroom community for the suburbs.” The other highlights the politics of residence and community. In the case of the Wychwood Barns, neighbors clashed over whether to rehabilitate abandoned and dilapidated streetcar repair barns into artist live-work space, an environmental educational center, and a farmers market or to demolish it for a traditional grass and trees park.
The primary aim of this chapter is to articulate the nature and importance of the idea indicated ... more The primary aim of this chapter is to articulate the nature and importance of the idea indicated in its title. First I will offer a meditation on the phrase "some scenes of urban life," reflecting on each word of the phrase separately and then together as a unity. John Dewey, Georg Simmel, Kenneth Burke, Charles Baudelaire, among others, will serve as reference points for this exercise. Second comes an illustration of how scenes can be empirically studied as both outgrowths and drivers of key aspects of urban life. To do so I will draw from original Canadian national databases of local amenities. Built from census of business and online business directories, these databases cover all Canadian postal areas and include millions of listings of hundreds of amenity categories (such as family restaurants, churches, art galleries, and the like). Similar databases have been built in the US, France, Spain, and Korea. The conclusion argues for the fruitfulness of synthesizing scenes-oriented research with the neighborhood effects tradition of urban analysis, exemplified most powerfully in recent years by Robert Sampson’s Great American City.
More traditionally associated with hogs (“Chicago: Hog Butcher to the World”), clientelism (“We D... more More traditionally associated with hogs (“Chicago: Hog Butcher to the World”), clientelism (“We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent,”), and industrialism (“Chicago, City of Broad Shoulders”), Chicago lacks a strong tradition of major civic and city government expenditure and interest in arts, culture, and amenities. As late as 1975, Saul Bellow wrote, “there were beautiful and moving things in Chicago, but culture was not one of them” (Bellow 1975: 69). In the wake of major investments in Chicago’s cultural infrastructure, by 2009, the Director of the National Endowment of the Arts could say: “Mayor Daley should be the No. 1 hero to everyone in this country who cares about art” (in The Theater Loop, 2009). In 1976, Milton Rakove described Chicago as “Dick Daley’s town. Uncultured and parochial...not an Athens, neither a Rome, nor a London, and never a Paris” (Rakove 1976: 41). In 2003 Mayor Daley II had the street level bus stops and rail entrances redesigned to match those in Paris. What happened in between, how did local politicians drive this process, and how has Chicago politics changed?
This chapter investigates the consequences of local ‘scenes’ for urban development. It treats the... more This chapter investigates the consequences of local ‘scenes’ for urban development. It treats the particular constellation of amenities in a place – cafes, galleries, pubs, music venues, fashion houses, dance clubs, antique shops, restaurants, fruit stands, convenience stores and the like – as constituting the local scene. These constellations of amenities define the scene by making available an array of meaningful experiences to residents and visitors. Scenes give a sense of drama, authenticity and ethical significance to a city’s streets and strips. Depending on its particular configuration of amenities, a vibrant scene can transform an urban area into a theatrical place to see and be seen (glamorously, transgressively or in other ways), an authentic place to explore and affirm local, ethnic or national identities (among others), an ethical place to share and debate common values and ideals (such as tradition or self expression). The availability of these experiences varies substantially across and even within cities and regions. These variations have significant consequences for urban economies and populations.
We propose several hypotheses and analyses about scenes as one factor that contributes to ‘creative cities’. We situate these propositions within a broader universe of ideas about the significance of creativity. First, we offer a brief overview of the processes involved in what we call the institutionalization and internalization of creativity. This is a process whereby creativity moves from the margins to the centre of basic conceptions of human action, bringing with it special attention to the specific mechanisms through which creative activity is more likely to occur in one place and moment rather than another. Second, we briefly review some classic and contemporary hypotheses about what these multiple mechanisms might be, such as education, technology, density and the like. Third, we propose adding scenes as a distinctly important factor of creativity. We offer a brief introduction to our scenes perspective on urban development, before proposing and testing several hypotheses about how scenes drive urban development.
This essay seeks to understand a particular kind of response to the felt collapse of a cultural p... more This essay seeks to understand a particular kind of response to the felt collapse of a cultural practice that purports to link humans, things, and the divine. The cultural practice I am referring to is philosophy; the feeling of collapse occurred in early twentieth-century Europe; the response is that of Martin Heidegger in his 1929-1930 lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude.
One of the central problems of sociological theory has always been to demarcate the social domain... more One of the central problems of sociological theory has always been to demarcate the social domain of reality and to thereby provide sociological research with its own distinctive topic. Because the social domain is created and sustained by human actions, sociology’s classical theorists have naturally been at pains to understand how action can come to acquire a social character. But sharing the question “what is action?” does not mean that we should force their different answers into an artificial unity in the mode of standard philosophies of action. Though one often speaks of the action-theoretical approach in sociology, clearly the notion of action in the sociological classics is not as homogeneous as it may seem. Far from being unsystematic or contingent, the meaning of action is nevertheless too widespread and “polyphonic” to be restricted to one distinct and consistent approach. Current and contemporary theories would provide further evidence. Even theorists who do not call themselves “action theorists” at all, like Bourdieu or Luhmann, cannot avoid considering different notions of action, whether for apologetic or critical reasons. Thus, talk of the “action- theory”-approach in general and its alleged counterparts (like “systems theory” or “structuralism”) has to be treated cautiously.
Nevertheless, we think that the classical social theorists share much in common that sets them apart from most philosophers of action and allows for a systematic comparison of the action- theoretical alternatives they offer. First, they do not confine the matter of action to the more or less metaphysical distinction between what is action and what is not; nor do they reduce action to an “exercise of reason” in the Kantian mode. Instead, they treat action and its sociality as practical problems that emerge in the course of life, such as when actors find it difficult to understand one another or experience resistances and constraints. In other words: rather than deal with the question, “what ontological criteria must a behavior meet to count as ‘an action’?” they instead elaborate on the fact that acting and/or activity in daily life takes place under “imperfect” conditions of time pressure, sympathy, dependency, power, role-taking, drives, interests, solidarity. “Action” and “actor” are results, often contested, of dealing with these imperfect conditions. The “idealized rational actor” forecloses analysis of these conditions from the start; furthermore, breaking down these complex social entanglements to a handy difference between “reason” or “instinct” – as we come across in e.g. Korsgaard – is also not an option the sociological “classics” took into consideration.
What is more, the classical sociologists articulated “thick” historic examples to show that “action” and “agency” are interweaved with social institutions, habits, values and forms. The analyses of this interpenetration of action and sociality they undertook go much deeper than simply taking note that some, mostly self-evident, process of socialization shapes the conditions of agency and identity. For our protagonists, the social dimension of action stands for more than the social dependency of children or a “deficient” mode of individual autonomy. Their theories are meant to enable systematic analyses and observations of the world of sociable action, in all of its types, objects, and forms.
Our discussion of some of these theoretical efforts is organized as follows. We begin with the two uncontested classics of sociology, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, and highlight crucial divergences between their methodological statements and their material investigations. In the case of Weber, his theoretical statements about the methodological priority of instrumentally rational individual actions are belied by his research into the origins of the capitalist work ethic, which stresses instead customs and common values. In the case of Durkheim, his theoretical statements about the “thing-like” and coercive character of society are belied by his research into religious rites, which stresses instead how ritual action generates a meaningful and attractive social world. The remainder of our essay turns to Talcott Parsons and Georg Simmel as representatives of two classical approaches to theorizing the implicit connections between action and sociality never fully addressed by Weber and Durkheim. Simmel’s formal sociology focuses on forms rather than objects of social action and situates the social form of experience as one among many. Parsons’ general theory of action treats systems of social roles as one sub-system of action alongside personality systems and cultural systems, all of which emerge from the problems and contingencies inherent to acting in situations.
During the early 1940s, sociologist Talcott Parsons and political scientist Eric Voegelin engaged... more During the early 1940s, sociologist Talcott Parsons and political scientist Eric Voegelin engaged in a vigorous written exchange, touching at length on topics such as the origins of totalitarianism and modern anti-Semitism, the legacy of Max Weber, patterns of secularization set in motion by the Protestant Reformation, the methodology and goals of social science, and more. Their entire extant correspondence (comprising eleven letters from Parsons and fourteen from Voegelin) is published here, for the first time in the original English, along with bibliographical and historical notes. The reader will see not only a pregnant intellectual dialogue, but also hints of a relatively brief but evidently genuine friendship between the two scholars. For a more extensive discussion of the scholarly questions motivating the correspondence and the interpersonal context in which they were raised, please see our article “Critical Naïveté? Religion, Science and Action in the Parsons-Voegelin Correspondence” in the European Journal of Sociology 54, no. 2, pp. 265-293.
We have several interesting and stimulating submissions in this issue: First, Fabio Rojas of Indi... more We have several interesting and stimulating submissions in this issue: First, Fabio Rojas of Indiana University talks about how he radically changed the way he teaches theory; Second, Terry Leahy of the University of Newcastle engages with mind/body dualism and the New Materialism; Third, Brad West of the University of South Australia and Steve Matthewman of the University of Auckland respond to a recent critique (in a past issue of Theory) by Michael and Angeline Kearns Blain. Our last substantive piece, by François Dépelteau of Laurentian University, talks about relational sociology and a new book series that offers opportunities for publication. As always, we conclude with announcements by our members.
Greetings to the members of RC-16! We hope you are all having prosperous and pleasant summers. It... more Greetings to the members of RC-16! We hope you are all having prosperous and pleasant summers. It is hard to believe, but we will be seeing many of you in one year’s time in Toronto at the ISA World Congress. On that note, we would urge you all to consider submitting abstracts to our research committee’s very exciting set of theory panels. The deadline for abstract submissions is September 30th—all information on how to submit can be found on the ISA website. This issue of Theory has three original thought pieces from our members. The first, by Shoji Kokichi of University of Tokyo, engages with the importance of theory in “countering the ‘new normalcy’” in society. The second essay, by Eduardo De La Fuente, helps illuminate how and why a “textural sociology” can be helpful in our theorizing. Finally, Michael Blain and Angeline Kearns Blaine offer commentary on West and Matthweman’s previous Theory essay, with the goal of thinking through what causes war and military violence. We want to thank all the contributors for helping construct what we think is a very interesting edition of the newsletter. Enjoy!
This is the Winter 2016 edition of Theory, the newsletter of the International Sociological Assoc... more This is the Winter 2016 edition of Theory, the newsletter of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Sociological Theory. In addition to section announcements and news, we have two substantive pieces: The first, “Sociological Theory as Demilitarized Zone” by Brad West and Steve Matthewman, considers how sociological theory neglects the subjects of war and the military. The second, by Filipe Carreira da Silva, asks “Who reads Tocqueville today?”
Our conference is fast approaching, and we look forward to the many stimulating
conversations it ... more Our conference is fast approaching, and we look forward to the many stimulating conversations it promises. To whet our collective appetite, we include in this edition of Theory abstracts of papers to be presented in Cambridge, June 27-29. Thank you to co-chairs Patrick Baert and Agnes Ku for their excellent work in organizing and managing the event, and for the tremendous support provided by Kate Williams. We are also excited about the two pieces we feature in this edition. Continuing our ongoing series on how sociological theory is taught in various parts of the world, Lars Döpking examines the situation in Germany. Additionally, Natàlia Cantó-Milà discusses the ongoing “mainstreaming of relational sociology,” by way of introducing the new focus of the journal Digithum: a relational perspective on culture society. Many members may be interested in participating in the journal’s various endeavors, and so we encourage you to visit its website: http://journals.uoc.edu/index.php/digithum/.
Donald Levine passed away in April. Committed to the value of international dialogue among socio... more Donald Levine passed away in April. Committed to the value of international dialogue among sociological theorists, Don was an active member of this Research Committee. He contributed to the pages of Theory on several occasions, most recently with a stirring memorial to Schmuel Eisenstadt (in 2011) and a call to critically recover crucial ideas from the sociological heritage about agency and emancipation (in 2012).
This issue of Theory is dedicated to Don’s memory. We include articles that testify to his intellectual and personal impact on the field, in its content and form. The notion of dialogue is the keynote. Indeed, through his final days, Don was working on a book, Dialogical Social Theory (which Transaction Press will publish), that would forward the concept of dialogue as the emergent guiding idea of his own oeuvre and as a potential lynchpin to a powerful reinterpretation of the theoretical tradition writ large.
We are pleased to publish a brief selection from the introduction to Dialogical Social Theory here, and thank Howard Ungerman and Transaction Press for permission to do so. Jon Baskin introduces this selection by way of an account of what it was like to work with Don towards its completion. A University of Chicago graduate student and one of Don’s long-time friends, Baskin’s piece offers a moving portrait of how thought, teaching, and friendship fused in Don’s life.
Other articles in this edition speak to issues that Don held dear. He was intensively concerned with questions about how to teach social theory, and believed that doing so well required careful reflection on the aims of education together with the broader situations in which teachers and students find themselves. Wolfgang Knöbl’s essay on his own practice as a theoretical educator ably demonstrates the importance of undertaking such reflection. Questions about the nature of social relations, processes, and structures also animated Don’s work, especially given his life-long engagement with the thought of Simmel and Parsons. Such issues are central in the “invitation to an ongoing experiment” we publish here, which records an ongoing conversation about relational sociology among several participants, with François Dépelteau and Jan Fuhse at the center. That this conversation appears as an unfolding dialogue, in all of its fits and starts, gives and takes, nearing and distancing, would be highly congenial to Don, we believe. In a similar experimental and dialogical vein, we include a link to “Theorizing from the South,” by Gabriel Restrepo. Finally, Don was a master at “inverting the lens” from the objects of social thought to its thinkers, their texts, and their relationships. The essay here by Cinthya Guzman and Dan Silver draws explicit inspiration from Don’s Visions of the Sociological Tradition in reporting ongoing work analyzing sociological theory syllabi in Canada and beyond.
Theorizing is a practical skill. Like any skill, it can be improved with training. Novices begin ... more Theorizing is a practical skill. Like any skill, it can be improved with training. Novices begin with some latent abilities, and teachers help them to cultivate those abilities. Successful teaching and learning culminates in people who can exercise their theoretical capacities excellently.
My thesis is that social aesthetics culminate in sociological aesthetics. Without an appropriate ... more My thesis is that social aesthetics culminate in sociological aesthetics. Without an appropriate medium for their articulation, the experiential qualities of social life remain fleeting and obscure. They become durable and intelligible in objects geared toward their expression. Sociology has among its tasks the production of such objects. If explaining social action requires reconstructing experiences in a compelling way, then sociological works have an irreducibly aesthetic dimension; they have to condense social experience into expressive objects which can in turn deepen perception and integrate experience. Sociology is a work of art, which at its best joins discursive and non-discursive symbols in an effort to successfully represent the substance of its subject matter.
The sociological art is not easy; most attempts fail. I suggest John Dewey's Art as Experience and Susanne Langer's Feeling and Form provide a valuable fund of ideas for elaborating the nature of sociology as an aesthetic practice. To clarify the sociological implications of their ideas, I contrast them to another account of sociological artistry, Robert Nisbet's, which is rooted in humanism rather than pragmatism. The early Chicago School provides an illuminating example of this pragmatist approach to sociology as a form of art, in particular in the intensive use of visual, abstract, non-verbal symbols, most notably maps. These images, I argue, express - as neither everyday experience nor discursive symbols can -- the experience of society as a form of life, moving, growing, uncertain, tensive, emotionally fraught, adaptive, competitive, contingent, but also -- because it is all of these -- potentially meaningful.
This paper outlines the scenes perspective on measuring the cultural meanings embedded in concret... more This paper outlines the scenes perspective on measuring the cultural meanings embedded in concrete places and spaces and applies that perspective to Canada. It uses a national database of hundreds of types of local amenities to measure the local "scene" in every Canadian postal code. It provides a tour through the Canadian "scenescape" at the national, regional, metropolitan, and neighborhood level by outlining variations in types of amenities and the cultural meanings they support, such as tradition, self-expression, transgression, or local authenticity. And it investigates which types of scenes are associated with various demographic and social indicators, such as change in population among sub-groups and job growth.
A core idea of urban genetics is that cities are constantly making new versions of themselves. Th... more A core idea of urban genetics is that cities are constantly making new versions of themselves. The degree to which the new version resembles the previous one varies. If there is no resemblance, then there is no genetic code to speak of; it is a world without memory or inheritance. If there is absolute fidelity, there is no evolution to speak of; it is a world without variation. Actual cities exist somewhere on this continuum between volatility and stability, ferment and fidelity. They have a basic genetic code, inscribed in their physical forms and explicit or implicit expectations for how they are to be used, and by whom. These make tomorrow tend to resemble today. However, the script is always being rewritten, sometimes in small ways that accumulate over time into a larger transformation, sometimes in big changes that dramatically threaten to unsettle established routines. This post explores these themes via the case of Toronto, using two methods: Markov modeling and sequence analysis.
Este año, con motivo del fallecimiento de Georg Simmel en Estrasburgo, noreste francés, el 28 de ... more Este año, con motivo del fallecimiento de Georg Simmel en Estrasburgo, noreste francés, el 28 de septiembre de 1918,RedSimmel propone una mirada a varias relaciones que han tenido algunos académicos que recorren su obra con amplitud, desde la edición de textos de Simmel hasta la docencia prolongada y la investigación respectivas.
Pedimos a varias figuras internacionales que respondieran tres preguntas acerca de sus primeras lecturas de la obra simmeliana y las circunstancias personales que rodearon tal encuentro. Hoy publicamos lo que contestaron los profesores Valentina Salvi y Esteban Vernik, ambos de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, y Daniel Silver, profesor estadounidense de la Universidad de Toronto.
Do we truly live in a “post-authentic” musical world, where norms and conventions around musical ... more Do we truly live in a “post-authentic” musical world, where norms and conventions around musical creation have weakened and individual creativity is born to run free? Our work starts with this question, and then goes on to pursue a couple further ones about how musical unconventionality relates to band popularity and how unconventionality may be geographically concentrated.
Over the last four decades public art has galvanized neighborhoods around the world, yet in Toron... more Over the last four decades public art has galvanized neighborhoods around the world, yet in Toronto it is a relatively untapped tool for engaging with and promoting vibrant and inclusive communities. Inspired by the potential of art in public space, a vigorous dialogue has sprung up from many sources with the goal of making Toronto a leader in global public art practice. Participants seek to evaluate current practice and explore future opportunities to expand the definition, practice, and support for public art in this city. Though this conversation transcends policy, policy is a key part of the puzzle. Spurred by this dialogue and by the relevance of public art to universities, researchers from OCAD University and the University of Toronto joined together to produce this report, Redefining Public Art in Toronto.
From the Ground Up: Growing Toronto’s Cultural Sector investigates the fundamental link between c... more From the Ground Up: Growing Toronto’s Cultural Sector investigates the fundamental link between culture, economy and place in Toronto’s pursuit of long-term prosperity and competitiveness.
This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the S... more This paper is part II of “Towards A Model of Urban Evolution.” It defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of the information encoded in that space. This information consists of: an urban genome, which captures ideas regarding the groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) to which a space’s physical forms are oriented; ideas among human actors regarding who (users) and how (uses) to utilize the space and its forms; and the signals that are communicated within and among urban spaces. Central to the model is the notion of the formeme, which provides the building blocks for a Signature. Formemes are units of urban information regarding physical forms, groups, and activities, which may be encoded in physical artifacts, signals, or human actors, and circulate among them. We then show how various metrics can define an urban area based on its Signature, and that these metrics can be used to measure similarity of urban spaces. The Signature, and its underl...
Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger ... more Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would be by distributing cross-partisan news among individuals with distinct political orientations, i.e., “reaching the bubbles”. This study investigates whether this holds in the context of nationwide elections in Brazil and Canada. We collected politics-related tweets shared during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election and the 2019 Canadian federal election. Next, we proposed an updated centrality metric that enables identifying highly central bubble reachers, nodes that can distribute content among users with diverging political opinions—a fundamental metric for the proposed study. After that, we analyzed how users engage with news content shared by bubble reachers, its source, and its topics, considering its political orientation. Among other res...
This paper seeks to uncover the modes of justification by which sociological theorists legitimize... more This paper seeks to uncover the modes of justification by which sociological theorists legitimize the "canon" of sociological theory in practice, through the stories they tell to students in sociological theory textbooks. Specifically, we ask: how do textbook authors rationalize their decisions to include and exclude some theorists? Further, what are the modes or "rules of the conceptual game" underlying these justifications? To address these questions, we undertake a rhetorical examination of a corpus of 250 English-language editions of sociological theory textbooks. Focusing on their Introductions and Conclusions, we highlight texts that presume the canon is a social fact and investigate the justifications they provide for assenting to this fact. We articulate and illustrate three forms of legitimation: functionalist, historicist, and humanist. Functionalist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its capacity to generate disciplinary unity and integrity. Historicist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its members' foundational and influential role in defining the direction of the field. Humanist justifications legitimate the canon through appealing to the intrinsic qualities of its texts and authors. Identifying these pathways is the primary empirical contribution of this paper, which in turn contributes to the collective project of disciplinary self-reflection.
In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same&#3... more In an era of international flows of policy ideas, when many cities apply the 'same' policy ideas, their local translations can be substantially different. Yet, urban studies have not provided sufficient tools to compare such translations among a wide number of cities. We develop a methodological program that operationalizes into a quantitative analysis the rich Policy Assemblage framework often used to compare selected cases. We distinguish between assemblage as a process and assemblage as an outcome, and argue that both are important for urban policy mobility studies. While assemblage as a process is often seen as the thicker description, assemblage outcomes provide central snapshots that reveal the broader process and make its concrete configurations evident. Using the case of public art policies and the mechanism of the Percent of Public Art, we compare the assemblage outcome of the idea in 26 cities with more than one million residents in the Anglosphere. We ask, how do cities assemble policy discourses, and what is the logic that differentiates cities from one another? We find cities use multiple discourses which refer to the socioeconomic , cultural identity and the spatial dimensions of public art in cities. Nevertheless, when cities assemble these discourses, the socioeconomic dimension tends to define a central cleavage between cities. To examine how such a cleavage is constructed, we examine the assembly process of Toronto more closely.
This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Ur... more This paper is part IV of “towards a model of urban evolution”. It demonstrates how the Toronto Urban Evolution Model (TUEM) can be used to encode city data, illuminate key features, demonstrate how formetic distance can be used to discover how spatial areas change over time, and identify similar spatial areas within and between cities. The data used in this study are reviews from Yelp. Each review can be interpreted as a formeme where the category of the business is a form, the reviewer is a group and the review is an activity. Yelp data from neighbourhoods in both Toronto and Montreal are encoded. A method for aggregating reviewers into groups with multiple members is introduced. Longitudinal analysis is performed for all Toronto neighbourhoods. Transversal analysis is performed between neighbourhoods within Toronto and between Toronto and Montreal. Similar neighbourhoods are identified validating formetic distance.
This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four ... more This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four major sections. First, we review prior adumbrations of an evolutionary model in urban theory, noting their potential and their limitations. Second, we turn to the general sociocultural evolution literature to draw inspiration for a fresh and more complete application of evolutionary theory to the study of urban life. Third, building upon this background, we outline the main elements of our proposed model, with special attention to elaborating the value of its key conceptual innovation, the “formeme”. Last, we conclude with a discussion of what types of research commitments the overall approach does or does not imply, and point toward the more formal elaboration of the model that we undertake in “Towards a Model of Urban Evolution, Part II” and “Towards a Model of Urban Evolution, Part III”. In “Towards a Model of Urban Evolution, Part IV” we demonstrate the application of the model to Ye...
This chapter discusses a new approach to the study of urban place, “the scenes approach.” While t... more This chapter discusses a new approach to the study of urban place, “the scenes approach.” While this approach is not exclusively applicable to cities, this chapter is focused on urban areas. Businesses and institutions, people and practices join to produce areas with distinct aesthetics—hip, edgy, refined, glamorous, etc. These qualities make it possible to move about a city as if it were a scenic route, to discover the styles of life each has to offer. This chapter is intended as a first effort to extend scenes thinking to historic preservation and public heritage practice (and vice versa) and we invite critical dialogue and collaboration.
Cities have established official neighborhood boundaries for targeted social policy in recent dec... more Cities have established official neighborhood boundaries for targeted social policy in recent decades. The authors propose that a sociological conception of neighborhoods sensitizes us to the potential consequences of imposing categorical divisions onto a largely continuous urban space. The authors specify this idea in three steps. First, they argue that designations affect people’s behavior toward target neighborhoods. Second, the heterogeneity within official boundaries may lead to informational distortion; disadvantaged areas are denied benefits solely because of location. Third, designations may generate negative reputations for targeted areas or extend existing stigma to new areas. To examine these processes, the authors study Toronto’s Priority Area Program (2006–2013). Difference-in-difference models show significant negative effects of the designation on rent, home value, and building permits. The authors provide evidence of informational distortion through income distributi...
The urban policy mobility literature describes the widespread circulation of policy ideas while h... more The urban policy mobility literature describes the widespread circulation of policy ideas while highlighting their mutations along the way. At the same time, the literature often analyzes the localization of such ideas by examining their adoption in one or several cities. To better understand policy replications and mutations, we develop theoretical and methodological strategies that provide sensitivity to both local distinctiveness and global variability. We build on the Urban Policy Mobility literature and combine it with ecological theories of conceptual spaces to develop the concept of Urban Model Spaces – a matrix of discursive possibilities evolving from the accumulated replications and localizations of a model. We articulate it via three core properties central to Urban Policy Mobility - Temporality, Scale, and Position and test how they shape the emergence of policy discourses. To demonstrate the concept we analyze public art policy and the funding mechanism of the Percent for Art ordinance from 26 cities combining Structural Topic Modeling and regression analysis.
Chicago Music City, a first-of-its kind study conducted by the Cultural Policy Center at the Univ... more Chicago Music City, a first-of-its kind study conducted by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, compares the strength and vitality of music industries and scenes across the United States, and finds that Chicago is a leader by nearly each indicator measured. As cities across the United States vie with each other to attract and retain business, sociologists, urban planners, and real estate developers point to quality of life and availability of cultural amenities as important indicators of the health and future success of urban areas. A number of these cities are turning to economic impact studies to show the importance of the music to the local economies. Chicago Music City compares Chicago's musical strength with the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U. S., focusing especially on a group of eleven comparison cities: Chicago and its demographic peers, New York and Los Angeles, plus eight others with strong musical reputations – Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Las ...
Synthesizing and extending multiple literatures, this article develops a new approach for explori... more Synthesizing and extending multiple literatures, this article develops a new approach for exploring the spatial articulation of urban political cleavages. We pursue three questions: (1) To what extent does electoral conflict materialize between rather than within neighborhoods? (2) How salient are group, place, and location in defining urban cleavages? (3) How do these sources inflect one another? To answer these questions, the article analyzes a novel longitudinal database of neighborhood-scale mayoral voting in Chicago, Toronto, and London. We find strong evidence of spatially articulated cleavages: in each city, voting patterns are equally or more geographically concentrated than the non-White population, income, and poverty. While group-based interests define Chicago’s cleavage structure, place and location are paramount in Toronto and London. We conclude by proposing a research agenda for investigating the spatiality of urban politics and advancing a preliminary typology of urb...
This paper examines an important but underappreciated mechanism affecting urban segregation and i... more This paper examines an important but underappreciated mechanism affecting urban segregation and integration: urban venues. The venue- an area where urbanites interact- is an essential aspect of city life that tends to influence residential location. We study the venue/segregation relationship by overlaying venues onto Schelling’s classic (1971) [1] agent-based segregation model. We show that a simulation world with venues makes segregation less likely among relatively tolerant agents and more likely among the intolerant. We also show that multiple venues can create spatial structures beyond their catchment areas and that the initial location of venues shapes later residential patterns. Finally, we demonstrate that the social rules governing venue participation alter their impacts on segregation. In the course of our study, we compile techniques for advancing Schelling-style studies of urban environments and catalogue a set of mechanisms that operate in this environment.
This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of 1) sources of variations; 2) pr... more This paper develops a formal model of urban evolution in terms of 1) sources of variations; 2) principles of selection; and 3) mechanisms of retention. More specifically, regarding (1) it defines local and environmental sources of variation and identifies some of their generative processes, such as recombination, migration, mutation, extinction, and transcription errors. Regarding (2), it outlines a series of selection processes as part of an evolutionary ecology of urban forms, including density dependence, scope dependence, distance dependence, content dependence, and frequency dependence. Regarding (3), it characterizes retention as a combination of absorption and restriction of novel variants, defines mechanisms by which these can occur, including longevity, fidelity, and fecundity, and specifies how these processes issue in trajectories define by properties such as stability, pace, convergence, and divergence. A conclusion reviews the effort and looks forward to computer simulation and data-driven applications, as well as focused theoretical extensions of parts of the model.
This paper is part II of "Towards a model of urban evolution." This paper defines a formal model ... more This paper is part II of "Towards a model of urban evolution." This paper defines a formal model of the Signature of an urban space, comprised of: an urban genome which captures the expected groups (i.e., users) and activities (i.e., uses) of physical forms; a description of the actual activities and groups of the physical forms; and the signals that are communicated within and among urban spaces. Central to the model is a formeme, which provides the building blocks for a Signature. A formeme captures the interactions among physical forms, groups and activities. We then show how various metrics can define an urban area based on its Signature, and that these metrics can be used to measure similarity of urban spaces. The Signature and its underlying formemes capture the sources of variations in urban evolution.
This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four ... more This paper seeks to develop the core concepts of a model of urban evolution. It proceeds in four major sections. First we review prior adumbrations of an evolutionary model in urban theory, noting their potential and their limitations. Second, we turn to the general sociocultural evolution literature to draw inspiration for a fresh and more complete application of evolutionary theory to the study of urban life. Third, building upon this background, we outline the main elements of our proposed model, with special attention to elaborating the value of its key conceptual innovation, the "formeme." Last, we conclude with a discussion of what types of research commitments the overall approach does or does not imply, and point toward the more formal elaboration of the model that we undertake in "Towards a Model of Urban Evolution II" and "Towards a Model of Urban Evolution III."
This paper proposes a computer simulation framework for investigating the role of built form – sp... more This paper proposes a computer simulation framework for investigating the role of built form – specifically physical venues-in the dynamics of neighborhood integration and segregation. Looking to Schelling's classic work (1971) and the subsequent literature, we note, however, that with few exceptions 'form' in these models is reduced to an agent's capacity to 'see' nearby grid-cells of the simulation world: an agent's neighbourhood is its Moore neighbourhood. In this research, we argue that an analytically meaningful simulation of neighbourhood formation – or more specifically of integration and segregation dynamics – must acknowledge the role of built form. To do so, we introduce physical venues into the classic Schelling model in order to reconsider the simulation's dynamics as influenced by both the spaces where agents live and the spaces of their activities. Our analysis proceeds through a series of four case studies of increasing sophistication, considering the impact of different spatial configurations as well as different kinds of venue. We articulate a simple but powerful generative model of urban social formations that also may offer insight into the conditions under which sedimented patterns of segregation may become unsettled.
Using theory syllabi and departmental data collected for three academic years, this paper investi... more Using theory syllabi and departmental data collected for three academic years, this paper investigates the institutional practice of theory in sociology departments across Canada. In particular, it examines the position of theory within the sociological curriculum, and how this varies among universities. Taken together, our analyses indicate that theory remains deeply institutionalized at the core of sociological education and Canadian sociologists' self-understanding; that theorists as a whole show some coherence in how they define themselves, but differ in various ways, especially along lines of region, intellectual background, and gender; that despite these differences, the classical vs. contemporary heuristic largely cuts across these divides, as does the strongly ingrained position of a small group of European authors as classics of the discipline as a whole. Nevertheless, who is a classic remains an unsettled question, alternatives to the " classical vs. contemporary " heuristic do exist, and theorists' syllabi reveal diverse " others " as potential candidates.
Though it refers to Simmel as ‘George’ in its title, readers should not judge this book by its co... more Though it refers to Simmel as ‘George’ in its title, readers should not judge this book by its cover. Kauko Pietilä provides a clear, sensitive, and critically sympathetic account of Simmel’s relational conception of society. He finds in that conception possibilities, only partially tapped by Simmel himself, for reenergizing sociology as an ethical practice. I found this book stimulating and challenging and I expect others would as well. It could be assigned in contemporary theory courses for advanced undergraduates and graduate students and would be of interest not only to Simmel scholars and sociological theorists but also to social thinkers exploring potential normative missions for their work.
In Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Com- munity in Nashville, Daniel B. Cornfield provides a c... more In Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Com- munity in Nashville, Daniel B. Cornfield provides a compelling analysis of how musi- cians are responding to ongoing rapid trans- formations in the music economy and the broader post-industrial economy. Musicians’ careers are becoming less anchored in corpo- rations and unions; digitalization is produc- ing new opportunities for direct interaction with peers and audiences; and immigration, the rise of identity-based political move- ments, and the demands of omnivorous consumers produce a greater diversity of genres and modes of expression. Many musi- cians respond by taking an entrepreneurial and activist route, striking out on their own to build new ways to sustain a musical career in an era when much of the risk of doing so falls squarely on their shoulders. Based on interviews with 75 Nashville musicians, Beyond the Beat takes their personal stories and develops a general sociological theory of artist activism.
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In Scenescapes, Daniel Aaron Silver and Terry Nichols Clark examine the patterns and consequences of the amenities that define our streets and strips. They articulate the core dimensions of the theatricality, authenticity, and legitimacy of local scenes—cafes, churches, restaurants, parks, galleries, bowling alleys, and more. Scenescapes not only reimagines cities in cultural terms, it details how scenes shape economic development, residential patterns, and political attitudes and actions. In vivid detail and with wide-angle analyses—encompassing an analysis of 40,000 ZIP codes—Silver and Clark give readers tools for thinking about place; tools that can teach us where to live, work, or relax, and how to organize our communities.
experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental
entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies
directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of
case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book
advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and
political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban
cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and
influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural
policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative
outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective
policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities
for building effective cultural policy coalitions.
In Scenescapes, Daniel Aaron Silver and Terry Nichols Clark examine the patterns and consequences of the amenities that define our streets and strips. They articulate the core dimensions of the theatricality, authenticity, and legitimacy of local scenes—cafes, churches, restaurants, parks, galleries, bowling alleys, and more. Scenescapes not only reimagines cities in cultural terms, it details how scenes shape economic development, residential patterns, and political attitudes and actions. In vivid detail and with wide-angle analyses—encompassing an analysis of 40,000 ZIP codes—Silver and Clark give readers tools for thinking about place; tools that can teach us where to live, work, or relax, and how to organize our communities.
experts to critically analyze the ways that governmental actors and non-governmental
entities attempt to influence the production and implementation of urban policies
directed at the arts, culture, and creative activity. Presenting a global set of
case studies that span five continents and 22 cities, the essays in this book
advance our understanding of how the dynamic interplay between economic and
political context, institutional arrangements, and social networks affect urban
cultural policy-making and the ways that these policies impact urban development and
influence urban governance. The volume comparatively studies urban cultural
policy-making in a diverse set of contexts, analyzes the positive and negative
outcomes of policy for different constituencies, and identifies the most effective
policy directions, emerging political challenges, and most promising opportunities
for building effective cultural policy coalitions.
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context. Synthesizing the array of factors that influence the processes and politics behind urban cultural policy, we suggest, helps to see how urban cultural policy and analysis is moving beyond the now familiar creative city script. We conclude this introduction by presenting the organization of the book.
This chapter uses two case studies to explore how local politics have been affected by these changes. One highlights the politics at stake in cultural work and consumption. In the case of the West Queen West Triangle, a vibrant independent art scene, supported by city officials, politicians, and influential media figures and professionals, sought to resist and alter proposed condominium developments that threatened to turn one of the city’s core post-industrial employment districts into a “bedroom community for the suburbs.” The other highlights the politics of residence and community. In the case of the Wychwood Barns, neighbors clashed over whether to rehabilitate abandoned and dilapidated streetcar repair barns into artist live-work space, an environmental educational center, and a farmers market or to demolish it for a traditional grass and trees park.
unity. John Dewey, Georg Simmel, Kenneth Burke, Charles Baudelaire, among others, will serve as reference points for this exercise. Second comes an illustration of how scenes can be empirically studied as both outgrowths and drivers of key aspects of urban life. To do so I will draw from original Canadian national databases of local amenities. Built from census of business and online business directories, these databases cover all Canadian postal areas and include millions of listings of hundreds of amenity categories (such as family restaurants, churches, art galleries, and the like). Similar databases have been built in the US, France, Spain, and Korea. The conclusion argues for the fruitfulness of synthesizing scenes-oriented research with the neighborhood effects tradition of urban analysis, exemplified most powerfully in recent years by Robert Sampson’s Great American City.
We propose several hypotheses and analyses about scenes as one factor that contributes to ‘creative cities’. We situate these propositions within a broader universe of ideas about the significance of creativity. First, we offer a brief overview of the processes involved in what we call the institutionalization and internalization of creativity. This is a process whereby creativity moves from the margins to the centre of basic conceptions of human action, bringing with it special attention to the specific mechanisms through which creative activity is more likely to occur in one place and moment rather than another. Second, we briefly review some classic and contemporary hypotheses about what these multiple mechanisms might be, such as education, technology, density and the like. Third, we propose adding scenes as a distinctly important factor of creativity.
We offer a brief introduction to our scenes perspective on urban development, before proposing and testing several hypotheses about how scenes drive urban development.
Nevertheless, we think that the classical social theorists share much in common that sets them apart from most philosophers of action and allows for a systematic comparison of the action- theoretical alternatives they offer. First, they do not confine the matter of action to the more or less metaphysical distinction between what is action and what is not; nor do they reduce action to an “exercise of reason” in the Kantian mode. Instead, they treat action and its sociality as practical problems that emerge in the course of life, such as when actors find it difficult to understand one another or experience resistances and constraints. In other words: rather than deal with the question, “what ontological criteria must a behavior meet to count as ‘an action’?” they instead elaborate on the fact that acting and/or activity in daily life takes place under “imperfect” conditions of time pressure, sympathy, dependency, power, role-taking, drives, interests, solidarity. “Action” and “actor” are results, often contested, of dealing with these imperfect conditions. The “idealized rational actor” forecloses analysis of these conditions from the start; furthermore, breaking down these complex social entanglements to a handy difference between “reason” or “instinct” – as we come across in e.g. Korsgaard – is also not an option the sociological “classics” took into consideration.
What is more, the classical sociologists articulated “thick” historic examples to show that “action” and “agency” are interweaved with social institutions, habits, values and forms. The analyses of this interpenetration of action and sociality they undertook go much deeper than simply taking note that some, mostly self-evident, process of socialization shapes the conditions of agency and identity. For our protagonists, the social dimension of action stands for more than the social dependency of children or a “deficient” mode of individual autonomy. Their theories are meant to enable systematic analyses and observations of the world of sociable action, in all of its types, objects, and forms.
Our discussion of some of these theoretical efforts is organized as follows. We begin with the two uncontested classics of sociology, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, and highlight crucial divergences between their methodological statements and their material investigations. In the case of Weber, his theoretical statements about the methodological priority of instrumentally rational individual actions are belied by his research into the origins of the capitalist work ethic, which stresses instead customs and common values. In the case of Durkheim, his theoretical statements about the “thing-like” and coercive character of society are belied by his research into religious rites, which stresses instead how ritual action generates a meaningful and attractive social world. The remainder of our essay turns to Talcott Parsons and Georg Simmel as representatives of two classical approaches to theorizing the implicit connections between action and sociality never fully addressed by Weber and Durkheim. Simmel’s formal sociology focuses on forms rather than objects of social action and situates the social form of experience as one among many. Parsons’ general theory of action treats systems of social roles as one sub-system of action alongside personality systems and cultural systems, all of which emerge from the problems and contingencies inherent to acting in situations.
conversations it promises. To whet our collective appetite, we include in this edition of Theory abstracts of papers to be presented in Cambridge, June 27-29. Thank you to co-chairs Patrick Baert and Agnes Ku for their excellent work in organizing and managing the event, and for the tremendous support provided by Kate Williams. We are also excited about the two pieces we feature in this edition. Continuing our ongoing series on how sociological theory is taught in various parts of the world, Lars Döpking examines the situation in Germany. Additionally, Natàlia Cantó-Milà discusses the ongoing “mainstreaming of relational sociology,” by way of introducing the new focus of the journal Digithum: a relational perspective on culture society. Many members may be interested in participating in the journal’s various endeavors, and so we encourage you to visit its website: http://journals.uoc.edu/index.php/digithum/.
This issue of Theory is dedicated to Don’s memory. We include articles that testify to his intellectual and personal impact on the field, in its content and form. The notion of dialogue is the keynote. Indeed, through his final days, Don was working on a book, Dialogical Social Theory (which Transaction Press will publish), that would forward the concept of dialogue as the emergent guiding idea of his own oeuvre and as a potential lynchpin to a powerful reinterpretation of the theoretical tradition writ large.
We are pleased to publish a brief selection from the introduction to Dialogical Social Theory here, and thank Howard Ungerman and Transaction Press for permission to do so. Jon Baskin introduces this selection by way of an account of what it was like to work with Don towards its completion. A University of Chicago graduate student and one of Don’s long-time friends, Baskin’s piece offers a moving portrait of how thought, teaching, and friendship fused in Don’s life.
Other articles in this edition speak to issues that Don held dear. He was intensively concerned with questions about how to teach social theory, and believed that doing so well required careful reflection on the aims of education together with the broader situations in which teachers and students find themselves. Wolfgang Knöbl’s essay on his own practice as a theoretical educator ably demonstrates the importance of undertaking such reflection. Questions about the nature of social relations, processes, and structures also animated Don’s work, especially given his life-long engagement with the thought of Simmel and Parsons. Such issues are central in the “invitation to an ongoing experiment” we publish here, which records an ongoing conversation about relational sociology among several participants, with François Dépelteau and Jan Fuhse at the center. That this conversation appears as an unfolding dialogue, in all of its fits and starts, gives and takes, nearing and distancing, would be highly congenial to Don, we believe. In a similar experimental and dialogical vein, we include a link to “Theorizing from the South,” by Gabriel Restrepo. Finally, Don was a master at “inverting the lens” from the objects of social thought to its thinkers, their texts, and their relationships. The essay here by Cinthya Guzman and Dan Silver draws explicit inspiration from Don’s Visions of the Sociological Tradition in reporting ongoing work analyzing sociological theory syllabi in Canada and beyond.
The sociological art is not easy; most attempts fail. I suggest John Dewey's Art as Experience and Susanne Langer's Feeling and Form provide a valuable fund of ideas for elaborating the nature of sociology as an aesthetic practice. To clarify the sociological implications of their ideas, I contrast them to another account of sociological artistry, Robert Nisbet's, which is rooted in humanism rather than pragmatism. The early Chicago School provides an illuminating example of this pragmatist approach to sociology as a form of art, in particular in the intensive use of visual, abstract, non-verbal symbols, most notably maps. These images, I argue, express - as neither everyday experience nor discursive symbols can -- the experience of society as a form of life, moving, growing, uncertain, tensive, emotionally fraught, adaptive, competitive, contingent, but also -- because it is all of these -- potentially meaningful.
Pedimos a varias figuras internacionales que respondieran tres preguntas acerca de sus primeras lecturas de la obra simmeliana y las circunstancias personales que rodearon tal encuentro. Hoy publicamos lo que contestaron los profesores Valentina Salvi y Esteban Vernik, ambos de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, y Daniel Silver, profesor estadounidense de la Universidad de Toronto.