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Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century1 Manuel Castells*

Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century1 Manuel Castells*

Cidades- Comunidades e Territórios Dez. 2002, n.0 5, pp. 9-19

Urban in the Twenty-First Century1 *

Resumo: Partindo de uma interrogação que o próprio autor se colocava a si próprio em 1968, sobre a eventual existência de uma sociologia urbana- num posicionamento que rapi­ damente se colocaria como uma referência fundamental naquela época sobre a questão urba­ na- o presente texto abre para di versos pressupostos que possam permitir hoje, uma resposta afirmati va à questão então colocada. Comentando os dois paradigmas fundamentais (repre­ sentados então pelo autor, mas também por H. Lefebvre) que, a partir daquela época, integra­ ram a "nova sociologia urbana", o autor justifica a obsolescência dessa postura, num contexto de generalizada urbanização à escala global e perante a emergência do que designa de Era lnformacional, surgindo assim a necessidade de uma "novíssima" sociologia das cidades. Este novo paradigma é então sustentado em três eixos fundamentais: ao nível funcional, em que a sociedade em rede se organiza em tomo da oposição do global e do local; no quadro do conhecimento, em que aquela sociedade se caracteriza pela oposição entre individualismo e comunalismo; ao nível da forma espacial, na base das tensões e articulações entre o espaço de fluxos e o espaço de lugares. No final do artigo, o autor sistematiza temas para uma sociologia urbana do século XXI, terminando por enfatizar a necessidade de novos instrumentos de aná­ lise, quer em termos conceptuais, quer no quadro de novas metodologias.

Palavras Chave: "nova" e "novíssima" sociologia urbana; paradigmas analíticos e contextos históricos e societais; padrões espaciais e processos urbanos num mundo globalmente urbanizado; global e local; individualismo e comunalismo; espaços de .fluxos e espaços de lugares; temas de uma sociologia urbana do século XXI.

rural life that had characterized the livelihood of A Retrospective Perspective humankind for millenniums. It was built around the central theme of social integration in a new, ln 1968 I published my first academic article, urban made up of recent rural immigrants, under the title "Is there an ?" and where the traditional of social (Castells, 1968). Thirty-two years later, with the integration were crumbling under the weight of hindsight of historical perspective and a life of , economic development, social practicing on , the answer is: mobility, and social struggles. Because American yes, there was; no, there is currently not; but metropolitan areas were the epitome of growth, perhaps, with luck, it will resurge in the twenty­ immigration, and change, they provided the social -first century, with new concepts, new methods, and laboratory in which social scientists could explore new themes, because it is more necessary than ever the conditions of integration into the urban society to make sense of our lives - which will be lived, for of the masses of uprooted immigrants, flocking to the large majority of people, in urban areas of some the new Babylon from both the countryside and sort. overseas. was simultaneously the center U rban sociology was one of the founding fields of social struggles (May I commemorates the killing of modem . It originated from the of striking workers in Chicago), of Bertolt Brecht' s issues raised by fast as a consequence theater ("St Jeanne of the Slaughterhouses"), and of industrialization, breaking down the pattems of of some of the most innovative sociologist of the

' Entre outros títulos, o autor é Professor na Universidade da Califórnia, Berkley e na Universidade Autonoma de , sendo considerado um dos teóricos da sociologia urbana mais influentes dos últimos trinta anos. 1 Te xto de conclusão do livro de Ida Susser (ed.), "The Castells Reader on Cities and ", 2002, Blackwell Publishers. A revista Cidades. Comunidades e Territórios agradece ao autor e à Blackwell Publishers a autorização para a publicação do referido texto.

9 CIDADES Comunidades e Territórios time (Park et al. , 1925; Zorbaugh, 1929; Wirth different from those that gave birth to the Chicago 1938), who created the Chicago School of urban School. Social/cultural integration was not the issue sociology, the founding act of urban sociology as any longer. The struggle over the control and scholarly discipline. orientations of an urban-industrial society was now The Chicago School was ideologically biased at the forefront of urban problems. Furthermore, around the notion of – a unified were arising, challenging the culture that would characterize dwellers very notion of development and industrialization, regardless of their class, gender, or ethnicity. Yet, calling for the pre-eminence of human experience by emphasizing the conditions and contradictions over economic growth and for new forms of of social integration for an extraordinarily diverse relationship between society and nature. Gender local society, the Chicago sociologists were dealing issues were raised as fundamental. The diversity with the central problem of American society at the of the urban experience throughout a multicultural time: how to make a society out of a collection of world was finally acknowledged by social science, disparate communities and competitive individuals disqualifying the ethnocentric theory of mo- fighting for survival. While the conditions in dernization as . Widespread state European cities were not so extreme, the issue of intervention in people’s lives by means of its control the reconstruction of patterns of social interaction of and public amenities became the for former peasants and transients in an urban- key element in the organization of both every day -industrial context was equally poignant, even life and urban processes. When everything was though a lack of interest among socialist ideologies contested, debated, fought over, and negotiated in the urban question led to the reduction of urban between social groups with conflicting interests and contradictions to the secondary dimension of alternative projects, the very notion of integration broader class conflict. in a shared culture appeared utterly obsolete. Thus, Alongside the study of social integration, a new urban sociology emerged from a new urban urban sociology focused on the study of spatial reality. It took different orientations in America and patterning, also formalized by another stream of in Europe. In America, pluralist Chicago School sociologists, linked to social placed political conflict and bargaining at the center Darwinism in the development of what came to be of urban social analysis (Banfield and Wilson, known as (Hawley, 1956; Schnore, 1963; Monenkopf, 1983). While I disagree with 1965). Thus, the study of forms and processes of its consideration of social actors and interest groups human settlements under the notion of competition outside the constraints of their class interests and and social selection, and the analysis of the social cultural frameworks, the approach of urban political conditions for cultural integration, were the science, philosophically rooted in the tradition of founding themes of an urban sociology that, while liberalism, represented a major break with the ideologically biased, responded to the historical theme of social integration, putting conflict and its issues raised by industrialization and urbanization negotiation at center-stage of urban social science. in the first half of the twentieth century. Regardless However, for reasons that historians of knowledge of the theoretical and political divergences I have will explore some day, during the 1970s, the field with the Chicago School, urban sociology blossomed of urban sociology was strongly revitalized by the under its influence because the Chicago sociologists so-called “new urban sociology” school, which were dealing, with as much rigor and imagination originated in France, essentially around the work as early sociologists could do, with the key issues of two individuals who were in sharp intellectual of their time – with the process of formation of a disagreement: the great Marxist philosopher Henri new society, spatially organized in large urban Lefebvre (1968), and myself. The new urban centers. Because of the strength of this scholarly sociology, which was never a unified school of tradition, its themes, methods, and theoretical thought, was built around four major themes, two framework greatly outlasted the relevance of the introduced by the first theorist, the other two by approach – although has its surprises, as I the second. The first two themes, later elaborated will elaborate later. by and Edward Soja, were the In the 1960s and 1970s, social problems in production of space and the right to the city. Space general, and urban issues in particular, were very was to be considered as a process of production

10 Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century

(e.g. capitalist production), whose outcome would the issues, themes, and concepts produced in the ultimately frame people’s lives in spatially two big waves of urban sociology, in the 1920-30s constrained patterns. As a corollary, when capital and in the 1960-70s. Yet, by and large, urban did not consider it profitable or useful to keep sociology ceased to connect with the new issues people in the city, but could not send them back to arising in cities, space, and in society at large. The the countryside because they were needed as urban “new urban sociology” became obsolete vis-à-vis workers, a new, intermediate space was built: the its new urban context, marked by the early stages – high rise and working class in the of the Age, just as the Chicago School European version; single family dwelling and had become obsolete in relation to the mature middle class in the American version, but equally industrial society. The lack of excitement of both anti-urban. Thus, after being expelled from their students and intellectuals vis-à-vis urban sociology rural communities, people were now expelled, or reflects an understanding of the exhaustion of its induced to move out, from the city they had made sources of inspiration from the challenges into a liveable place. Now they were losing their happening in the real world. right to the city. In order to understand the crisis of urban The two other critical themes of the new urban sociology at the turn of the millennium, and the sociology were built on the notions of collective avenues for its intellectual reconstruction, we have consumption and urban social movements. The city to recast the transformation of cities and urban was considered as a system organized around the issues in the new historical period, which I provision of services necessary for everyday life, conceptualized as the . This could under the direct or indirect guidance/control of the be a long and complicated detour, but I will build state. Housing, transportation, schools, health care, on the analysis of this matter presented in chapter social services, cultural facilities, and urban 9 of this volume, “The Culture of Cities in the amenities were part of the elements necessary to Information Age.” Thus, here I will simply the economy and to daily life that could not be underline the key trends of urban transformation produced or delivered without some kind of state at the turn of the century to link them to the intervention (e.g. public housing and public theoretical challenges to be answered by urban transportation in Europe, federally backed housing sociology in the twenty-first century. mortgages and subsidized highway systems in the United States). Collective consumption (that is, state-mediated consumption processes) became at A New Urban World the same time the basis of urban infrastructure, and the key relationship between people and the state. Spatial transformation must be understood in Cities became redefined as the points of the broader context of social transformation: space contradiction and conflict between capital does not reflect society, it expresses it, it is a accumulation and social redistribution, between fundamental dimension of society, inseparable from state control and people’s autonomy. Around these the overall process of social organization and social issues, new urban social movements – that is, change. Thus, the new urban world arises from the movements centered both on the control of formation of what I have analyzed as the emergence community life and on the demands of collective of a new society, characteristic of the Information consumption emerged as new actors of social Age, as a result of the interaction between the conflict and political power. Urban sociology was information-technology revolution, socioeconomic turned upside-down, from the discipline studying restructuring, and cultural social movements. The social integration to the discipline specializing in key developments in spatial patterns and urban the new social conflicts of postindustrialism. processes associated with these macro-structural Then, suddenly, in the last years of the changes, can be summarized under the following twentieth century, a deep silence. Urban sociology headings: receded into obscurity, in spite of the orderly pursuit of academic careers and the regular publication of • Because commercial agriculture has been, by scholarly journals that dutifully printed thousands large, automated, and a global economy has of papers re-stating, re-elaborating, and refining integrated productive networks throughout the

11 CIDADES Comunidades e Territórios planet, the majority of the world’s population is succession to explain the new dynamics of urban already living in urban areas, and this will be space. increasingly the case: we are heading toward a • Urban areas around the world, but particularly largely urbanized world which will comprise in the developed world, are increasingly multi- between two-thirds and three-quarters of the total ethnic and multicultural; an old theme of the population by the middle of the century. Chicago School, now amplified in terms of its • This process of urbanization is concentrated extremely diverse racial composition. disproportionately in metropolitan areas of a new • The global criminal economy is solidly rooted kind: urban constellations scattered throughout in the urban fabric, providing jobs, income, and huge territorial expanses, functionally integrated social organization to a criminal culture, which and socially differentiated, around a multi-centered deeply, affects the lives of low-income communities structure. and of the city at large. This gives rise to increasing • Advanced , the , and violence and/or widespread paranoia of urban fast, computerized transportation systems allow for violence, with the corollary of defensive residential simultaneous spatial concentration and decen- patterns. tralization, ushering in a new of networks • The breakdown of patterns and urban nodes throughout the world, throughout between individuals and between cultures, and the countries, between metropolitan areas, and within emergence of defensive spaces, lead to the metropolitan areas. formation of sharply, segregated areas: gated • Social relationships are characterized simul- communities for the rich, territorial turfs for the taneously by individuation and communalism, both poor. processes using, at the same time, spatial patterning • In a reaction against trends of suburban sprawl and on-line communication. Virtual communities and individualization of residential patterns, urban and physical communities develop in close centers and public space become critical expression interaction, and both process of aggregation are of local life, measuring the vitality of a given city. challenged by increasing individualization of work, Yet commercial pressures and artificial attempts social relationships, and residential habits. at mimicking urban life often transform public • The crisis of the patriarchal family, with different spaces into theme parks where rather than manifestations depending on cultures and levels experience, create a life-size, urban virtual reality, of economic development, shifts sociability from ultimately destined to the real virtuality projected family units to networks of individualized units in the media. This gives rise to increasing (often women and their children, but also individualization, as urban places become individualized co-habiting partnerships), with consumption items to be individually appropriated. considerable consequences in the uses and forms • Overall, the new urban world seems to be of housing, neighborhoods, public space, and dominated by the dual movement of inclusion into transportation systems. transterritorial networks and exclusion by the • The emergence of the network enterprise as a spatial separation of places. The higher the value new form of economic activity, with its highly of people and places, the more they are connected decentralized, yet coordinated, form of work and into interactive networks. The lower their value, , tends to blur the functional the lower their connection. At the extreme, some distinction between spaces of work and spaces of places are switched off and bypassed by the new residence. The work-living arrangements geography of networks, as in the case of depressed characteristic of the early periods of industrial craft rural areas and urban shanty towns around the- work are back, often taking over the old industrial world. spaces, and transforming them into informational • The constitution of mega-metropolitan regions, production spaces. This is not just New York’s without a name, without a culture, and without Silicon Valley or San Francisco’s Multimedia Gulch, institutions, weakens the mechanism of political but a phenomenon that also characterizes London, accountability, of citizen participation, and of Barcelona, Tokyo, Taipei and Buenos Aires, among effective administration. On the other hand, in the many other cities. Transformation of productive uses age of , local governments emerge as becomes more important than residential flexible institutional actors, able to relate at the

12 Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century same time to local citizens and to global flows of It is against the background of these major power and money; not because they are powerful, trends of urban that we can re-think but because most levels of government, including the issues, themes, and prospects of urban sociology the nation-state, are equally weakened in their in the coming years. capacity of command and control if they operate in isolation. Thus, a new form of state emerges, the The Newest Urban Sociology network state, integrating supranational institutions made up of national governments, nation-states, To make the transition from the observation regional governments, local governments, and even of urban trends to the new theorization of urban non-governmental organizations. Local govern- sociology, we need to grasp, at a more analytical ments become a node in the chain of institutional level, the key elements of socio-spatial change. representation and management, able to input the I think the transformation of cities in the overall process, yet with added value in terms of Information Age can be organized around three their capacity to represent citizen at a closer range. axes: the first relates to function, the second to Indeed, in most countries, opinion polls show that , the third to form. people have a higher degree of trust in their local Functionally speaking, the is governments, relative to other levels of government. organized around the opposition between the global However, institutions of metropolitan governance and the local . Dominant processes in the economy, are rare (and when they exist they are highly technology, media, and institutionalized authority centralized, with little citizen participation), and are organized in global networks. But day-to-day there is an increasing gap between the actual unit work, private life, cultural identity, and political of work and living (the metropolitan region) and participation are essentially local. Cities are the mechanisms of political representation and supposed to link up the local and the global, but . Local governments this is exactly where the problems start since these compensate for this by cooperating and competing, are two conflicting logics that tear cities from the yet, by defining their interests as specific sub-sets inside when they to respond to both, simultaneously. of the metropolitan region, they (often unwillingly) In terms of meaning, our society is contribute to further fragmentation of the spatial characterized by the opposing development of framing of social life. Individuation and communalism . By individuation, • Urban social movements have not disappeared, I understand the enclosure of meaning in the by any means. But they have mutated. In an projects, interests, and representations of the extremely schematic representation, they develop individual; that is, a biologically embodied along two main lines. The first is the defense of the personality system (or, if you want, translating from local community, affirming the right to live in a French , a person). By communalism, particular place, and to benefit from adequate I refer to the enclosure of meaning in a shared housing and urban services in that place. The identity, based on a system of values and beliefs to second is the environmental movement, acting on which all other sources of identity are subordinated. the quality of cities within the broader goal of Society, of course, exists only in-between, in the achieving a better quality of life: not only a better interface between individuals and identities life but a different life. Often, the broader goals of mediated by institutions, at the source of the environmental mobilizations become translated into constitution of “civil society” – which, as Gramsci defensive reactions to protect one specific argued, does not exist against the state but in community, thus merging the two trends. Yet, it is articulation with the state, forming a shared public only by reaching out to the cultural transformation sphere, à la Habermas. Trends I observe in the of urban life as proposed by ecological thinkers and formative stage of the network society indicate the activists that urban social movements can transcend increasing tension and distance between their limits of localism. Indeed, enclosing personality and culture, between individuals and themselves in their communities, urban social communes. Because cities are large aggregates of movements may contribute to further spatial individuals, forced to coexist, and the settlement fragmentation, ultimately leading to the breakdown for most communes, the split between personality of society. and commonality brings extraordinary stress upon

13 CIDADES Comunidades e Territórios the social system of cities as communicative and marketing agencies. Thus, from the structural point institutionalizing devices. The problematic of social of view, the of cities in the global economy integration again becomes paramount, albeit under depends on their connectivity in transportation and new circumstances and in terms radically different networks, and of the ability of from those of early industrial cities. cities to mobilize human resources effectively in This is mainly because of the role played in this process of global competition. As a conse- urban transformation by a third, major axis of quence of this trend, nodal areas of the city, opposing trends, this one concerning spatial forms. connecting to the global economy, will receive the This is the tension and articulation between the highest priority in terms of investment and space of flows and the space of places , as defined in management, as they are the sources of value chapter 8. The space of flows links up electronically creation from which an urban node and its separate locations in an interactive network that surrounding area will make their livelihood. Thus, connects activities and people in distinct the fate of metropolitan economies depends on their geographical composites. The space of places ability to subordinate all other urban functions and organizes experience and activity around the forms to the dynamic of certain places that ensure confines of locality. Cities are structured and their competitive articulation in the global space destructured simultaneously by the competing of flows. logics of the space of flows and the space of places. From the point of view of the urban experience, Cities do not disappear in the virtual networks. But we are entering a built environment that is they are transformed by the interface between increasingly incorporating electronic communi- electronic communication and physical interaction, cation devices everywhere. Our urban life fabric, by the combination of networks and places. As as Mitchell (1999) has pointed out, becomes an e- William Mitchell (1999), from an urbanist topia, a new urban form in which we constantly perspective, and (1998), from a interact, deliberately or automatically, with on-line sociologist perspective, have argued, the information systems, increasingly in the wireless informational city is built around this dual system mode. Materially speaking, the space of flows is of communication. Our cities are made up at the folded into the space of places. Yet their logics are same time of flows and places, and of their distinct: on-line experience and face-to-face relationships . Two examples will help to make sense experience remain specific, and the key question of this statement, one from the point of view of urban then is to assure their articulation in compatible structure, another in terms of the urban experience. terms. Structurally speaking, the notion of “global cities” These remarks may help the theoretical was popularized in the 1990s. Although most people reconfiguration of urban sociology in response to assimilate the term to some dominant urban centers, the challenges of the network society, and in such as London, New York, and Tokyo, the concept accordance with the emergence of new spatial forms of (Castells, 1989; Sassen, 1991) does and processes. not refer to any particular city, but to the global articulation of segments of many cities into an The Themes of Twenty-first Century electronically linked network of functional Urban Sociology domination throughout the planet. The global city is a spatial form rather than a title of distinction for It should now be clear why the issue of social certain cities, although some cities have a greater integration comes again at the forefront of urban share of these global networks than others. In a sociology. Indeed, it is the very existence of cities sense, most areas in a cities, including New York as communication artifacts that is called into and London, are local, not global. And many cities question, in spite of living in an urban world. But are sites of areas, small and large, which are what is at stake is a very different kind of integra- included in these global networks, at different tion. In the early twentieth century the quest was levels. This conception of global city as a spatial for assimilation of urban into the urban form resulting from the process of globalization is culture. In the early twenty-first century the in fact closer to the original analysis by Saskia challenge is the sharing of the city by irreversibly Sassen than to its popularized version by city distinct cultures and identities. No more dominant

14 Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century culture because only global media have the power to media culture, must be integrated into the theory to send dominant messages, and the media have, of communication by doing rather than by saying. in fact, adapted to their market, constructing a In other words, how messages are transmitted from kaleidoscope of variable content depending on one to another, from one meaning to demand, thus reproducing cultural and personal another in the metropolitan region, requires a diversity rather than superimposing a common set redefinition of the notion of public sphere - moving of values. The spread of horizontal communication from institutions to the public place. Public places, via the Internet accelerates the process of as sites of spontaneous social interaction, are the fragmentation and individualization of symbolic communicative devices of our society, while formal, interaction. Thus, the fragmented and political institutions have become a specialized the individualization of communication reinforce domain that hardly affects the private lives of each other to produce an endless constellation of people; that is, what most people value most. Thus, cultural sub-sets. The nostalgia of the public it is not that politics, or local politics, does not domain will not be able to countervail the structural matter. It is that its relevance is confined to the trends toward diversity, specification, and world of instrumentality, while expressiveness, and individualization of life, work, space, and thus communication, refers to social practice, communication, both face to face and electronic. outside institutional boundaries. Therefore, in the On the other hand, communalism adds collective practice of the city, its public spaces, including its fragmentation to individual segmentation. Thus, in transportation networks and their social exchangers the absence of a unifying culture, and therefore of (or communication nodes), become the communi- a unifying code, the key question is not the sharing cative devices of city life. How people are, or are of a dominant culture but the communicability of not, able to express themselves, and communicate multiple codes. Since this is not a policy paper but with each other, outside their homes and off their theoretical text, the matter to be considered is not electronic circuits - that is, in public places-is an what to do to restore communication (thus city life), essential area of study for urban sociology. I call it but how to research the processes underlying it. the sociability of public places in the individualized The notion of symbolic communication protocols is metropolis. central here , protocols that may be physical, social, The third level of communication refers to the and electronic, with additional protocols being prevalence of electronic communication as a new necessary to relate these three different planes of form of sociability . Studies by Wellman (1999) and our multidimensional experience. by Jones (1998), and by a growing legion of social Physically, the establishment of meaning in researchers, have shown the density and intensity these nameless urban constellations relates to the of electronic networks of communication, providing emergence of a new monumentality and new forms evidence to sustain the notion that virtual of symbolic centrality which will identify places, even communities are often communities, albeit of a through conflictive appropriation of their meaning different kind than face-to-face communities. Here by different groups and individuals . Urban again, the critical matter is the understanding of appears, surprisingly, at the forefront of new urban the communication codes between various research, enabling us to understand the processes electronic networks, built around specific interests by which new cathedrals and new agoras are or values, and between these networks and physical created, whatever their surprising forms may be in interaction. There is no established theory yet on the Information Age. However, the methodological these communication processes as the Internet is prerequisite for urban semiotics to fulfill its promise still in its infancy. But we do know that on-line is to return to its origins in formal , using sociability is specified, not downgraded, and that the new tools of research and computerized physical location does contribute, often in modeling, instead of escaping into the much easier unsuspected ways, to the configuration of electronic path of metaphoric commentary and interpretative communication networks. The sociology of virtual narration. communities is the third axis of the newest urban The second level of symbolic analysis refers to sociology. social communication patterns. Here, the diversity Furthermore, the analysis of code-sharing in of expressions of local life, and their relationship the new urban world also requires the study of the

15 CIDADES Comunidades e Territórios interface between physical layouts, social cosmopolitan . Worldwide mass tourism, organization, and electronic networks . It is this international migration, and transient work are interface that Mitchell (1999) considers to be at experiences that relate to the new huddled masses the heart of the new urban form, what he calls e- of the world. How we relate to airports, to train and -topia. His intuition is most insightful. We now have bus stations, to freeways, to customs are part of the to transform it into research. In a similar vein, but new urban experience of hundreds of millions. We from a different perspective, Graham and Marvin’s can build on an ethnographic tradition that (2001) analysis of urban infrastructure as splintered addressed these issues in the mature industrial networks, reconfigurated by the new electronic society. But here, again, the speed, complexity, and pipes of urban civilization, opens up the perspective planetary reach of the transportation system have of understanding cities not only as communication changed the scale and meaning of the issues. systems, but as machines of deliberate segmen- Furthermore, the key reminder is that we move tation. In other words, we must understand at the physically while staying put in our electronic same time the process of communication and that connection. We carry flows and move across places. of incommunication. The contradictory and/or Urban life in the twenty-first century is also complementary relationships between new being transformed by the crises of patriarchalism . metropolitan centrality, the practice of public space, This is not a consequence of technological change, and new communication patterns emerging from but I have argued in my book The Power of Identity virtual communities, could lay the foundations for (Castells, 1997) that it is an essential feature of a new variety of urban sociology, the sociology of the Information Age. To be sure, patriarchalism is “cyborg cities” or hybrid cities made up of the not historically dead. Yet it is contested enough, intertwining of flows and places. and overcome enough, so that everyday life for a Let us go farther in this exploration of the new large segment of city-dwellers has already been themes for urban sociology. We know that redefined vis-à-vis the traditional pattern of an telecommuting – meaning people working full-time industrial society based on a relatively stable on-line from their home – is another myth of patriarchal nuclear family. Under conditions of futurology. Many people, including you and me, gender equality, and under the stress suffered by work on-line from home part of the time, but we traditional arrangements of formation, continue to go to workplaces, as well as moving the forms and rhythms of urban life are dramatically around (the city or the world) while we keep altered. Patterns of residence, transportation, working, with mobile connectivity to our network shopping, , and recreation evolve to adjust of professional partners, suppliers, and clients. The to the multidirectionality of individual needs that latter is the truly new spatial dimension of work. have to share household needs. This transformation This is a new work experience, and indeed a new is mediated by variable configurations of state life experience. Moving physically, while keeping, policies. For instance, how childcare is handled – the networking connection to everything we do, is by government, by firms, by the market, or by a new realm of human adventure of which we know individual networking – largely conditions the time little. The sociology of networked spatial mobility and space of daily lives, particularly for children. is another frontier. To explore it in terms that We have fully documented how women are would not be solely descriptive we need new discriminated against in the patriarchal city. We concepts. The connection between networks and can even empirically argue that women’s work places has to be understood in a variable geometry makes the functioning of cities possible, while of these connections. The places of the space of rarely being acknowledged in the flows – that is, the corridors and halls that connect literature. Yet we need to move forward, from places around the world – will have to be denunciation to the analysis of specific urban understood as exchangers and social refuges, as contradictions resulting from the growing homes on the run, as much as offices on the run. dissonance between the de-gendering of society and The personal and cultural identification with these the historical crystallization of patriarchalism places, their functionality, their symbolism, are in the patterns of home and urban structure. How essential matters that do not concern only the do these contradictions manifest themselves? What

16 Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century are people’s strategies to overcome the constraints movement, and of an ecological view of social of a gendered built environments? How do women organization, as urban areas become the connecting in particular reinvent urban life, and contribute to points between the global issues posed by re-designing the city of women, in contrast to the environmentalism and the local experience through millennial heritage of the city of men? These are which people at large assess their quality of life. To the questions to be researched, rather than stated, redefine cities as ecosystems, and to explore the by a truly post-patriarchal urban sociology. connection between local ecosystems and the global Grassroots movements will continue to shape ecosystem, lays the ground for the overcoming of cities, as well as at large. They will come localism by grassroots movements. On the other in all kind of formats and ideologies, and we should hand, the connection cannot be operated only in keep an open mind on this matter, not deciding in terms of ecological knowledge. Implicit in the advance which ones are progressive, and which environmental movement, and clearly articulated ones are regressive, but taking all of them as in the “deep ecology” theory, as reformulated by symptoms of society in the making. We should also Fritjof Capra (1996), is the notion of cultural keep in mind the most fundamental rule in the study transformation. A new civilization, and not simply of social movements. They are what they say they a new technological paradigm, requires a new are. They are their own consciousness. We can study culture. This culture in the making is being fought their origins, establish their rules of engagement, over by various sets of interests and cultural explore the reasons for their victories and defeats, projects. Environ mentalism is the code word for link their outcomes to overall social transformation, this cultural battle, and ecological issues in the but not interpret them, not explain to them what urban areas constitute the critical battleground for they really mean by what they say. Because, after such struggle. all, social movements are nothing else than their Besides tackling new issues, urban sociology own symbols and stated goals, which ultimately will still have to reckon in the twenty-first century means their words. Based on the observation of with the lingering questions of urban poverty, racial social movements in the early stages of the network and social discrimination, and social exclusion . In society, two kinds of issues appear to require fact, recent studies show an increase in urban privileged attention from urban social scientists. marginality and inequality in the network society. The first one is what I called “the grassrooting of Furthermore, old issues in a new context become, the space of flows”, that is, the use of the Internet in fact, new. Thus, Ida Susser (1997) has shown for networking in social mobilization and social the networking logic underlying the spread of AIDS challenges. This is not simply a technological issue among New York’s poor along networks of because it concerns the organization, reach, and destitution, stigma, and discrimination. Eric process of formation of social movements. Most Klinenberg (2000), in his social anatomy of the often these “on-line” social movements connect to devastating effects of the 1995 heat wave in locally based movements, and they converge, Chicago, shows why dying alone in the city, the physically, in a given place at a given time. A good fate of hundreds of seniors in a few days, was rooted example was the mobilization against the World in the new forms of social isolation emerging from Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in December people’s exclusion from networks of work, family, 1999, which, arguably, set a new trend of grassroots information, and sociability. The dialectics opposition to uncontrolled globalization, and between inclusion and exclusion in the network redefined the terms of the debate on the goals and society redefines the field of study of urban poverty, procedures of the new economy. The sociology of and forces us to consider alternative forms of social movements on-line, and their interaction with inclusion (e.g. social solidarity or, otherwise, the their place-based frame of reference (which can criminal economy), as well as new mechanisms of be multiple), assigns new tasks to the study of exclusion – technological apartheid in the era urban social movements, renewing the tradition of of the Internet. urban researchers in the 1960-70s. The final frontier for urban sociology, indeed The other major issue in the area of social for social science in general, is a study of new movements is the exploration of the environmental relationships between time and space in the

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Information Age. I have proposed the notion of the Urban Sociologists in the Trenches of emergence of timeless time as characteristic of our Research society, in parallel with the formation of a space of flows. By timeless time, I mean the destruction For urban sociology to renew itself by of the sequence, at the source of chronological time, confronting the extraordinary range of issues that I either by time compression (as in instant financial have outlined, it must create new tools, both transactions in the electronic markets) or by the theoretical and methodological. It must also blurring of the sequence (as in the discontinuous abandon futile exercises of deconstruction and pattern of working time in the week or throughout reconstruction enclosed in the verbal games of most life). In the same way that the space of flows coexists postmodernist theorizing, and go back to its origins, with, and contradicts, the space of places, timeless in fieldwork research, in the generation of new time coexists with chronological time, and is information, in the discovery of the hidden realms opposed by “glacial time”, that is, by the time of of society, and in the fascination for urban life with very slow motion, as in the ecological processes all its glamour and miseries. We do not need new that characterize the planet’s ecosystem. Each form urban ideologies or well-meaning utopias – we of time and space is embodied in the projects of should let people imagine their own myths. What social actors, and formalized in the organization urban sociologists of the twenty-first century really of society, always in flux, as the actual spatio- need are new tool boxes (including conceptual tools) to take on the hard work necessary to research and -temporal processes depend on the overall process understand the new relationships between space of social change. In my analysis of the new and society. relationships of time and space I went further, Concepts: networks, space of flows, space of proposing the hypothesis that, in the network places, local, global, communities (physical, society, space structures time, in contrast to the virtual, face-to-face), urban social exchangers, time-dominated constitution of industrial society, mobile places, de-gendered homes and cities, in which urbanization and industrialization were switched-off locales, links of inclusion, glocal social considered to be part of the march of universal movements, shared time/spaces, time-space progress, erasing place-rooted traditions and regimes, individuation, communalism, urban cultures. In our society, the network society, where constellations, metropolitan regions, urban you live determines your time-frame of reference. monumentality, multi-nodal centrality, meaning, If you are an inhabitant of the space of flows, or if function, form. I deliberately provide a list that you live in a locality that is in the dominant reads like Borges’s Chinese encyclopedia because networks, timeless time (epitomized by the frantic to structure and assemble this collection of race to beat the clock) will be your time – as in concepts, or even to define them, would constitute Wall Street or Silicon Valley. If you are in a Pearl a theoretical framework, and this is not my purpose River delta factory town, chronological time will in this text, although it must be done sometime, be imposed upon you as in the best days of somewhere, through collective, interactive Taylorism in Detroit. And if you live in a poor village theorizing. I simply want to indicate a style of in the Atitlan lake in Guatemala biological time, inquiry, and to evoke the kind of concepts that could usually a much shorter life-span, will still rule your fit into a research design able to address the life. Against this spatial determination of time, questions that I consider critical for twenty-first environmental movements assert die notion of slow- century cities. For readers irritated by the motion time, the “clock of the long now” in the allegorical character of this elaboration I can refer words of Stewart Brand (1999), by broadening the to work I have already initiated toward a systematic spatial dimension to its planetary scale in the whole theorization of the network society (Castells, 2000), complexity of its interactions – thus including our a perspective that needs, however, to be specifically great-grandchildren in our temporal frame of focused on the study of cities and spatial processes. reference. Thus, the newest urban sociology has a Urban sociologists also need new methods. great deal to accomplish in the twenty-first century The Internet is not only an object of research, but a – a task that can only be undertaken with the help research tool. It allows access to a wide variety of of new concepts and new methods. sources. And helped by automated translation

18 Urban Sociology in the Twenty-First Century programs, the Internet will enable true multicul- also, new technological tools will enable turalism in the sources and issues of urban research. researchers to record, check, and analyze their A global system will be tackled from a global observations against their database in real time. perspective, even if the entry points of the analysis Mobile computing capacity, on-line connection will continue to be culturally and institutionally to modeled systems of analysis, and interactivity singular. will allow urban social scientists to systematize New computing power, and its ubiquitous qualitative observations, to build their database distribution, will allow at last, the use of simulation as they go on their fieldwork, and to feed back modeling as a tool of formalization and verification into their observation and interviewing the of hypotheses on the basis of qualitative material. meaning of these observations for their overall The new mathematics of complexity, powered by analytical framework. fast computer processing, will free statistical Yet, with all these new tools, urban sociology analysis from the constraints of linearity, in a giant will only be up to the task if urban sociologists in leap toward understanding a that, the twenty-first century continue to have the same by definition, is non-linear. Hard-to-do ethno- passion for cities, and the same empathy for their graphic fieldwork will continue to be the essential, fellow citizens, that most of us, earlier urban distinctive tool of urban social scientists, but here, sociologists, felt in the twentieth century.

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