First published in 1997, Imagining Cities gives students access to the most exciting recent work on the city from within sociology, cultural studies and cultural geography. Contributions are grouped around four major themes:
- The theoretical imagination
- Ethnic diversity and the politics of difference
- Memory and nostalgia
- The city as narrative
The book considers the interplay of past and present, imagined and substantive, and links present and future in examining the idea of the virtual city. Here, the world of cyberspace not only recasts views of space and communication, but has a profound impact on the sociological imagination itself.
Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Imagining Cities, Sallie Westwood and John Williams
Part I: Theorising Cities
1. Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis, Edward W. Soja
2. Imagining the Real-Time City: Telecommunications, Urban Paradigms and the Future of Cities, Stephen Graham
3. Chaotic Places or Complex Places? Cities in a Post-Industrial Era, David Byrne
Part II: Racial/Spatial Imaginaries
4. Out of the Melting Pot Into the Fire Next Time: Imagining the East End as City, Body, Text, Phil Cohen
5. White Governmentality: Urbanism, Nationalism, Racism, Barnor Hesse
6. Migrant Spaces and Settlers’ Time: Forming and De-Forming an Inner City, Max Farrar
Part III: Nostalgia/Memory
7. Looking Backward, Nostalgia and the City, Elizabeth Wilson
8. Authenticity and Suburbia, David Chaney
9. ‘Proper Little Mesters’: Nostalgia and Protest Masculinity and De-Industrialised Sheffield, Ian Taylor and Ruth Jamieson
Part IV: Narrating Cityscapes
10. This, Here, Now: Imagining the Modern City, James Donald
11. (Re)Placing the City: Cultural Relocation and the City as Centre, Tim Hall
12. Anglicising the American Dream: Tragedy, Farce and the ‘Postmodern’ City, Julie Charlesworth and Allan Cochrane
Part V: Virtual Cities
13. Cyberpunk as Social Theory: William Gibson and the Sociological Imagination, Roger Burrows
14. Cities, Subjectivity and Cyberspace, Graham B. McBeath and Stephen A. Webb
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Sallie Westwood, John M Williams
