Space, the City and Social Theory - by Fran Tonkiss (Paperback)

About the Book

Space, the City and Social Theory offers a clear and critical account of key approaches to cities and urban space within social theory and analysis.

From the Back Cover

Space, the City and Social Theory offers a clear and critical account of key approaches to cities and urban space within social theory and analysis. It explores the relation of the social and the spatial in the context of critical urban themes: community and anonymity; social difference and spatial divisions; politics and public space; gentrification and urban renewal; gender and sexuality; subjectivity and space; experience and everyday practice in the city.

The text adopts an international and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on a range of debates on cities and urban life. It brings together classic perspectives in urban sociology and social theory with the analysis of contemporary urban problems and issues. Rather than viewing the urban simply as a backdrop for more general social processes, the discussion looks at how social and spatial relations shape different versions of the city: as a place of social interaction and of solitude; as a site of difference and segregation; as a space of politics and power; as a landscape of economic and cultural distinction; as a realm of everyday experience and freedom. Similarly, it examines how core social categories - such as class, culture, gender, sexuality and community - are shaped and reproduced in urban contexts.

Linking debates in urban studies to wider concerns within social theory and analysis, this accessible text will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students in urban sociology, social and cultural geography, urban and cultural studies.

Review Quotes

"A wonderfully eclectic but focused book about social relations and spatial process in the US city."
British Journal of Sociology

"Fran Tonkiss has written an important book. She shows the ways in which classic social theory continues to haunt the understanding of modern urban life. In clear, direct prose she shows also the ways cities are changing, and so require new thinking. The urbanite as well as the urbanist will be provoked."
Richard Sennett, London School of Economics

"This is an exceptionally useful and inspiring book that will be used to instruct many of the urbanists of the future."
Nigel Thrift, University of Oxford

About the Author

Fran Tonkiss is a Lecturer in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.