Search results for ""Author Michael Peter Smith""

Transnational Urbanism is a profound work of theoretical synthesis by internationally renowned urban theorist Michael Peter Smith. Moving deftly across disciplines and discursive terrains, Smith forges original and stimulating connections between urban studies and the emerging field of transnational studies. With original and extraordinary insight, he addresses the central question of how and why immigrants, refugees, political activists, and institutions locate and maintain social relations in light of transnational urbanism. Brings a concrete, historically informed discussion of globalization and transnationalism applied to urban studies. Offers a blueprint for reconstructing urban theory itself . Forges stimulating connections between the field of urban studies and the emerging field of transnational studies .

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The literature on modernist and postmodernist urban development is abundant, yet few researchers have taken up the challenge of studying the areas hi which marginalized people live as sources of resistance to continued modernization. In Marginal Spaces, Michael Smith has assembled case studies combining structural and historical analyses of the moves of powerful social interests to dominate social space, and the tactics and strategies various marginalized social groups employ to reclaim dominated space for their own use. The marginal spaces embodied in the title of this fifth volume of the Comparative Urban and Community Research series include five sites of domination and resistance. A squatters' movement in Ann Arbor, Michigan, resists the adverse consequences of four decades of urban development. A homeless encampment in Chicago engages hi "guerilla architecture" and other moves designed to reconstitute prevailing social constructions of the problem of "homelessness." An antigentrification movement hi the East Village of New York engages hi an ongoing struggle to resist efforts by developers to market their neighborhood as space for luxury condominium development. There is a Public Housing Council organized by African American women hi New Orleans that is resisting both the material regulation of their daily lives and the dominant social construction of public housing as a racially gendered space suitable only for "dependent" women and children of color. Finally, there is a subordinate labor market niche hi California agriculture where indigenous Mixtec peasants from Oaxaca are displacing the more traditional mestizo farm workers, but who are also politically organizing as a transnational grassroots movement, pursuing a binational strategy to alleviate then- economic, political, and cultural marginality. Contributions and contributors include: "House People, Not Cars!" by Corey Dolgon, Michael Kline, and Laura Dresser; "Tranquillity City" by Tahnadge Wright; "Private Redevelopment and the Changing Forms of Displacement hi the East Village of New York" by Christopher Mele; "Resisting Racially Gendered Space" by Alma Young and Jyaphia Christos-Rodgers; and "Mixtecs and Mestizos hi California Agriculture" by Carol Zabin. This volume will be of interest to urban planners, sociologists, and political scientists, especially those with strong interests hi local ethnography and concrete policy.

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Michael Peter Smith and Matt Bakker spent five years carrying out ethnographic field research in multiple communities in the Mexican states of Zacatecas and Guanajuato and various cities in California, particularly metropolitan Los Angeles. Combining the information they gathered there with political-economic and institutional analysis, the five extended case studies in Citizenship across Borders offer a new way of looking at the emergent dynamics of transnational community development and electoral politics on both sides of the border. Smith and Bakker highlight the continuing significance of territorial identifications and state policies—particularly those of the sending state—in cultivating and sustaining transnational connections and practices. In so doing, they contextualize and make sense of the complex interplay of identity and loyalty in the lives of transnational migrant activists. In contrast to high-profile warnings of the dangers to national cultures and political institutions brought about by long-distance nationalism and dual citizenship, Citizenship across Borders demonstrates that, far from undermining loyalty and diminishing engagement in U.S. political life, the practice of dual citizenship by Mexican migrants actually provides a sense of empowerment that fosters migrants' active civic engagement in American as well as Mexican politics.

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The world of modern capitalism is a global network both of corporations and of cities - 'world command cities' such as New York, London and Tokyo; 'specialized command cities' which concentrate on particular industries, such as Detroit; 'state command cities' such as Washington and Brasilia; and so on. These cities, linked by an organizational web of transnational corporations, are the pins holding the capitalist world economy together in the new international division of labour. In The Capitalist City a group of eminent scholars analyzes the intricate relationships among cities, state policies and urban politics at a time of economic restructuring at global, national and local levels to provide an original and timely contribution to one of the most important areas of political and social science.

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