BES Book of the Year, 2014-2015: Gottdiener and Hutchinson, The New Urban Sociology

The previous Book of the Year focused on bio-ecological theory.  Because BES is a social-ecological research and education endeavor, the Project Management Committee agreed that this year our book should focus on social theory.  An ideal book to help all of us in the project who are not social scientsts is Mark Gottdiener and Ray Hutchinson's book, The New Urban Sociology, 4^th Edition, published in 2010.  Some of us have profited by reading earlier editions of this book, which combines social processes and social heterogeneity thinking.  Hence, it is an excellent social mirror for our originally biological and geophysical spatial approach summarized by patch dynamics and the nested watershed concept.  They label their approach, “socio-spatial,” but those of you in the social sciences should not jump to the conclusion that this book is a resurrection of the discredited aspects of the Chicago School, or that it is an exercise in environmental determinism. 

Because BES is a social-ecological research and education project, the Project Management Committee agreed that this year should focus on social theory.

The book is written as a text book and therefore will be an accessible (but not condescending) introduction for biophysical scientists and educators in BES.  Hopefully, it will also provide fodder for our social science members to weigh in with their own insights and experience on the concepts, cases, and controversies the book discusses. 

The book comprises 14 Chapters that address the foundational theories in urban sociology and the contemporary issues and controversies about the topic.  The chapter titles are as follows:

1. The New Urban Sociology.  Including topics such as urban regions, megacities, and articulation of the socio-spatial approach.

2. The Origins of Urban Life.  The long history of urbanization through capitalist industrialization.

3. The Rise of Urban Sociology.  Here are the field’s founding giants, whose  theories continue to echo in current controversies and applications: Simmel, Wirth, the Chicago School and the rise of human ecology.

4. Contemporary Urban Sociology.  Theories and applications of political ecology, class conflict, capital accumulation, real estate, and urban culture.

5. Urbanization in the United States.  Our national urban history, through the rise of the post-war metropolis.

6. Suburbanization, Globalization, and the Emergence of the Urban Region.  This chapter includes deindustrialization, uneven development, suburbs and beyond, multi-nucleated regions.

7. People and Lifestyles in the Metropolis: Urban and Suburban Culture.  Class differentiation and space, gender, revitalization, and migration are topics.

8. Minority Settlement Patterns, Neighborhoods, and Communities.  Neighborhood dynamics, new forms of community, and interaction without proximity.

9. Metropolitan Problems: Racism, Poverty, Crime, Housing, and Fiscal Crisis.  The socio-spatial approach to social problems, income inequality, affordable housing, and service problems are additional topics beyond those in the subtitle of the chapter.

10. Urbanization in the Developed Nations.  This chapter compares and contrasts urban processes in Western and Eastern Europe and Japan vis a vis the US.

11. Globalization and Urbanization in the Developing World.  Changing perspectives on urbanization, the demographic transition, primate cities, shantytowns, and informal economies are discussed here.

12. Metropolitan Planning and Environmental Issues.  Sprawl, the sociology of land use planning, trends in planning are covered.

13. Metropolitan Social Policy.  Topics include the “tragedy of the commons,” uneven development, privitism, and social justice.

14. The Future of Urban Sociology.  Understanding the new urban world features here.

These topics are all helpful in understanding the social side of the Baltimore equation, as well as for understanding the national and international context in which Baltimore fits.  The changing nature of the global network of urban areas is a crucial ingredient in this understanding.

Each chapter ends with a list of key concepts, important names, and discussion questions.

The book is published in paperback by Westview Press.  The authors chose this publisher to be able to produce a book that was more affordable than the average university textbook.  You can order it from your local bookstore, or your favorite online source.  Used ones go for the mid 20 USD, and new for a little less than 50 USD.  It is also available as an e-book from some sources.  Those of you at colleges and universities might request that your library obtain a copy and put it on reserve.  The OCLC website – worldcat.org – can tell you whether local libraries have the book.

We will be planning a series of webinars to discuss various chapters or topics in the book.  If you want to be alerted to these, contact the BES Project Facilitator, Holly Beyar at beyarh at caryinstitute dot org.

Just One Book a Year -- That's All We Ask.

BES is a far flung, disciplinarily diverse project.  We do many things to apply centripetal force to a situation that seems naturally to be dissipative.  One centering activity is to identify a “book of the year.”  In the past, we have had two such books.  They were chosen to provide useful and interesting background on Baltimore, in the case of Sherry Olson’s Baltimore: The Building of an American City (1997), and to highlight the contribution of one of our own to urban studies, in the case of Austin Troy’s The Very Hungry City.  This year’s BES Book of the Year has a different purpose.

The edited volume by Samuel Scheiner and Michael WilligThe Theory of Ecology has been chosen to help the BES community use ecological theory better.  This goal emerges from the Mid-Term Review conducted by an external visiting committee in October, 2013.  The critique emerging from that review made clear that as a project, we need to be able to better articulate the theories that we use, to tie them together more effectively, and to link broad theories more clearly to the specific research activities which we pursue.

(2011) on

The first BES Webinar, to be held on Tuesday 4 March,

will briefly present the high points of one of the chapters in this book, and provide the opportunity for us to discuss the insights and relevance of the chapter to the structure and integration of BES research.  The purpose of this session is to learn about the nature and structure of ecological theory.   It will be more useful for BES if we treat this as an opportunity to absorb, rather than attempt to critique, a way to understand and use theory.

The main reading and the background texts all come from Scheiner and Willig’s book.  I hope that members of BES will get their own copies of this book, or will request that their institutional libraries obtain it.  If there are many members of BES at an institution, it might be a good idea to put the book on reserve.  The book is available in paper and electronic versions from “the usual suspects.”  Here are the readings for 4 March:

Main Reading:

Kolasa, J. 2011.  Theory makes ecology evolve.  Chapter 2, pp 21-49, in S.M. Scheiner and M.R. Willig, editors.  The Theory of Ecology.  University of Chicago Press, Chicago.  This chapter puts the hierarchical approach to theory to work, and gives examples of theory as an evolving pursuit throughout the history of ecology.  It clarifies the “jobs” that theory performs in science, and shows the broadest way to conceive of theory and its relationships with data and generalization.  Putting the insights of this chapter to work in BES should help clarify our own theoretical structures and the relationships to specific research activities.

Background Readings:

Scheiner, S.M. and M.R. Willig.  2011.  A general theory of ecology.  Chapter 1, pp 3-18, in S.M. Scheiner and M.R. Willig, editors.  The Theory of Ecology.  University of Chicago Press, Chicago.  This chapter emphasizes the components of theory, the hierarchical structure of theory (general, constitutive, model), and articulates the deepest and most general propositions underwriting the science of ecology.

Collins, J.P. 2011.  Foreword, pp ix-x, in S.M. Scheiner and M.R. Willig, editors.  The Theory of Ecology.  University of Chicago Press, Chicago.   By one of contemporary biology’s most profound thinkers.  A former Director of NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology, and an author of an important paper on contemporary urban ecology in the US at its birth. This introductory overview puts ecological theory in a very broad context.

This may seem like a lot to read.  But BES is a large and complex project.  We only identify one book each year as a focus of learning and discussion among all members of the BES community.  We hope that’s not too much to ask.  

Join the Webinar

Please join us via Go-To-Meeting at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday 4 March to discuss these three selections from our Book of the Year.  Go here at that time to join the meeting: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/882708421  The meeting will be recorded and archived for those who cannot join live. Go To Meeting will load an app to permit you to contact the meeting using your computer mic and speakers (or better, headset).  If you want to join by phone, that option will also be presented.

RSVP

Please RSVP, either for acceptance or regrets to Holly Beyar, BES Project Facilitator at this email: beyarh at caryinstitute dot org.  Important background information for the webinar and its archive will be circulated to those who RSVP either way.

Don’t miss this.

The BES Year of Theory

Important Needs for Theory

Two things are clear about theory in BES.  First, it is an extraordinarily important and well recognized tool for integration and motivation in our long-term social-ecological research and education activities.  Theory features prominently in the proposal for BES III, and we are actively exploring three important theoretical lenses as ways to view and link our long-term  research, including modeling and comparative studies.  However, it is equally clear that we can do a much better job of explaining our theories to others, and using them to integrate among our various data streams and conceptual areas.

Our Strategy for Improving Use of Theory

In order to help us clarify and improve the use of theory in BES, 2014 will be the BES Year of Theory.  This will involve several linked and reinforcing activities:

• The BES Book of the Year will be Scheiner and Willig's The Theory of Ecology, published by the University of Chicago Press.
• We will conduct web-based seminars to examine several chapters in Scheiner and Willig's book, and links with social theory.
• Our Quarterly Project Meetings will focus on the three theories we have chosen as motivating and integrative tools, as well as on  research opportunities that cross disciplines and theories.
• We will seek a plenary speaker for our 2014 Annual Meeting who can address theory in a way suitable to a multi-disciplinary audience.
• We will conduct multi-disciplinary "walk-abouts" or field trips in Baltimore to promote shared understandings of place, research opportunities, and educational potential of our theoretical structure.

The Project Management Committee will explore other strategies for meeting the goals of clarifying and better using theory.  Please share your thoughts with me or with other members of that committee so that we have the best menu of choices available.

The BES Book of the Year.

In order to facilitate our use of theory as an integrative tool in our long-term social ecological research, an important book on The Theory of Ecology, edited by Samuel M. Scheiner and Michael R. Willig has been chosen as the 2013-2014 Baltimore Ecosystem Study Book Of The Year.  Published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011, the book’s 404 pages contain 15 chapters.

The strategy of the book is to lay out a general, very fundamental theory of ecology in Chapter 1, with the bulk of the book examining the more specific theories that contribute to the general theory.  Although all chapters will help us understand how to better articulate and employ theory in our empirical, long-term research, of particular interest in BES are the chapters on the metacommunity (by Leibold), on succession (by Pickett, Meiners, and Cadenasso), on ecosystems (by Burke and Lauenroth), on global change (Peters, Bestelmeyer, and Knapp), and gradients (by Fox, Scheiner, and Willig). 

In addition, the book includes two chapters by philosophically trained authors, Jurek Kolasa and Jay Odenbaugh. The editors conclude the book with a synthesis statement  on the state of theory in ecology.

In order to stimulate all members of our diverse and dispersed community to delve into this book, and to apply its insights in our own research and synthesis, we will hold web-based seminars using portals such as Google Hangouts or Go-To-Meeting.  We will also address social theory in some of our webinars.  Theory is a crucial tool that we can use to promote clarity and integration in our project. 

I strongly encourage all members of BES to read deeply in this book.

Bibliography

Publication details on the Scheiner and Willig volume can be found here: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo11161054.html  The book is available in paper or e-book editions.  (Well, hardcover too, of course.)

As background, you will not be surprised that I recommend the following:

Pickett, S. T. A., J. Kolasa, and C. G. Jones. 2007. Ecological understanding: the nature of theory and the theory of nature, 2nd edition. Springer, New York.  http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780125545228

BES Book of the Year -- Baltimore: The Building of an American City

We have started a new tradition at BES.  A book of the year is a good way to focus on some important publication relevant to everyone in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study.  We start this tradition with a classic and fundamental book about the history and development of Baltimore: Professor Sherry H. Olson’s Baltimore: The Building of an American City.  Although first published in 1980, and updated in 1997, it remains a key intellectual resource on Baltimore.  Prof. Olson was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University at the time the book was first written.  She has since moved to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

By highlighting this book, we hope that all members of the BES community will read this important work.  Some of course, will be returning to it as a refresher.  The book will surely repay their effort, given the plethora of details and explanations of the trajectory of change in Baltimore.  Those who are new to Prof. Olson’s book are in for a treat, because it is not only comprehensive, but engagingly written.

Our spotlight on this book will also shine on Prof. Olson herself, as she will give the keynote presentation at our Annual Meeting at the Cylburn Arboretum on 24 October, 2012.  Entitled "The Growth Machine: Its Environmental Legacy," this talk will give a chance for her to bring us up to date on her research and scholarship.  All members of the BES community are invited to delve into the book, and to hear Prof. Olson at our Annual Meeting.

See her web page for more on her research interests and publications: http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/faculty/olson/