Interaction, Indifference, Injustice: Elements of a Normative Theory of Urban Solidarity

Abstract

While popular conceptions of urban living proclaim the city as a cold and heartless place, this chapter demonstrates that the complex nexus of orientations and interactions sustaining urban anonymity rests upon the tension between the promise of individual freedom and the threat of social disintegration that the city poses. Drawing on Goffman and Simmel, I offer a new concept, ‘non-mutual indifference,’ as a way of understanding the advancement and ubiquity of ‘softer’ forms of inequality in contemporary cities and then offer examples by drawing briefly on interviews conducted in a Toronto neighbourhood characterized by increased structural inequality. The chapter concludes by asserting that urban social solidarity must rest on a principle of what I call ‘minimal mutual recognition’ as a baseline from which to move towards the achievement of social justice.

This chapter benefitted from audience feedback at the University of Guelph, University of Calgary, York University, St. Francis Xavier University, Acadia University, and at meetings of the Canadian Sociological Association and the American Sociological Association, where various elements of the argument were presented. I also benefitted from discussion of drafts with graduate students in my theory seminars at Acadia University and the University of Guelph. Special thanks to Marcia Oliver and Fuyuki Kurasawa for their close readings and feedback, and to members of Canadian Network for Critical Sociology (CNCS) for their input.