ancient cities

926 Urban Sociology
windows” line of analysis. Localized studies focusing
on urban political power in the United States
may well emphasize the emergence of minority
political cultures that have produced gains in
minority leadership in urban elected and appointed
offices. A broader political perspective would
emphasize the crisis of dwindling resources for
these older central municipalities struggling to
deal with problems of job loss, homelessness,
crime, and education, at the same time that they
are surrounded by affluent independent suburban
political entities.
This comparison describes tendencies—there is
nothing to prevent an ecologically oriented analysis
from beginning with a broader political and
economic context, or for a study of national or
global patterns of the redistribution of opportunities
to consider how problems are intensified by
the local urban environment. But the contrasting
tendencies arise from the initial impulse that orients
the different modes of study, from natural
analytical affinities that are produced by local versus
global premises. The ecological premise of
traditional sociology is inherently interested in
locally produced ways of life, meanings, and
behaviors. Some will continue to seek the answers
to questions of social consequences within the
urban environment; others will emphasize the
effects that broader structural factors, particularly
the forces of globalization, have on creating the
conditions in those environments. Contemporary
urban sociology combines both perspectives.
In an earlier era, the theme of “urbanism” was
called into question as overly deterministic, not
allowing for the variations in style and comfort
level found among diverse urban populations.
More recently, assumptions about globalization as
an inexorable restructuring market force, with its
attendant features of deindustrialization and economic
decline for cities in wealthy nations, have
faced the same charge of overdetermination. Critics
argue that the globalization premise cannot account
for why trends have not had the same impact in
every city, or even adjacent cities with similar
infrastructures and industrial profiles. Some cities
follow the predicted pattern of industrial decline;
others resist and prosper. This has led to a call for
more empirical studies focused on local variables
that might explain the observed differences.
Giddens, in particular, has been effective in urging
social scientists to abandon theories of change that
assume that human beings are powerless to resist
the impact of structural transformation. He has
posited the idea that the human capacity to understand
and modify the impact of such forces, human
agency, has been underestimated by social scientists.
During the 1990s the response to this call for
correction took the form of a reemphasis on local
studies, the effectiveness of social movements, and
the potential power of urban elites to resist and
alter the effects of global forces. Meanwhile, the
continuing massive restructuring of urban economies
in tune with global change became ever
clearer within social science, just as the rhetoric
and policies of national and international political
bodies reflected an attitude of inevitability that a
new global division of labor was emerging. There
was little that anyone, including those living in cities,
could do about it—other than to adjust on its
terms.
One of the major implications for urban sociology
is that its object of study no longer represents
an emerging frontier of social organization and
human experience. It is even questionable whether
the city can be considered an adequate unit of spatial
analysis for a full understanding of changes
taking place there. Early in the twentieth century
Robert Park said that the “big story” of change
that marked his time was to be found in the growing
cities. Surrounding Park, a generation of urban
sociologists sought to write the story of the city by
following the ecological premise, a localist orientation.
Today, urban sociology has developed into a
much more diffuse body of study that includes an
effort to understand the interaction between social
processes occurring within the urban arena and
much more broadly rooted political and economic
forces. The ecological premise remains discernable
as just one orientation within urban sociology.
William Flanagan
See also Chicago School of Urban Sociology; New Urban
Sociology; Urban Ecology (Chicago School); Urban
Geography; Urban Theory
Further Readings
Burgess, E. W. 1925. “The Growth of the City: An
Introduction to a Research Project.” Pp. 45–62 in The