Urban Bonds

by Blokland, Talja; Mitzman, Lee K.

• ISBN13: 9780745628011
• ISBN10: 074562801X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-12
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

What is the role of the neighbourhood in our understanding of community and how has this role changed over the last century? Talja Blokland seeks to answer this question in this careful ethnographic study of the changing nature of social relationships and urban communities. This outstanding and thoughtful book interweaves two rather different but parallel lines of inquiry: a detailed study of the history and current social life of an inner city neighbourhood in Rotterdam, and a general reflection on the changing character of social ties in urban areas. The book is organized around broad conceptual issues in a way that presents the empirical material within a framework that is relevant for teaching purposes. Blokland addresses key issues of community and identity and draws on a wide range of literature in urban sociology. Urban Bonds is set to become a classic in its field and will be widely used in courses on urban sociology, human geography, and ethnicity.

Author Biography

Talja Blokland is a Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences and based at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
1 Disintegration and the 'Demise of Community'	1	(18)
1.1 Community, residential location and disadvantage	1	(6)
1.2 The Siamese twins of neighbourhood and community in the debate	7	(4)
1.3 Structure of this book and research perspective	11	(8)
2 Hillesluis as a Natural Area? Social Ecology and Neighbourhood Use	19	(27)
2.1 Social ecology and the Chicago School	19	(2)
2.2 The origins of Hillesluis: a heterogeneous working-class district	21	(7)
2.3 Hillesluis today: a heterogeneous district of disadvantage	28	(9)
2.4 Categories, role repertoires and neighbourhood use	37	(1)
2.5 Illustrating neighbourhood use: Hillesluis in categories	38	(6)
2.6 Conclusions: a social-ecological perspective on Hillesluis	44	(2)
3 Personal Networks as Communities	46	(15)
3.1 Barry Wellman's analysis: community as a personal network	46	(2)
3.2 Illustrating the networks: cases from Hillesluis	48	(10)
3.3 A personal network does not constitute community: criticism	58	(3)
4 Social Identifications and a Grid of Social Relations	61	(27)
4.1 Community in everyday usage	61	(1)
4.2 Categorization and social identification	62	(2)
4.3 A grid of social relations	64	(16)
4.4 At the intersection of types of social relations: the diversity of neighbour relations	80	(5)
4.5 Summary: social relations and community	85	(3)
5 Familiarity and Transactions: Privatization I	88	(37)
5.1 Applying Weber's rationality thesis	88	(5)
5.2 Neighbourhood use and visibility in Hillesluis, circa 1925-1955	93	(4)
5.3 From familiarity to mutual assistance: neighbourliness in times of need, 1940-1945	97	(2)
5.4 Familiarity as a context for social distinctions	99	(10)
5.5 The influence of social changes on neighbourhood use	109	(5)
5.6 Neighbour relations as changing transactions	114	(8)
5.7 Conclusion: a Weberian perspective on privatization of community	122	(3)
6 Institutions and Attachments: Privatization II	125	(28)
6.1 Durkheim's theory of social cohesion in practice	125	(2)
6.2 Religion and class as binding fields	127	(19)
6.3 The end of the old binding fields	146	(5)
6.4 Individualization and privatized communities	151	(2)
7 Contemporary Communities and the Importance of Location	153	(14)
7.1 Community based on bonds	153	(1)
7.2 Nobody else's business: current morality and community	154	(2)
7.3 How do social identifications currently transpire?	156	(1)
7.4 The role of neighbourhood in communities today	157	(8)
7.5 Two unresolved issues	165	(2)
8 Ethnicity as a Dividing Field	167	(24)
8.1 Binding and dividing	167	(1)
8.2 Indifference	168	(1)
8.3 Contact and rapprochement: interethnic attachments	169	(7)
8.4 Ethnicity as a dividing field in the struggle for location	176	(7)
8.5 Ethnicity as a dividing field in non-realistic conflicts	183	(5)
8.6 The neighbourhood of contradictions: ethnicity, imagined communities and location	188	(3)
9 The Neighbourhood in the Imperfect Past	191	(17)
9.1 Nostalgia and collective memory	191	(1)
9.2 The remembered neighbourhood: who remembers what and how?	192	(6)
9.3 Shared nostalgia: collective memory and imagined communities	198	(4)
9.4 The lost community: isolation and nostalgia	202	(3)
9.5 Conclusions: nostalgia, collective memory and location	205	(3)
10 Urban Bonds: Conclusions	208	(9)
10.1 Introduction	208	(1)
10.2 Ties do not constitute community: a theory of social relations	208	(3)
10.3 Examining community across the boundaries of paradigms	211	(2)
10.4 Imagined communities in a Rotterdam neighbourhood: urban bonds	213	(4)
Annex: Research Approach	217	(2)
Notes	219	(6)
References	225	(14)
Index	239