Download Download
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Urban Sociology Is the Enduring View of Urban Space As a Proxy for Demographic, Structural, Economic Or Behavioral Variables in Social Research
UC Santa Barbara Spaces for Difference: An Interdisciplinary Journal Title Finding Space Beyond Variables: An Analytical Review of Urban Space and Social Inequalities Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3tz160nq Journal Spaces for Difference: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1(2) Author Joseph, Lauren Publication Date 2008-12-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Spaces for Difference: An Interdisciplinary Journal Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 29-50 Finding Space Beyond Variables: An Analytical Review of Urban Space and Social Inequalities LAUREN JOSEPH Stony Brook University ABSTRACT Attention to the element of space in the urban setting illuminates how social inequalities and social difference are reproduced and contested. In this review essay, I draw upon urban social research to demonstrate the relevance and utility of spatial analysis in the city, focusing on the dimensions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. I present a conceptual framework for analyzing the intersection of urban space, social inequality, and social difference: (a) urban space as inscribed by boundaries and reflective of patterns of social difference and inequality; (b) urban space as a site and object of struggle between social groups; and (c) urban space as a vehicle for social reproduction through the logic of its universe. Edward Soja points to the recent “spatial turn” of the late 1990s, in which he finds a “renewed awareness of the simultaneity and interwoven complexity of the social, historical, and spatial dimensions of our lives, their inseparability and often problematic interdependence” (2000:7). Drawing on Michel Foucault’s (1984) attention to the intersections of space, knowledge, and power and Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) conceptualization of the relations between spatiality, society and history, social researchers across disciplines have increasingly turned toward examining the social production of space, particularly urban space. -