Urban Culture

This innovative text uses the lens of culture to examine the various theoretical perspectives and paradigms of urban analysis. It explores the city's impact on how we make and consume all types of culture—art, music, literature, architecture, film, and more—not only illustrating the effects the urban environment has on the production of culture, but, at times, how culture has influenced the city. Theoretically diverse, Urban Culture employs the major theoretical perspectives in sociology and the major paradigms in Urban Sociology and Urban Studies: Urban Ecology, Marxism, New Urbanism, Socio-Psychological Perspective, Structuralists/Econometrics, and Urban Elites/ Entrepreneurs. Urban Terrorism is also addressed to provide a timely examination of the cultural impact and sociological effects of terrorism in an urban setting.

The award-winning, field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th century Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.

This set includes key pieces from Peter Ackroyd, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Homi Bhaba, Charles Dickens, Fredrick Engles, Paul Gilroy, Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, George Simmel, Ian Sinclair, Edward W. Soja, Gayatri Spivak, Nigel Thrift, Virginia Woolf, Sharon Zukin, and many others. The material is arranged thematically highlighting the variety of interests that coexist (and conflict) within the city. Issues such as gender, class, race, age and disability are covered along with urban experiences such as walking, politics & protest, governance, inclusion and exclusion. Urban pathologies, including gangsters, mugging, and drug-dealing are also explored. Selections cover cities from around the globe, including London, Berlin, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Bombay and Tokyo. A general introduction by the editor reviews theoretical perspectives and provides a rationale for the collection. This collection offers a valuable research tool to a broad range of disciplines, including: sociology; anthropology; cultural history; cultural geography; art critical theory; visual culture; literary studies; social policy and cultural studies.

Urban Apologetics examines the legitimate issues that Black communities have with Western Christianity and shows how the gospel of Jesus Christ—rather than popular, socioreligious alternatives—restores our identity. African Americans have long confronted the challenge of dignity destruction caused by white supremacy. While many have found meaning and restoration of dignity in the black church, others have found it in ethnocentric socioreligious groups and philosophies. These ideologies have grown and developed deep traction in the black community and beyond. Revisionist history, conspiracy theories, and misinformation about Jesus and Christianity are the order of the day. Many young African Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity. Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community. The book is divided into three main parts: Discussions on the unique context for urban apologetics so that you can better understand the cultural arguments against Christianity among the Black community. Detailed information on cults, religious groups, and ethnic identity groups that many urban evangelists encounter—such as the Nation of Islam, Kemetic spirituality, African mysticism, Hebrew Israelites, Black nationalism, and atheism. Specific tools for urban apologetics and community outreach. Ultimately, Urban Apologetics applies the gospel to black identity to show that Jesus is the only one who can restore it. This is an essential resource to equip those doing the work of ministry and apology in urban communities with the best available information.

How do we experience a city in terms of the senses? What are the inter-relations between human experience and behaviour in urban space? This volume examines these questions in the context of European urban culture between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring the institutions and ideologies relating to the range of sensual experience and its interpretation. Spanning pre-industrial and modern cities in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, it enables the reader to establish major contrasts and continuities in what is still an evolving urban experience. Divided into sections corresponding to the five senses: noise, vision, taste, touch and smell, each sections allows for comparisons which act as reminders that the experience of the city was a multi-sensual one, and that these experiences were as much intellectual as physical in their nature.

This collection of twelve essays describes aspects of town life in medieval Wales, from the way people lived and worked to how they spent their leisure time. Drawing on evidence from historical records, archaeology and literature, twelve leading scholars outline the diversity of town life and urban identity in medieval Wales. While urban histories of Wales have charted the economic growth of towns in post-Norman Wales, much less has been written about the nature of urban culture in Wales. This book fills in some of the gaps about how people lived in towns and the kinds of cultural experience which helped to construct a Welsh urban identity.

Urban subcultures have joined together to become something larger, more powerful, and more pervasive than ever before. Our new global urban culture, street culture at its broadest, is its force. The more than 1,000 photographs featured here together form a journey, a record, and an inspiration. The world's streets are its most vibrant sites of visual creativity, and amid their crush are photographers, documenting, creating, and collectively bringing this book to you. Their stories are the stories of the interconnectedness of global street culture. Travel and exploration are near the essence of street cultures, and the travelers who have used their passions to cross the boundaries of nations are at the heart of the process of cultural exchange.--[from publisher's description].

This innovative text uses the lens of culture to examine the various theoretical perspectives and paradigms of urban analysis. It explores the city's impact on how we make and consume all types of culture—art, music, literature, architecture, film, and more—not only illustrating the effects the urban environment has on the production of culture, but, at times, how culture has influenced the city. Theoretically diverse, Urban Culture employs the major theoretical perspectives in sociology and the major paradigms in Urban Sociology and Urban Studies: Urban Ecology, Marxism, New Urbanism, Socio-Psychological Perspective, Structuralists/Econometrics, and Urban Elites/ Entrepreneurs. Urban Terrorism is also addressed to provide a timely examination of the cultural impact and sociological effects of terrorism in an urban setting.