Showing papers by "Alan Warde published in 1993"

Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity

Abstract: Introduction - The Roots of Urban Sociology - The Economic Bases of Urban Form - Inequality and Social Organisation in the City - Perspectives on Urban Culture - Modernity, Post-modernity, and Urban Culture - Urban Politics - Conclusion: Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity - References

A Changing Domestic Division of Labour? Issues of Measurement and Interpretation

Abstract: This paper is concerned to evaluate recent arguments about changes in the domestic division of labour. To this end it identifies different positions on the issue in the literature and deploys some evidence from a survey in Greater Manchester in 1990 to try to discriminate between competing views. We report findings, regarding couple households, about the sex-stereotyping of domestic tasks and about differences in the domestic labour contributions of wives, husbands and young people living in their parental home. The key determinants of variation among households are isolated. We explore attitudes towards sharing and fairness. The results suggest that, with some qualifications, gender stereotyping of specific domestic tasks and unequal contributions between men and women cannot have shifted much in recent years.

Social class and change in eating habits.

Abstract: Records an investigation of changing class variation in household expenditure on food in contemporary Britain. Based on secondary analysis of the Family Expenditure Survey, it documents the persistence of class differences between 1968 and 1988 showing that they cannot be reduced to levels of household income. Argues that obituaries for the concept of social class in the sociological and cultural studies literatures are premature.

Cities and Uneven Economic Development

Abstract: Though best seen as an extended inquiry into the relationship between capitalism and modernity, urban sociology has characteristically concentrated on cities as sites of modernity, neglecting the way in which capitalist economic systems structure cities. In this chapter we draw on the work of urban geographers to show how cities need to be placed in the broader context of the world capitalist system. Such contextualisation, we argue, is important in specifying the relationship between different cities, and between cities and rural areas, so allowing the urban sociologist to avoid the mistake of seeing cities as self-contained objects with clear boundaries — as exemplars of a universal modernity. The significance of examining the economic bases of urban form is that it allows urban specificity to be comprehended, in terms of the particular role which different cities play within the worldwide economic system.

Conclusion: Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity

Abstract: The past twenty years have witnessed a growing doubt about the status of scientific knowledge. The problem, the philosophers observe, is one of finding some foundational grounding for affirming knowledge true and certain. Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth-century believed in the capacity of Reason to understand the world, whereupon planned interventions might secure human Progress. Western social thought developed largely under the wing of such a modern rationalist view, though there was always philosophical dissent. Today, the dissenters are in the majority. Post-modernists and post-structuralists deny that there can be any grounds for sustaining the narrative of Progress, of a singular, universal and developing core of knowledge to which science once pretended. We live in an age of radical doubt. While this condition might seem to undermine traditional histories of science as steadily approaching perfect understanding, it makes little difference to giving an account of urban sociology, which has always been characterised by discontinuity, uncertainty and rediscovery.

Modernity, Post-modernity and Urban Culture

Abstract: The critique of the idea of a generic urban culture is often seen as exhausting all interest in urban culture But this does not follow In most forms of cultural analysis it is the diversity of possible meanings in any given cultural form that inspires inquiry We do not stop interpreting novels if we conclude that they have different meanings! In a like manner, a framework is required to show how and why cities develop particular meanings, and how these are constructed, interpreted and sustained

The Roots of Urban Sociology

Abstract: In this chapter we present a brief and selective survey of the history of urban sociology. Section 2.1 deals with the concerns of urban sociology in its ‘golden age’ between 1910 and the 1930s, when it was central to the development of the discipline. We focus on the Chicago School and identify elements in its legacy which are relevant for analysis today. We contrast the development of urban sociology in the UK to indicate some of the specific strengths of the British tradition of urban research. After the Second World War urban sociology became more marginal to sociology, and in section 2.2 we indicate some of the reasons for this. The pressing sense of social turmoil and political unrest which had earlier generated an interest in cities was replaced by more complacent political attitudes in which it was assumed that economic growth and social harmony were destined to be permanent features of capitalist welfare states. The rise of functionalist and structuralist social theory altered the terrain of sociological inquiry. By the middle of the 1970s most commentators were contemptuous of the contribution of the Chicago School and of urban sociology more generally. However, in section 2.3 we argue that this dismissive evaluation was misplaced and that the theoretical approaches favoured in the 1970s left a series of serious conceptual problems.