Abstract
The questions provoked by urbanisation — individualism, status definition, ethnicity, property capital and state intervention — challenge the very terms in which Marxism is cast. Over the past generation social theory has had to take account of changing alignments in the labour force, state planning and, as well, urbanisation. Even in ‘urbanised’ societies urbanisation remains a live issue. Despite legal and institutional constraints on labour mobility and low rates of economic growth, urban migration continues and rural society continues to be incorporated into the urban net. And, further, economic restructuring enforces the recategorisation and reshaping of urban places. Some of the more intractable political issues relate to this experience of urbanisation. In Britain, the peripheralisation of the inner cities with continued ‘deurbanisation’ is most conspicuous; in France, the urban question centred on the explosive growth of French towns and the challenge this presented to state planning.
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Notes and References
J. Lojkine, ‘Contributions to a Marxist Theory of Capitalist Development’ in C. Pickvance, Urban Sociology: Critical Essays, London, Methuen, 1976, p. 119.
The key publications are H. Lefebvre, La revolution urbaine, Gallimard, Paris, 1970
H. Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, London, Sphere Books, 1970
R. Williams The Country and the City, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973
M. Castells, La question urbaine, Paris, Maspero, 1973
J. Lojkine, Le Marxisme, l’etat et la question urbaine, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1977
and D. Harvey, The Limits to Capital, Oxford, Blackwell, 1982.
J. and B Hammond, The Town Labourer ( 1917 ), London, Longman, 1978.
U. Hannerz, Exploring the City, New York, Columbia Press, 1980.
Research Committee for the Sociology of Urban and Regional Development, International Sociological Association, Budapest, 1972, quoted by M. Harloe, Introduction to Captive Cities, London, John Wiley, 1977, p. 2.
J. Walton, book review, International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, 1983, vol. 7, p. 298.
For example, the comments by R. Moore: ‘it would be a mistake to see the state as monolithic and omnicompetent’, in ‘Urban development on the periphery of industrialised societies’, in M. Harloe (ed.), New Perspectives in Urban Change and Conflict London, Heinemann, 1981, p. 153.
M. Castells, The Urban Question, London, Edward Arnold, 1977, p. 92.
H. Lefebvre, The Explosion, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1969, p. 137.
H. Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World, London, Allen Lane, 1972, p. 57.
Notably R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1957
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See R. Glass, ‘Verbal Pollution’, New Society, vol. 41, 1977, pp. 667–9
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Criticisms of the ecological approach, and Wirth’s theory of urbanism, had been developed by E Manheim, ‘Theoretical Prospects of Urban Sociology in an Urbanised Society’, American Journal of Sociology vol. XLVI, 1960
H. Gans, ‘Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life’ in A. Rose, Human Behaviour and Social Processes, London, Routledge, 1962
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R. Pahl, Whose City?, London, Longmans, 1969 and J. Rex and R. Moore, Race, Community and Conflict, London, Oxford University Press 1967.
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Collective consumption is most straightforwardly defined as ‘state involvement in the provision of consumption facilities’: C. Pickvance, The state and collective consumption, Milton Keynes, Open University, 1982, p. 10.
M. Castells, ‘Towards a political urban sociology’ in M. Harloe (ed.), Captive Cities, London, John Wiley 1977, p. 64.
Notably P. Dunleavy, Urban Political Analysis: the Politics of Collective Consumption London, Macmillan, 1980
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C. Pickvance, book review, Sociology, vol. 14, 1980, p. 159.
M. Castells, Luttes urbaines et pouvoir politique, Paris, Maspero, 1971, p. 11.
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As the Director of Housing interviewed by Dunleavy on the outcome of protest about rehousing into Ronan Point type blocks after the explosion commented: ‘You know there’s a skill in dealing with people that achieved that result’, P. Dunleavy, The Politics of Mass Housing in Britain 1945–75, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, p. 254.
C. Pickvance, book review, Sociological Review 1978, p. 175.
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In particular, J. Lambert et al., Housing Policy and the State, London, Macmillan, 1978.
P. Saunders, ‘Towards a Non-Spatial Urban Sociology’, University of Sussex, Urban and Regional Studies Working Paper, no. 21, 1980, p. ii.
J. Gyford, ‘The New Urban Left: a Local Road to Socialism’, New Society, 21 April 1983, pp. 91–3.
There is of course a considerable difference in British and French urban history in this respect. In 1946 barely half the French population was enumerated as being urban; by 1975 72.9% were resident in ‘unités urbaines’, i.e. built-up areas. The population of French towns and cities swelled by 16 million in that period, leaving only 10% working or living on farm holdings. I. Scargill, Urban France, London, Croom Helm, 1983.
P. Dunleavy, The Scope of Urban Studies in Social Science, Milton Keynes, Open University, 1981, p. 54.
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P. Abrams, ‘Towns and Economic Growth’ in P. Abrams (ed.), Towns in Societies Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 9–34
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P. Saunders, ‘Beyond Housing Classes: the Sociological Significance of Private Property Rights in Means of Consumption’, University of Sussex, Urban and Regional Studies Working Paper, no. 33, 1982.
See J. Rex and R. Moore, op. cit.; J. Rex, Race, Colonialism and the City, London, Routledge, 1973
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This differentiation between types of place is accepted in historical reconstruction. See in particular A. Briggs, Victorian Cities, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969
J. Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1974
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U Hannerz, Exploring the City, New York, Columbia Press, 1980, p. 100.
Compare the interviews reported by P. Harrison, Inside the Inner City, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1983, with those reported by J. Seabrook, op. cit.
E.J. Hobsbawm, Revolutionaries, London, Quartet Books, 1977, p. 220.
The community activities listed in the local papers were sampled: those recorded for Berkeley included ‘cross-cultural couples meeting, black women, black co-eds, middle-years groups, lesbian parents, transvestites/transsexuals rap, round dancing, and many more’. Those for a small ‘wine country town’ included ‘two bridge clubs, model railroaders, 5 branch meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2 square dances, senior citizens group etc’, C.S. Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends, University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 198.
Notable reviews include R. Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1977;
L. Lofland, A World of Strangers, New York, Basic Books, 1973;
J Hannerz, Exploring the City, New York, Columbia Press, 1980. See also the Urban Affairs Quarterly and Urban Life and Culture.
R. Friedland, Power and Crisis in the City, London, Macmillan, 1982.
D. Harvey, ‘Class-monopoly rent, finance capital and the urban revolution’, Regional Studies, vol. 8, 1974, p. 240.
H. Richardson, Urban Economics, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971, p. 15.
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See in particular A.P. Cohen, Belonging, Manchester University Press, 1982
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F. Inglis, ‘Nation and Community: a Landscape and Its Morality’, Sociological Review, vol. 25, 1977, pp. 489–513.
R. Williams, The Country and the City, op. cit. For a discussion see R. Mellor, Images of the City, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1981.
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Mellor, R. (1985). Marxism and the Urban Question. In: Shaw, M. (eds) Marxist Sociology Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17912-1_2
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