History and Social Thought

Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Angotti, Thomas. Metropolis 2000: Planning, Poverty and Politics. Development and Underdevelopment. Eds. Ray Bromley and Gavin Kitching. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

“Metropolis” is a new 20th c. settlement form, distinct from older city because it is much bigger (> 1 million pop.) & toodiverse economically, socially & geographically to wither; 20% of world pop. live in such metropoloi. Potentially offers greatest freedom to individuals of all settlement forms, because of that diversity. Planning goal should be “integrated diversity”; US model is not sufficiently integrated (too many separate planning authorities, or no planning, causing great inefficiencies), Soviet model was highly integrated (top-down) but not diverse politically (because of lack of lower-level or distinct planning authorities with any autonomy). Dependent metropolis (primate city of a dependent country) is further distorted (some descriptive detail but not much of a theory about this that I could find, but considers Havana example to be the most positive). Some 20% of world population live in metropolises, most in dependent countries.

Arrighi, Giovanni. "Globalization and Historical Macrosociology." Sociology for the Twenty-First Century: Continuities and Cutting Edges. Ed. Janet Abu-Lughod. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 117-33.

Critiques 2 schools, Comparative & Historical Sociology (CHS, Charles Tilly et al.), & Political Economy of World Systems (PEWS, Emmanual Wallerstein et al.), & concludes: (1) contrary to PEWS, contemporary international financial integration is different in important ways from its predecessor world systems: 13th c. Mongol empire that "created the conditions for the emergence of an Afroeurasian world trading system"; 16th c European colonization that connected Indian Ocean to the Caribbean; 19th c European imperialism over 4/5 of the globe. Mostly the difference is that this is imperialism w/o an imperialist. (2) Center of world financial power may be moving back to Asia, as in 13th c, though Western theory finds this hard to recognize precisely because all its terms are Western.

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Beck, Ulrich. Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, 2005.

Bernstein, Edward. Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation. Trans. E. C. Harvey. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1912.

The process of liberation of the workers, not the Utopianism of a Marxist “ultimate end” is the essence of socialism. The great Marx allowed his artificial doctrine to affect his theory at the expense of observation. The proletariat is not growing poorer, the rich are not becoming richer and fewer. The right of revolution cannot be abridged, but socialism can develop more successfully through legislative extension of democracy. Property rights need not be ignored.

Boggs, Carl. The Socialist Tradition: From Crisis to Decline. Revolutionary thought/Radical movements. Ed. Roger S. Gottlieb. New York: Routledge, 1995.

100 years after its birth, modern socialism is now politically exhausted, social democracy, communism & “3rd path” aternatives all having failed to move industrial society toward the Marxian vision of an egalitarian, democratic order. Transformation of an unjust & globe-destroying order is even more urgent than a century ago, but to advance it radicals must abandon a set of commitments inherited from the socialist tradition: discursive universality (claiming that one theory answered all questions), identification with single classes & parties, simple representation of (economic) interests, blindness to multiple forms of domination (incl. race & gender), unbridled productivism (faith in material production) in a world of ecological limits. Feminism & ecological consciousness are most encouraging recent developments, but many obstacles to leading such mvmts into global transformation.

Bruhat, Jean, Jean Dautry, and Émile Tersen. La Commune de 1871. Avec la collaboration de Pierre Angrand, Jean Bouvier, Maurice Choury, Henry Dubief, Jeanne Gaillard et Claude Perrot. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1970.

Most useful & comprehensive of recent histories inc. plates (posters, cartoons, documents), biographies, topical bib., thorough text with analysis on principles of “socialisme scientifique”. Intro esp. useful, chs. on “La Commune et les forces populaires” & “L’Œuvre de la Commune”, etc.

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Marxist critique of urban (mostly US) sociology, proposals for radical analysis of urban ideology & urban structure (including space) with detailed examples from Castells’ own research (Chile, France, Quebec); emphasis on popular participation to regain popular power of urban life. “urban” is never defined & appears, after critique, to be meaningless category. First published 1972 in France; “Afterword 1975” is partial critique of book itself. Many aperçus, but not yet a coherent theory.

Castells, Manuel, and John H. Mollenkopf. "Conclusion: Is New York a Dual City?" Dual City: Restructuring New York. Eds. John H. Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992. 399-418.

No. It is too diverse, with too many gradations, and all the sectors, from poorest to richest, are interdependent.

Chandler, Tertius. Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census. Lewiston, N.Y: St. David's University Press, 1987.

"The word 'city,' it should be understood, is used here in the sense of urban area, to include suburbs lying outside the municipal area, and omitting farmland lying within the municipality. It amounts to house-to-house density." p. 1. Estimates populations of all cities >20,000 in the Americas, Europe, Africa & >40,000 in Asia for each century at the century and up to 1850. Introduction describes some assumptions used to calculate in absence of reliable censuses. E.g., where size of army is known, ratio of militia to total pop. assumed to be 1:6. Where city's area is known (space within the walls), various ways to calculate density (known density of other towns in region, parish records, etc.).

Cheever, Benjamin. "Paradise Lost (The Westchester Chronicle)." New York July 28 1997: 18-23, 61, 72.

The son of John Cheever waxes nostalgic for a country that never really existed, the suburbia imagined in his father's stories, as well as the real Westchester he grew up in and which is no more. The mansion on the hill has been turned into condominium apartments, the shopping centers -- themselves an innovation when he was a boy -- turned into malls, trees cut down and old buildings razed to widen streets. The population of Westchester County has grown, but only from 808,891 in 1960 to 874,886 in 1990. "It's not how many of us there are, or even who we are, since we have always been a racial and cultural grab bag. The problem is who we mean to be. Up until 1960, we all meant to be the same American. We failed, of course, but our intentions kept us peacefully in line."

On the making of late 19th century America's most celebrated tragedy, the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer and his 200+ 7th Cavalrymen at the Little Bighorn. Vivid portrayals of Custer (reckless, flamboyant & very ambitious -- he may have timed his attack to influence the Republican convention to nominate him for president), Maj. Marcus Reno (brave but slow-thinking, he panicked and survived in disgrace), Capt. Frederick Benteen (hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, sagacious & very bold, he too survived but also managed to save most of his men), and other whites, and of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Gall (possibly the most frightful of all the Sioux), Rain in the Face and other Sioux & Cheyennes, plus Crow scouts, Buffalo Bill (as flamboyant as Custer, and not much use in actual combat) and others, including a few white and Indian women. Where accounts are wildly contradictory, Connell presents the different versions in their contexts. Exciting story, masterfully told. 021021

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Epstein, Jason. "Metropolitan Life: The Encyclopedia of New York City." The New York Review of Books November 16 1995: 4-6.

“On the theory that human creativity left to itself will usually produce better results than a master plan or a ruling clique, Manhattan’s unique advantage may not have been its geography at all, but its polyglot origins.” 4 Also, NYC “welcomed adventurers who might not have found equal scope for their eccentricities elsewhere.” 5 Finds support for hypothesis(derived from Jane Jacobs) in various entries in the Encyclopedia, about NYC’s polyglot origins in Nieuw Amsterdam & its more notable later oddballs & strong-minded individualists, including Jacobs.

Fainstein, Susan, and Norman Fainstein. "The Changing Character of Community Politics in New York City: 1968-1988." Dual City: Restructuring New York. Eds. John H. Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992. 315-32.

"In the mid-1960s, as city spending for social programs was rapidly rising, minority groups in New York mobilized through a multifaceted political movement" [316] & won important victories, esp. in education. The collapse of the national civil rights mvment & the rightward politics of Nixon et al, + the 1973-75 recession & the NY fiscal crisis of 1977-78 deprived such movements of political & material resources. Today the economy is in better shape, but community activists have not mounted an effective, broad-based movement. "Minority leadership has largely chosen to work within the regular political system, and community groups have received only limited concessions in response to their demands." 316-17 Race- & ethnic-based movements are not now allied with "client status" mvmts, as they were when Welfare Rights Orgnzn allied with & was seen as part of civil rights movment; neighborhood-based movements "don not voice Alton Maddox's objective of changing the basic power equation of New York," but merely seek to run their own community programs. 320 In contrast, both Boston under Mayor Raymond Flynn, & Chicago with Mayor Harold Washington, though with different electoral bases, achieved broad progressive coalitions, mainly because their leadership had roots in the neighborhoods. Authors are skeptical of David Dinkins' election to change things (given his lack of grass-roots support).

Fulford, Robert. Accidental City: The Transformation of Toronto. Toronto: MacFarlane Walter & Ross, 1995.

Until 1960s, Toronto was a staid, unsmiling city; Viljo Revell’s city hall & Nathan Phillips Square (1965) created new image & public gathering place, making city more vibrant and sociable. RF discusses this & other major projects — CN Tower, Gardiner Expressway, etc. — focusing on their unintended consequences (good, in case of Tower; bad, in case of expressway) for urban life.

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“Fidel Castro is a symbol of national dignity. … But for a long time, Castro has been at the center of a bureaucratic system, a system of echoes from the monologues of power, that imposes the routines of obedience on creative energies. … Such a system… came into being when the revolution had to close ranks to defend itself… A scandalous, long-running hypocrisy: Those who engineered all Cuba’s previous military dictatorships subject Cuba to constant democratic scrutiny. In Cuba, democracy and socialism began willing to be different names for the same thing; but those who control the world allow only the single freedom of choosing between capitalism and capitalism.” p. 10

García Canclini, Néstor. Consumidores y ciudadanos: Conflictos multiculturales de la globalización. México: Grijalbo, 1995.

La globalización mediante la explosión de comunicación electrónica y de otros medios (video, t.v. cable, etc.) no produce la homogeneización sino una diferenciación globalizada, en que los individuos se relacionan globalmente por sus afinidades en el consumo (tipo de música o de cine, estilo de ropa, etc.) más que por su localidad.

Gélard, Patrice. Les organisations de masse en Union soviétique: Syndicats et Komsomol. Paris: Éditions Cujas, 1965.

Mass orgs may be viewed either as instruments for embrigadement totalitaire or of a nouvelle forme de democratie, “composée de l’élite du pays, sorte de technocratie, puis d’organisations de mass… et enfin les masses populaires.” 203 Through them citizens learn to manage public affairs & state (as separate & opposing force) tends to disappear; all depends on degree of démocratisme interne, much greater now than in Stalin’s day. Soviet TUs, speaking through WFTU, h moderated their pol tone & seek reunificn with ICFTU; brief history of WFTU.

Gornick, Vivian. The Romance of American Communism. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

What the Party meant in the affective lives of members, 1930s-60s, based on 1974 interviews of ex- & some present-Communists & VG’s recollections of her own membership (up to Khruschchev’s 1956 speech, when she was 20). Concludes: “if the Communist Party had not embodied what is darkest and most terrifying in organizational politics, would the current generation of Marxists know as much as it does know both of vision and of dogma? Would it have been able to recover with such sure knowledge the idea of socialism if the Communists had not lived out for the the bitter-as-gall lessons of a visionary idea subordinated to the political apparatus?” 264

Gray, John. 1998. "Hollow triumph: Why Marx still provides a potent critique of the contradictions of late modern capitalism." The Times Literary Supplement May 8:3-4.

Ostensibly a review of the new Verso edition of The Communist Manifesto & of two books of interpretations of the Manifesto, argues that the demise of state socialism (which had been constructed according to Marx's counter-empirical & unexamined utopian longings) has allowed capitalism to return to its natural destructive course and thus reveals the powerful & accurate insights of Marx's critique of capitalism.

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Hall, Peter. "Looking on the Bright Side." Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Ed. Richard Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 191-209.

This long-time writer on "the world cities" (he published a book with that title in 1966) agrees with Dr. Pangloss (Candide's tutor), that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. That is, global capitalism may be having horrific effects here and there, but on the whole it is making things better and, anyway, there is no real alternative. In his comments on their essays in this same book, he dismisses the other Hall (Stuart) and David Harvey as silly and irrelevant Marxists, out of touch with real cities.

Hall, Stuart. "Cosmopolitan Promises, Multicultural Realities." Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Ed. Richard Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 20-51.

"The decolonization that occurred at the end of World War II, often hailed as 'setting the colonial world free', was in fact marked by three broad stages redefining relations between the developed West and the rest. In the first phase, fundamental relations of neocolonial dependency were established between the developed and underdeveloped worlds in the context of the Cold War. ...the Cold War was fought out largely by proxy on post-colonial terrain. In the second phase, 'structural adjustment' regimes were imposed by the West on the developing world, via international organizations coupled with massive indebtedness through the banking system. More recently, with the collapse of the Soviet empire and the rise of the US to single super-power hegemony, an unholy alliance of global corporate forces, collusive indigenous elites, and legal and illegal armies on the loose has been able to treat the world's poor and the societies of the South as open marketplaces, repositories of scarce resources, and reservoirs of cheap labour." pp. 27-28

Haraszti, Miklos. A Worker in a Worker’s State. Trans. Michael Wright. New York: Universe Books, 1978.

Original Hungarian manuscript, Darabber (“piece-rates”), completed 1972. Report of author’s experiences as miller (operating 2 milling machines simultaneously) at Red Star Tractor Factory. Naive sociology w vivid evocation of anxieties of piece-work; Haraszti admits unfamiliarity w factory beyond his own machines, & his mates are passively hostile to mgmt, foreman, inspectors, & pay no attn to union or politics. “Looting” (violating regulations to speed up the work so as to make a little more money) reported as standard procedure; “homers” made for fun. Although similar findings were common in published studies, book was banned.

2 lectures & an essay presented at Heidelberg in 2004. “Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class power” (how Reagan & Thatcher led the neo-con or neo-liberal counterrevolution); “Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development” & the essay, “Space as a key word.” Here he proposes a 3x3 matrix: his own tripartite division crossed against Lefebvre's. DH's are “absolute space” as “a ‘thing in itself’ with an existence independent of matter” ; “relative space” or how real, materially existing objects relate to one another; and finally “relational space… regarded in the manner of Leibniz, as being contained in objects in the sense that an object can be said to exist only insofar as it contains and represents within itself relationships to other objects.” Lefebvre's are (1) the space of experience and of perception open to physical touch and sensation; (2) the representation of space; and (3) spaces of representations, or “the lived space of sensations, the imagination, emotions, and meanings incorporated into how we live day by day." Yields 9 cells of interesting possibilities.

Harvey, David. "The Right to the City." Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Ed. Richard Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 83-103.

An elaboration of Henri Lefebvre's argument that the right to the city "cannot be conceived of as a simple visiting right or as a return to traditional cities…" but "can only be formulated as a transformed and renewed right to urban life" (Writings on Cities, p. 158), quoted on the first page. Harvey argues that utopianism, a vision of a better world, is essential if we are to achieve that better world, but must be reformulated. "Utopias of spatial form"--planned cities & communities meant to guarantee perpetual social harmony & the satisfaction of desires -- are flawed because they (futilely) "seek to suppress the force of historial change," while "utopias of social process," which pursue the same end but by some social process, whether liberalism & the free market (John Locke, Adam Smith) or class struggle, have failed "because they deny the constitutive significance of spatial organization." DH argues instead for "a utopianism of spatio-temporal process, a dialectical utopianism that combines the idea of radical changes in both space and time..." (p. 90) Our aim should be rights & social justice, but to "contextualize" our conceptions of them. This is because particular definitions of rights & justice support particular social processes, and "...it is impossible to wean society away from one dominant social process (such as that of capital accumulation through market exchange) to another (such as policial democracy and collective action) without simultaneously shifting allegiance from one dominant conception of rights and of social justice to another." (p. 92) Even John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness fails to do this.

"There is no way I can convince anyone by philosophical argument that the capitalistic regime of rights is unjust. … My objection to [it]… is quite simple: to accept it is to accept that we have no alternative except to live under a regime of endless capital accumulation and economic growth, no matter what the social, ecological, or political consequences." (96-97)

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Kapuscinski, Ryszard. Viajes con Heródoto. (Original in Polish: Podroze z Herodotem, Wydawnictwo Znak, Cracovia, 2004.) Trans. Agata Orzeszek. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2006.

En 1956, el periódico polaco Sztandar Mlodych [Estandarte de Juventud] envió a Kapuscinski a la India, porque la visita de Nehru a Polonia había despertado algún interés en ese lejano país. Esta fue la primera oportunidad para "cruzar la frontera" del joven reportero, que ni siquiera sabía inglés y quedó mistificado y fascinado por la India. Aquí nos cuenta de esa visita y anécdotas de otros viajes a Jartum, el Congo/Zaire, Senegal, y China, intercaladas con largas citas de Heródoto, cuya "Historia" descubrió cuando estudiante. Saca dos conclusiones de esa comparación del siglo XX y las historias de Heródoto Primero, los horrores de hoy no son nada nuevo, y segundo, el método de trabajo de Heródoto era muy parecido al de él, Kapuscinski: oir testimonios de los testigos o los guardianes de la tradición oral (o sea, en términos modernos, entrevistar), observar directamente, y pensar (para concluir entre todas las informaciones contradictorias, qué era lo más plausible.) En las anécdotas, Kapuscinski se muestra muy buen observador pero muy pobre intérprete; me hubiera gustado leer más de sus obervaciones y experiencias directas y menos de esos larguísimos pasajes de Heródoto -- muy interesantes, pero inconexos por fragmentarios; Heródoto también era mejor reportero que analista (a diferencia de su coetáneo el gran sociólogo Tucídides, por ejemplo).

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Production de l'espace 1974. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

“In the beginning was the Topos. Before – long before – the advent of the Logos, in the chiaroscuro realm of primitive life, lived experience already possessed its internal rationality; this experience was producing long before thought space, and spatial thought, began reproducing the projection, explosion, image and orientation of the body.” (p. 174)

In Henri Lefebvre’s terms, living things “produce” space simply by moving. What he meant was that an animal’s or plant’s “gestures,” that is, the movements of its body relative to other things, create new spatial relationships of left and right, above and below, in front and behind, inside and outside. Of course these spaces are all created within another, larger Topos including things that do not move on their own, and others that do -- what we call the natural environment. The human beings must adapt themselves to it (when they run into immovable objects) as they try to adapt it to themselves.

In short, humans had to domesticate their environment, beginning perhaps by domesticating each other – establishing the hierarchies and other rules that made it easier for them to live together -- and then domesticating some plants and animals, long before they had sufficient experience to reflect on what they were doing or its probable consequences.

Selected, translated, and introduced by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Includes: 1. Lost in Transposition - Time, Space and the City -- 2. Preface -- 3. Industrialization and Urbanization -- 4. Philosophy and the City -- 5. Fragmentary Sciences and Urban Reality -- 6. Philosophy of the City and Planning Ideology -- 7. The Specificity of the City -- 8. Continuities and Discontinuities -- 9. Levels of Reality and Analysis -- 10. Town and Country -- 11. Around the Critical Point -- 12. On Urban Form -- 13. Spectral Analysis -- 14. The Right to the City -- 15. Perspective or Prospective? -- 16. The Realization of Philosophy -- 17. Theses on the City, the Urban and Planning -- 18. Introduction -- 19. Institutions in a 'Post-technological' Society -- 20. No Salvation away from the Centre? -- 21. The Urban in Question -- 22. Seen from the Window -- 23. Rhythm analysis of Mediterranean Cities.

Lerner, Warren. Karl Radek: The Last Internationalist. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1970.

Galician Jew b. 1885, identified with international socialism rather than with any nations, journalist in many languages & militant in SDKPiL (Poland) with Rosa Luxemburg and in SPD (Germany); later was 2d to Zinoviev in Comintern, sent on mission to Germany to prevent disastrous Spartacist rising. Associated for a time with Trotsky’s left opposition. Out of place in atmosphere of “socialism in one country,” disappeared after spectacular trial, probably died in prison in 1939.

Likosky, Michael B. "Who Should Foot the Bill?" Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Ed. Richard Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 179-90.

Mostly agrees with S. Hall & D. Harvey (in this volume), but accepts Wolfensohn's claim that World Bank projects, using the resources of the poor themselves, have benefited many people. But they should not be the ones taxed or charged in user fees for, for example, BOT ("Build, Operate, Transfer") operations, where giant companies build infrastructure such as water lines or highways, operate it while charging users, until transferring it to the national governments.

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Families in mining & industrial areas of N of England live wretchedly. Government relief is inadequate &, in its present form, iniquitous. Socialism’s great drawback is its adherents, cranks or otherwise objectionable. Socialist propaganda should emphasize the simple slogans of “liberty” & “justice” & remind people that socialism can mean warm-heartedness. The middle class should not object to merging with the working class: “We have nothing to lose but our aitches.”

Mollenkopf, John H. "Political Inequality." Dual City: Restructuring New York. Eds. John H. Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992. 333-60.

Weak & divided leadership among Hispanics & blacks (and their low voter turnout), & their exclusion from the kinds of coalitions with other ethnic minorities that aided advance of European immigrants (mainly because of prejudice by the descendants of those immigrants, but also because of mutual prejudices among the Hispanics & blacks) will likely make it possible for the white majority to retain political control of the city, despite David Dinkins 1989 election (based on a fragile coalition of liberal whites & non-whites) to the mayoralty.

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Parkin, Frank. Class Inequality and Political Order: Social Stratification in Capitalist and Communist Societies. New York: Praeger, 1971.

Lucid & undogmatic critique of “neo-Weberians” with separate analyses of “class” in capitalist, social democratic & communist societies; latter are “class-less” in sense that strata do not have distinctive, self-perpetuating cultures because mobility into top managerial posts has been very high, but this may change if top stratum ceases to expand & incumbents contrive to keep privileges for their offspring. Class privileges are seen to be emerging in E. Europe & to be hereditary to chidren of white collar experts & party bureaucrats. Data from W. & E. Europe, especially Yugoslavia, examined.

Author’s emotional return to Havana (which she barely remembered) & her home town of Caibarién after 17 years of exile; enthusiastic about the “air of self-assuredness” of the youth, confident that “they can go as far with their schooling as their talent can take them,” and delighted to be “home,” but realizes that she is not ready to move back. “We know the difficulties of living with capitalism but are not ready to face, on a personal level, the difficulties of living without it. We want all our options, all our freedoms, and, at the moment we see that Cuba cannot offer us all that.”

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Sassen, Saskia. "Cracked Casings; Notes toward an Analytics for Studying Transnational Processes." Sociology for the Twenty-First Century: Continuities and Cutting Edges. Ed. Janet Abu-Lughod. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 134-45.

Argues that the immigrant poor are as much a part of modern "globalization" as the rich; the latter depend on the former (as well as contribute to producing migration) much more than they are aware (to perform necessary functions for the system of the rich to continue); because transnational transactions always occur in some place, locality still matters (even if the transaction is between 2 parties from other places); urban migrants "reterritorialize" neighborhoods by implanting their local cultures. The "casings" of national territories can no longer contain the processes that pass through them.

Scholar, Richard. Divided cities: the Oxford Amnesty lectures 2003. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Handy intro to 4 or 5 very diverse takes on the effects of contemporary capitalism and what to do about them. The ways "the city" are imagined are so different (except that Stuart Hall & Harvey are in agreement) that these authors are not really talking to one another at all, though Peter Hall makes an attempt to address the issues raised by the others -- especially S. Hall (no relation to Peter) and Harvey, whose "Marxism" strikes him as naive and leading to generalizations about urban impoverishment due to globalization that aren't borne out by his own observation of various cities. He also critiques Rogers, finding his "hatred" of suburbs futile since Englishpeople will continue to love them. (See my notes on specific essays.)

Contents:
Introduction / 1. Introduction to Stuart Hall / Cosmopolitan promises, multicultural realities / 2. Introduction to Patricia J. Williams / Theatres of war / 3. Introduction to David Harvey / The right to the city / 4. Introduction to James D. Wolfensohn / The undivided city / 5. Introduction to Richard Rogers / An urban renaissance / 6. Introduction to Patrick Declerck / On the necessary suffering of the homeless / 7. Who should foot the bill? - Michael B. Likosky/ 8. Looking on the bright side - Peter Hall / Oxonian epilogue -Declerck /

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Singer, Daniel. The Road to Gdansk: Poland and the USSR. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981.

2 chapters on Polish class struggle, 1956 through Gdansk agreement of 31 Aug 1980, “a truce in Poland’s class struggle” between workers & the state bureaucracy. Detailed & vivid.

BFS (taped disussion, Center for Study of Democratic Institutions) accepts “goals of struggle for freedom and dignity,” but regards concepts themselves as mystifications impeding rational control of environments so as to control behaviors for general good. Thoroughly materialist argument, but political suggestions are vague and avoid discussion of class or socialism.

Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 1926.

Rise of capitalism, essentially an increase in the influence & activity of a profit-seeking middle class, forced religion out of socio-economic life (where it had been a moral impediment to profit-making) altogether or, as with Calvinism, retained only those portions & interpretations of it which condoned sharp practice; religious influence on the development of economics is not to be denied, but the distinguishing characteristic of this development was the restriction of religion to man’s “spiritual” life, so that it would not affect his business.

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UE. More and Faster Production for Victory. Newark NJ: United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, District Four, 1942.

Stakhanovitism to boost war production, in the special hope that a western front will be opened while the Nazis are concentrating their forces against the heroic Red Army.

Ulam, Adam B. Titoism and the cominform. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.

Tito was expelled because he was too successful a “little Stalin” to be easily controlled by JVS—war hero & undisputed head of party. Gomulka (Poland), Kostov (Bulgaria), & Rajk (Hungary) were deposed as party leaders because they weren’t as entrenched as Tito, were accused of “Titoism” because they were popular war-time leaders (thus a threat) who were unable to switch as readily as the party line — although they had little in common with Tito in re theories of applied communism.

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Wolfensohn, James D. "The Undivided City." Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Ed. Richard Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 109-28.

The former president of the World Bank (1995-May 2005, before Paul Wolfowitz) describes ambitious program to eliminate slums by 5 "crucial elements": (1) Strengthening governments' "proper legal & judicial framework, viable financial systems, freedom from corruption," etc. Elections of Lula (Brazil) & Mandela (S. Africa) supposedly exemplify this. (2) Training mayors & other city officials in 7 "developing" countries & enabling (via a World Bank website 'notice board') communications among them & between them & university-based experts. (3) Provision of basic services. (4) Secure tenure for the urban poor (title to land they've built on). (5) Provision of financial services; most successful have been micro-credits for starting small businesses & 3-year loans of up to about $1,500 for home improvements. Our world (says Wolfensohn) is an "undivided city" because poverty, injustice or other problems in any part of it affect all of us.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999.

Elegant & persuasive critique of all theories (include Marxist) that assume that capitalism is the natural evolution of any market to which all societies tend once obstacles are removed, or that it emerges as a consequence of demographic and/or technological changes. Markets & trade are not proto-capitalist, because they do not operate for the purpose of maximizing profit, competition, and compulsion, but simply on the much older principle of buying cheap in one market (say, Samarkand) and carrying goods to sell dear in another (say, Constantinople). Capitalism is"a system in which goods and services, down to the most basic necessities of life, are produced for profitable exchange, where even human labor power is a commodity for sale in the market, and where, because all economic actors are dependent on the market, the requirements of competition and profit maximization are the fundamental rules of life."It first emerges in one place only, the English countryside, NOT all of Europe and not in the cities, because of peculiar conditions in England: exceptionally wide land holdings by lords, municipalities & other corporate entities with autonomous powers, who could rely on their economic power (to demand rents) and forego use of military power to extract surplus. Reliance on rents that varied according to market conditions, including the productivity of the land, made these landholders interested above all in productivity, thus on organizational & technical improvements, indlucing enclosures. The dipossessed ended up in the cities, especially London, which grew to become the first mass market for cheap consumer goods. English capitalism benefited enormously from its overseas empire, but it grew in the first instance in response to its domestic, mainly London, market, which became so powerful it obliged other countries to modify their economies to serve it (00/3/20).

History & Social Thought

Readings on History & Social Thought

Capitalism, socialism, communism, "globalization"

Cities

Political & Social History

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