In this blog post, I would like to provide some data for my colleagues on promotion at our university. I have heard many different comments in regards to research and publications. However, there appears to be very little data, or evidence beyond anecdotes describing what’s going on systematically. So, I’ve sat down and put this estimate together. The following chart of search “results” for publications was created using our Daily Brief newsletter announcements, and doing searches on Google Scholar.
Why I Study Cities
A version/part of this post was presented during the Second Annual Conference on Social Work in the Global Environment at Kutztown University on March 26, 2014. The presentation was entitled “The Global City as Level of Analysis: Connecting the Local and the Global.” As a globally oriented sociologist with concerns for social justice, I do not see social processes and movements as being just local or tied to specific nation-states. Rather, for me the local is always global, and the global is always local. This was the underlying premise of my presentation and this blog post on why I study cities.
Why am I interested in cities? As a product of SUNY Binghamton’s sociology program, I was trained in world-systems. World-systems is a multidisciplinary large-scale long-term approach that emerged in the 1970s and was a preceded the popularization of globalization studies. However, I was never particularly comfortable with the macro-level global approach of world-systems. Without going too much into my intellectual autobiography, my draw to cities is that it is a level of analysis that intersects the local and the global. Specifically, I wanted a more nuanced level of analysis than the nation-state. Why is the nation-state a problem? Perhaps the best example is the problem of poor regions of “core” counties in comparison to urban centers in semi-peripheral and peripheral counties. While there are no doubt high levels of poverty in cities in the Global South, such cities have amenities that are indistinguishable from that of major cities in the developed world – amenities that poor regions of the core lack. Central business districts, university campuses, golf courses, gated communities, and other elite amenities. This makes urban areas, and in particular alpha or primate cities (the largest city in a region or country), different economically, politically and culturally (as well as environmentally) from the rest of the country. Cities and their relationship to the rest of the country, and in comparison to other nation-states become a useful tool in understanding the larger (global) problem of uneven development. After all, more than half the world’s population live in urban areas – which are very much the product of transnational economic activity and migration.
Of course, urban poverty in the developed and less developed world are not the same thing. However, I believe that urban comparisons are more comparable when using economic indicators like GDP and social indicators to discuss inequality between different places (than at the national level). Moreover, an examination of cities, allows us to discuss the way in which inequality reproduces itself through local as well as global processes. Cities, and more specifically global cities, are a manifestation of the world-economy (which includes the modern world-system) (Knox & Taylor, 1995). London, Tokyo and New York look the way that they do thanks to the way they are connected to other cities – through migration, trade and other forms of social, economic, and political exchange (Friedmann, 1986; Sassen, 2001). More significantly, we see that it’s not just cities in core countries that fit this description of “Global.” Kuala Lumpur, Istanbul, Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Rio de Janiero are all cities very much linked to international finance, multinational corporations, the transnational business class and immigrant communities.When we look at something like immigration, we see similar “pull” factors between cities, because these are nodal points of the world-economy.
At the same time, we can look at such cities with much more nuance than just products of globalization. We can look at individuals, local groups (such as immigrant communities), and “micro”-level social actors that are more than just products of macro level phenomenon (or a top down approach). Rather they are active agents in the shaping of their social worlds within the cities they live and operate in. This is key. In global cities, we can talk about their agency in trade, global social movements, and cultural production. Cities and their citizens are active within transnational networks, which means that they are active participants in the processes of globalization. The best example of this is remittances. It is estimated that over $500 billion are sent to home countries by immigrants. This money not only goes into consumer goods, but family businesses and construction projects that fundamentally shape urban landscapes around the world (Lopez, 2010). Immigrants and diasporic communities in shape cities as much as the cities shape and structure their lives. Cities, after all, are homes. Cities are work places. People have emotional connections to place, whether they love or hate where they live. I would argue that environment, social context, and location come together in very important ways that explain the reproduction of social structure (a very sociological concern). It is, after all, social structure that creates and reproduces inequality.
Many urban communities are global and the spaces they occupy are global. In global cities elite spaces – gated communities – are constructed alongside sites of oppression and poverty – the favelas, banlieu, township, ghetto. Both spaces are the product of migration, draconian public policy, the push of aggressive real estate developers, as well as environmental degradation. Not only are they sites of destruction and inequality, but they are sites in which social justice is fought for. The existence of both spaces, reveal the urban nature of local and global social justice struggles. French sociologist and theorist Henri Lefebvre (1996) used the term “right to the city” to refer to the human right and dignity people should have within the world’s most common “lived” space – the city. David Harvey (2008, 2010. 2012) in his classic work Social Justice and the City and later works have argued that cities are sites of struggle. As such, there is no doubt in my mind that cities embody and contain many of the local and global struggles that people face.
Work Cited:
- Friedmann, J. (1986). The World City Hypothesis. Development and Change, 17(1), 69–83.
- Harvey, D. (2008). The Right to the City. New Left Review, (53), 23–40.
- ——. (2010). Social Justice and the City. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.
- ——. (2012). Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso Books.
- Knox, P. L., & Taylor, P. J. (Eds.). (1995). World Cities in a World-System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on Cities. (E. Lebas, Ed.). Oxford & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
- Lopez, S. L. (2010). “The Remittance House: Architecture of Migration in Rural Mexico,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 17 (2), 33–52.
- Sassen, S. (2001). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Post-Dissertation Research Trajectory
As I write my tenure and promotion application letter that recaps what I’ve done, I’m also thinking a great deal about where my career will be going. Raul Pacheco-Vega has blogged a bit about his own trajectory. So I figured, I’d spend #ScholarSunday (Pacheco-Vega’s creation) doing a bit of writing on my own trajectory.
For some of us PhDs, we have a love and hate relationship with our dissertation. It was our ticket to being called “doctor.” It led to publications that helped us get jobs and advance our careers. However, we are often sick of it (and possibly the topic) once we’ve squeezed what we can out of it. Yet, moving on is hard. I was recently talking to a colleague of mine and she expressed concern about future research once everything in her dissertation was published. Moving on to a new project is often scary and intimidating.
I actually haven’t thought much about my dissertation for the past 2-3 years. My trajectory is (maybe) different from others though. There were a number of ideas that I had when I was starting my dissertation that were not feasible for a number of reasons. As such, I had a U.S. (or California) -centric dissertation on architecture and culture despite being trained in globalization and global cities. After getting a few articles out of my dissertation, I started moving on to a very different area of study. While my recent work on wildfire comes out of a very brief section of my dissertation, it was essentially a new project that required a lot of new research. I basically had to train myself in environmental sociology. Since then, I’ve been working on global urban and environmental issues rather than culture and built environment. Also, visiting Turkey and Ethiopia the last two summers have allowed me to explore new angles to look at the connection between environment urbanization, but in a way, I’m returning to my roots as a Binghamton Sociology trained scholar.
This shift (or return) led to a bit of awkwardness at the American Sociological Association (ASA) meeting last week. When asked what I work on, I struggled to find an answer. I think for the time being, the simplest explanation is that I look at the “intersection between built and natural environments in the U.S. and globally.” Six years ago, if a time traveler had told me that this was my future, I’d have been shocked.
I’m not sure if this trajectory makes me look unfocused, but I think my short attention span and desire to constantly work on different topics keeps my intellectual curiosity strong. Loving learning is what brought me here, and I still get excited when I learn something new. So hopefully, this excitement can inspire many more years of research and writing. After all, I’m still an early career researcher / scholar.
Summer Travels and Teaching Overseas
Last summer I taught at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey and this summer I’ll be headed to the University of Gondar in Ethiopia. As I get ready for departure, I want to do a blog post on teaching overseas.
Although, I cringe when people call me a “teacher” (since I’m a researcher as well), teaching is very important to me. I enjoy being at a teaching oriented institution. However, I’m often jealous of friends and colleagues at research institutions who have resources and schedules that make going abroad easier. In the absence of those resources, teaching overseas during the summer is a great opportunity to both develop myself as a teacher and conduct research. Importantly, working with students overseas makes me something other than a tourist. While, I don’t horribly mind being a tourist (sometimes), being one certainly limits you. As a social scientist, it’s important to have first hand knowledge that isn’t filtered through pre-packaged vacations. I don’t want to just visit places, I want to get to know as much about a society as possible.
I teach and write on globalization and cities, as such, being able to live and work in other parts of the world (even if briefly) is vital to my intellectual and professional growth. As Donald Hall writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the benefits of teaching abroad include “important pedagogical, research-related, and life lessons.” It allows me to bring experiences back into the classroom and it informs my research writing. Overseas teaching not only gives me intimate knowledge of places and people, but forces me to critically think about the material I teach or write about.
From the standpoint of research, I was able to meet with colleagues (old and new) to share ideas last summer in Istanbul. I also learned a great deal from my students. My time there led to two article manuscripts and a new perspective on the city’s dramatic growth since my first visit in 2006 (and subsequent visits in 2008 and 2011). Perhaps most interesting was being able to teach an environmental sociology course amidst the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul.
This summer, I’ll be visiting Ethiopia for the first time. This trip will greatly support my ongoing work on global urban development issues. While most of my time will be in Gondar, I’m looking forward to seeing Addis Ababa. As an urbanist, it’s always interesting to see different types of cities. I’m hoping to learn about the city and the country, as well as examine the connections that shape different types of urbanism around the world.