Transnational mobility and rootedness: the upper middle classes in European cities

Some authors argue that ‘mobilities’ form the distinctive feature of late modern societies and represent a new social cleavage between cosmopolitan mobile élites and urban residents more rooted in their local neighbourhoods. One assumption in contemporary discourses of rootedness is that this new transnational or global society entails an ongoing process of uprooting individuals and a mainly mobile élite packing up and relocating. In this article, we draw on empirical comparative research to examine the patterns and dynamics of mobility and belonging across European borders among upper‐middle‐class managers in four cities – Paris, Madrid, Milan and Lyon. We suggest that these new urban upper‐middle‐class managers display flight responses, or ‘partial exit’ strategies, which operate at various levels to enable them to protect and control their interests while holding onto the reins of power in their local communities. Our study adopts a micro‐level perspective to explore individual experiences, strategies, motivations and values based on interviews with 480 managers in these cities.     

Recognizing difference: in/visibility in the everyday life of individuals with facial limb absence

People who lack part(s) of their face have a visibly different appearance both due to their facial difference itself and the medical aids that they use to cover it (e.g. prostheses, bandages). In this article, we draw on interviews with affected individuals in order to investigate how visible difference features in their everyday experience. The visibility of their facial difference, we show, comes into play as they interact with various others in the contexts of their daily life. However, respondents’ visibility manifests in different ways, depending on whether they cover or uncover their facial difference. These different modes of visibility make for distinct ‘visibility experiences’, as participants meet others who notice – or fail to notice – their atypical appearance. By exploring these experiences, our article provides insights into the role of visibility in interviewees’ everyday life, and demonstrates how they actively negotiate their social recognition within encounters with various others.     

城市发展建设中的“城市记忆”问题研究

城市记忆是存在于人类意识中的关于城市和城市生活内化的意象,展现了以往人们的生活情境和城市的历史文化,体现了个人和群体对于城市的热爱,同时也体现了城市存在的意义。笔者首先对城市记忆的定义进行了界定,其次阐述了与城市记忆相关的概念,描述了城市记忆的重要作用、城市记忆丧失的原因,最后对城市记忆进行了社会心理分析,以求对这一问题作出初步的综合分析。     

Olfactive frames of remembering: theorizing self,senses and society

By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta‐narratives including sensory relations (pertaining to familial and other ties), sensory memory, time and space, and sensoryscapes. This article also elucidates upon the various moral, cultural and aesthetic codes that may be discerned in biographical narrations of social actors drawn from narrative interviews. Furthermore, it highlights a need to consider sensorial‐bodily experiences in qualitative inquiry and thereby conceptualize how actors articulate their sense of self, and how they reformulate their experiences and relationships with others vis‐à‐vis emotional discourses of happiness, sadness and nostalgia in the maintenance and continuity of selfhood. The paper therefore contributes to sensuous scholarship by explicating how smells and memories operate in conjunction toward shaping self‐identity and social relations.     

Increased differentiation between individuals,but no genetic isolation from adjacent rural individuals in an urban red squirrel population

Whether or not individuals in cities and adjacent rural areas form separate populations depends on the origin of urbanized individuals. The rural individuals may have simply gradually invaded the city. Alternatively, the urbanization depended on arrival of individuals with specific adaptations for city life. A population within the city could also remain separated from adjacent rural populations if there are physical or behavioural dispersal barriers lowering the possibility of genetic exchange between individuals. All this is linked to dispersal behaviour of the species as gene flow is determined by distances moved during dispersal. In this study, we used microsatellite markers to evaluate whether or not Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) individuals in an urban environment are genetically separated from their sub-urban/rural counterparts. Using radio-telemetry, we also studied natal dispersal distances of urban red squirrels to evaluate the potential for gene flow within the city. We observed no indication that urban squirrels had been genetically isolated from rural squirrels. In addition, increased amount of built area did not explain differentiation between urban individuals, further indicating that there were no barriers restricting movement. Still, the genetic differentiation within the city was increased and natal dispersal distances relatively short, perhaps indicating lack of need to move long distances in the urban environment. We conclude that urban and adjacent rural squirrels were part of the same larger population with gene flow in and out from the city. Yet, urbanization was related to increased genetic differentiation, indicating different spatial genetic structure in urban and rural populations.     

The photo‐survey research method: capturing life in the city

Recent promotion of city centre living within UK policy has led to a commensurate interest in city centre conditions and the opinions and experiences of the people who live there. An apposite, straightforward method to capture city centre residents' experiences and views is described in this article. We successfully combined a novel, under‐utilized visual technique (self‐directed photography) with qualitative methods (log‐sheets and interviews) in the form of a ‘photo‐survey’. A background to visual methodologies is presented in this article, alongside a critique of using the photo‐survey with 84 city centre residents to investigate environmental conditions and perceptions within three of the UK's major cities. The method provided a rich, detailed set of data, but also brought a number of noticeable benefits to the data collection process. The photo‐survey not only effectively captured and documented life in the city but also acted as an ‘agent for change’, evoking thoughts and feelings which ultimately encouraged participants to reflect on their existing perceptions and urban experiences. The study also raises some important considerations for future work undertaken with this method and with using photographs as a set of data, and proposes techniques for minimising potential problems.     

The urban psychology of Stanley Milgram

Abstract

Although his obedience research will always remain Stanley Milgram's most important work, his involvement with the social psychology of the city occupied a much larger portion of his professional career. This article traces the evolution and intensification of Milgram's interest in cities, starting with his pre-professional years, through his early research at Harvard, culminating in his multifaceted engagement with urban psychology at the Graduate Center of CUNY. There, as head of the social psychology program, he was able to infuse it with an urban emphasis. He created and taught a variety of courses on urban psychology and got his students involved in a potpourri of experiments comparing behavior in cities and towns. Those experiments provided much of the substance for Milgram's seminal article in Science, “The experience of living in cities,” in which he also introduced the theoretical concept of stimulus overload to help account for the city-small town differences he and his students found. This article evaluates the overload concept and concludes with Milgram's overarching legacy for the study of city life.     

Chinese youth performing identities and navigating belonging online

This paper examines the experiences of belonging of young Chinese internet users through an analysis of their online identity practices. Drawing on a qualitative research project about online citizenship practices of 31 young Chinese citizens from mainland China, I explore their experiences of belonging on two online platforms (Weibo and WeChat) and the identities formed and sustained through these experiences. The results show that young people experience different senses of belonging in different social media spaces. Their strategies in navigating these experiences are informed by (a) their perceptions of online spaces as private or public, and (b) using online identity performance as a supplement to or escape from identities in physical life. I argue that young Chinese internet users experience different senses of belonging by flexibly appropriating the affordances of social media platforms for communication and networking; these senses of belonging play a key role in forming and sustaining their identities, and are crucial for their wellbeing.     

Focus groups identify optimum urban nature in four Australian and New Zealand cities

Urban residents and nature have often beneficial interactions, but there can also be conflict. We investigated the relationship between human wellbeing and nature in the two most-populous cities of both Australia and New Zealand. An online survey measured nature value orientations, and a selection of respondents who agreed to be contacted again were chosen based on their nature value orientation to invite to a focus group. This ensured that focus group participants represented a continuum of value orientations. Regardless of their nature value orientation, focus group participants were clear about needing nature in their city. They expressed strong opinions about how nature should be incorporated into the urban matrix to improve their lives. All focus groups described the integrated design of urban and natural elements when discussing positive experiences of nature in cities and had persistent concerns about how natural spaces are managed. While participants in different cities did discuss different landscape attributes and nature-related challenges, such as flooding, these differences did not affect the overall desire for nature in cities. We argue that urban design has the potential to ensure that residents engage with and experience nature in cities, and that design practices and policies could support the successful human-nature integration. Further research in other locations would determine how this work scales to either smaller towns and developed areas with smaller populations, or to mega-cities and other countries around the world.

     

推绿色教育促城市绿色发展

教育对绿色城市建设和城市的可持续发展具有重要促进作用,国际上一些国家和城市已较早地开始了以推行绿色教育来促进城市绿色发展的进程,取得了较好的效果。本文概述了绿色教育理念的形成和内涵,重点总结了国际上一些国家和城市在发展绿色教育中所积累的宝贵经验,并对中国城市绿色教育发展的概况和问题进行了简要分析,在此基础上提出了国际绿色教育经验对中国城市可持续发展的启示。     

The sensorium at work: the sensory phenomenology of the working body

The sociology of the body and the sociology of work and occupations have both neglected to some extent the study of the 'working body' in paid employment, particularly with regard to empirical research into the sensory aspects of working practices. This gap is perhaps surprising given how strongly the sensory dimension features in much of working life. This article is very much a first step in calling for a more phenomenological, embodied and 'fleshy' perspective on the body in employment, and examines some of the theoretical and conceptual resources available to researchers wishing to focus on the lived working-body experiences of the sensorium. We also consider some possible representational forms for a more evocative, phenomenologically-inspired portrayal of sensory, lived-working-body experiences, and offer suggestions for future avenues of research.     

No city for migrant women: construction workers’ experiences of exclusion from urban governance and discrimination in labour markets in Ahmedabad

ABSTRACT

Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, and a reflection of India’s story of exclusionary economic growth. This article focuses on research carried out with women construction workers with the help of a migrant construction workers’ union in Ahmedabad. It describes the method used by women members of the union to make visible their experiences as migrants in the city – with men, local authorities, and employers – to highlight the additional burdens that they bear due to a negligent state and industry, advocate for better working and living conditions, and raise consciousness of gender inequalities that need to be integrated into the demands of the workers’ union.     

A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON RACIAL RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION:

This article takes a first step to compare the residential segregation of blacks and Asians from whites in American and Canadian cities. The analysis is based on census data from 404 American and 41 Canadian cities. African Americans in the United States experience a higher level of residential segregation than Asians in U.S. cities. On the other hand, blacks in Canada experience the same low level of segregation as Asians. To explain the different experiences of blacks in the United States and Canada, a multivariate model is proposed and tested. The results reveal several patterns. First, African Americans are consistently obstructed much more than Asian Americans by their proportion in the city. In contrast blacks in Canada are not. Second, the residential segregation patterns of African Americans are affected strongly by the labor market and strucutral changes of the economy in the city. However, the structural change of the economy in the city has a very weak effect on the level of residential segregation of Asian Americans, black Canadians, and Asian Canadians.     

Climate riskscapes in world port cities: situating urban‐cosmopolitan risk communities via Ulrich Beck's comparative tactics

Building on empirical research into translocal connections among world port cities in addressing shared challenges of climate risk mitigation and adaptation, in this article I review two widespread tendencies in urban studies – methodological city‐ism and methodological globalism respectively – as a springboard for articulating a methodologically cosmopolitan alternative. This alternative, I argue, involves epistemological issues of how to interrogate ‘the urban’ as assemblages that constitutively draw together the near and the faraway, as well as more practical issues of mobile, multisited, and comparative urban research methods. Empirically, I compare the ways in which urban actors stage global climate risks on the waterfronts of four world cities – Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Yokohama and Copenhagen – to argue that such a comparative tactic of variable ‘riskscapes’ helps situate Ulrich Beck's notion of urban cosmopolitan risk communities more thoroughly into urban studies. In such ways, I suggest, Beck's methodological cosmopolitanism is germane to studying ongoing and far ranging transformation in world political geography, in which transurban networks, communities, and governance arrangements come to complement nation‐state centred institutions. Such conclusions must be tempered, however, by the deployment of Beck's equally strong impetus towards comparative attention to the varieties of second modernity; and doing so, I conclude, aligns well with ongoing transformations in urban studies itself.     

Sniffing the city: issues of sousveillance in inner city London

This article reflects on a series of workshops run by the art/media/hacktivist collective Deptford.TV in collaboration with the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR), Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009–2010 and in 2012. The aim of the workshops was to create short films using hacked CCTV material. Participants, equipped with digital video signal receivers, were led through the city by incoming surveillance camera signals. Receivers cached surveillance camera signals making a range of city spaces visible. The material was then stored on a shared video platform and reshuffled in personal narratives and montages of the city. Hackers and media artists call it ‘sousveillance’ and frame it as a critique of the ‘panopticon society’. I argue that this practice reveals an unusually realistic portrait of inner city London and its working-class population at their everyday work. My contention is that the absence of such activities in narratives of gentrification and the presumed end of manual work make this portrait particularly valuable. The article evaluates this emerging and ethically controversial practice of video recording, asking to what extent it can become a useful tool for urban scholars, visual sociologists and media artists. In conclusion, I argue that the exercise provides moments of self-discovery for the urban stroller, who – while practicing a sort of heroic immersion in inner city London – paradoxically becomes a watcher of scenes from life fabricated at a ‘safe’ distance; a middle way between urban ethnographer and flâneur.     

Finding the city in sociology: Broadening and deepening the geographic scope of the urban and inequality literatures

Cities have long been the object of fascination within sociology. Key portions of sociological literatures on inequality and globalization, for instance, have focused on urban spaces as essential sites for the production and reproduction of social life, and urban sociology itself is one of the oldest fields in the discipline. For all of this prominence, however, locating the city itself in these literatures can be difficult. Much of our understanding of urban life and urban social problems is derived from a relatively small number of American cities. Moreover, cities are often relegated to a supporting role as a research site rather than an institution worthy of interrogation. This article reviews the path that has brought a specific set of cities to the fore of American sociological analyses. In response, broadening literatures to cities in the literal and figurative American South and producing deeper literatures of specific cities can give sociology the opportunity to produce more representative and contextually rich analyses of inequalities, urban social life, and urban form. The literature on St. Louis, Missouri is presented as an example of what such a broader and deeper literature could encompass.     

“And then AIDS came along”: A life course turning point and sub-cohorts of older gay men

Research on life course turning points focuses on heterosexuals. Scholars acknowledge that the early AIDS epidemic was a period of crisis for current older gay men, and that this period has shaped and will likely continue to impact their lives. However, few studies have considered the range of early AIDS-related experiences within this group. In this article, I use a life course perspective and in-depth interviews with 40 gay men (60+) in Atlanta to address the following questions: (1) How did current older gay men's experiences vary during the AIDS years? (2) What social factors shaped this variation? I identified three AIDS-related sub-cohorts, which were defined by how participants' social and spatial relationships to urban gay communities influenced their experiences of personal loss, community loss, personal support, and community support between 1981 and 1996. The results suggest that scholars and service providers interested in how early life experiences impact later life should consider the divergent early AIDS-related experiences within the group “older gay men.”     

“宜居之城”建设中水资源的开发与利用研究——以重庆为例

“宜居之城”理念,既是城市化和后城市化时代城市转型升级的必然产物,也是提升城市核心竞争力的重要途径。实践证明,宜居城市的打造需要多方面的努力,而且必须依赖于城市自身的各种资源,其中水资源的作用不可小觑。本文以重庆为例,分析和探讨了江河水资源在构建“宜居之城”中的作用,并针对存在的问题提出了建议。