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Urban Studies Inside/Out
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Urban Studies Inside/Out
Theory, Method, Practice

Edited by:

Other Titles in:
Human Geography | Urban Geography

November 2019 | 384 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

At a time of intense theoretical debates in urban studies, the research practices underlying such theories have not received the same attention. This original and creative text interrogates the methodological underpinnings of contemporary urban scholarship, with reference to different global sites and situations, as well as to recent debates around postcolonial, planetary, and provincialized urban theories. Rather than reducing methodological questions to a matter of tools and techniques, it unearths the complex connections between theory, research design, empirical work, expositional style, and normative-ethical commitments.

Innovatively co-produced by faculty and graduate students from a variety of disciplines, Urban Studies Inside-Out it is comprised of three parts.

  • Part I: An introduction to the field of urban studies and its changing theories, methodological norms and practices.
  • Part II: Features a collection of methodological essays co-authored by graduate students, deconstructing the research designs, the methodological practices, and the modes of presentation and representation across recent urban monographs.
  • Part III: Consists of informative keyword primers which explicate the key concepts and formulations in the field of urban studies.

This volume offers a welcome intervention within urban studies, and stands to make a valuable contribution for graduate students and researchers.

 
Part 1 Reorientations
 
1 Urban studies unbound: postmillennial spaces of theory, by Helga Leitner, Eric Sheppard and Jamie Peck
 
2 Doing urban studies: navigating the methodological terrain, by Eric Sheppard, Helga Leitner and Jamie Peck
 
3 Urban studies inside/out: a guide for readers and researchers, by Jamie Peck, Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard
 
Part 2 Methodological essays
 
4 Constructing a feminist urban political economy: on Leslie Kern’s Sex and the revitalized city, by Kyle Loewen, Devra Waldman and Mikael Omstedt
 
5 Dreaming and scheming the 'world-class' city: on Asher Ghertner’s Rule by Aesthetics, by Dimitar Anguelov, Emma Colven and Prajna Rao
 
6 Fluid assemblages: on Lisa Björkman’s Pipe Politics, by Tanya Matthan, Emma Colven and Hudson Spivey
 
7 Constructing and contesting the banlieue: on Mustafa Dikeç’s Badlands of the Republic, by Nina Ebner, Joe Penny and Andre Comandon
 
8 Frustrated encounters: on Ahmed Kanna’s Dubai: The City as Corporation, by Nafis Hasan, Hudson Spivey and Kenton Card
 
9 Rescaling the urban: on Neil Brenner’s New State Spaces, by Joseph A Daniels, Mikael Omstedt and Dimitar Anguelov
 
10 Ethnography in the boundary zones: on Robert Fairbanks’ How it Works, by Samuel Nowak and Thomas Howard
 
11 Ethnographic exchanges: on Philippe Bourgois’ In Search of Respect, by Tom Howard, Samuel Nowak and Fernanda Jahn-Verri
 
12 Grounding the housing question in land: on Anna Haila’s Urban Land Rent, by Kenton Card, Joseph A Daniels and Andre Comandon
 
13 Mapping urban governance: on You-tien Hsing’s Great Urban Transformation, by Tyler Harlan and Jaehyeon Park
 
14 Claiming rights to the city: on James Holston’s Insurgent Citizenship, by Carolyn Prouse and Fernanda Jahn-Verri
 
15 Visualizing liquid cities: on Matthew Gandy’s Fabric of Space: Water, by CS Ponder and Sophie Webber
 
16 Writing the heterogeneous city: on AbdouMaliq Simone’s City Life from Jakarta to Dakar, by Prajna Rao and Andre Comandon
 
17 In search of ordinary 'elsewheres' in global urbanism? On Ola Söderström’s Cities in Relations, by Rachel Bok
 
18 Urban comparison, quantified: on Michael Storper, Thomas Kemeny, Naji Makarem and Taner Osman’s The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies, by Andre Comandon, Kenton Card and Joseph A. Daniels
 
Part 3 Reflections
 
19 Turning Urban Studies Inside/out, by Jamie Peck, Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard
 
APPENDIX: Keywords
 
Bibliography

A rare and generous effort of collaborative work between graduate students and professors, this book provides a road map to the complex reverse engineering of contemporary urban studies texts from a methodological perspective.

Raquel Rolnik is Professor of Urban Planning at the University of São Paulo.

Raquel Rolnik
Professor of Urban Planning at the University of São Paulo

The book provides good state of the art discussion of urban studies and research methodologies (written by the editors). The main chapters (written by post-graduate researchers) that form the main core of the book are very useful to introduce students to the main debates in the discipline, but they also show how postgraduate students can learn how to engage with these debates critically while preparing assignments and developing their research.

Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza
Department of Politics & Public Policy, De Montfort University
February 6, 2020

Helga Leitner

  Helga Leitner (Ph.D. University of Vienna, Austria) is a professor with research interests in international migration, politics of immigration and citizenship, urban development & sustainability, global urbanism, urban social movements, and socio-spatial theory. She teaches undergraduate and courses related to her research interests. More About Author

Jamie Peck

Jamie Peck, PhD is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy, Distinguished University Scholar, and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He is an institutional political economist, working on a range of issues relating to economic geography, urban restructuring, labor regulation, and statecraft. Much of his  research is concerned with the ways in which ostensibly global processes—for example, forms of market-oriented governance (a.k.a. neoliberalization)—are (re)made through local sites, distanciated networks, and grounded practices. He is currently working on the restructuring of... More About Author

Eric Sheppard

I seek to develop general explanations for the spatial organization and dynamics of economic activities in capitalist societies, and to determine how a geographical perspective illuminates such explanations. Economists recently have rediscovered economic geography as a place to apply economic theory, but my research shows that a proper incorporation of the spatial dimension of society challenges much of what economic theory tells us. A geographical approach can capture the complex evolution of economic landscapes and the various non-economic processes affecting economic change.... More About Author

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