Sage Publications Urban Studies Inside/Out

Review A rare and generous effort of collaborative work between graduate students and professors, this book provides a road map to the complex reverse engineering of contemporary urban studies texts from a methodological perspective. Raquel Rolnik is Professor of Urban Planning at the University of São Paulo. -- Raquel Rolnik Published On: 2019-08-27 Product Description At a time of intense theoretical debates in urban studies, the research practices underlying such theories have not received the same attention. This original and creative text interrogates the methodological underpinnings of contemporary urban scholarship, with reference to different global sites and situations, as well as to recent debates around postcolonial, planetary, and provincialized urban theories. Rather than reducing methodological questions to a matter of tools and techniques, it unearths the complex connections between theory, research design, empirical work, expositional style, and normative-ethical commitments. Innovatively co-produced by faculty and graduate students from a variety of disciplines, Urban Studies Inside-Out it is comprised of three parts. Part I: An introduction to the field of urban studies and its changing theories, methodological norms and practices. Part II: Features a collection of methodological essays co-authored by graduate students, deconstructing the research designs, the methodological practices, and the modes of presentation and representation across recent urban monographs. Part III: Consists of informative keyword primers which explicate the key concepts and formulations in the field of urban studies. This volume offers a welcome intervention within urban studies, and stands to make a valuable contribution for graduate students and researchers. From the Back Cover This original and creative text interrogates the methodological underpinnings of contemporary urban scholarship, with reference to different global sites and situations, as well as to recent debates around postcolonial, planetary, and provincialized urban theories. About the Author Helga Leitner (Ph.D. University of Vienna, Austria) is a professor with research interests in international migration, politics of immigration and citizenship, urban development & sustainability, global urbanism, urban social movements, and socio-spatial theory. She teaches undergraduate and courses related to her research interests. Jamie Peck, PhD is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy, Distinguished University Scholar, and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He is an institutional political economist, working on a range of issues relating to economic geography, urban restructuring, labor regulation, and statecraft. Much of his research is concerned with the ways in which ostensibly global processes―for example, forms of market-oriented governance (a.k.a. neoliberalization)―are (re)made through local sites, distanciated networks, and grounded practices. He is currently working on the restructuring of contingent employment regimes, the dynamics of “fast policy,” and the fiscal transformation of the local state. I seek to develop general explanations for the spatial organization and dynamics of economic activities in capitalist societies, and to determine how a geographical perspective illuminates such explanations. Economists recently have rediscovered economic geography as a place to apply economic theory, but my research shows that a proper incorporation of the spatial dimension of society challenges much of what economic theory tells us. A geographical approach can capture the complex evolution of economic landscapes and the various non-economic processes affecting economic change. Geography has basic theoretical contributions to make to knowledge, not just empirical elaborations. I am interested in how geographers think about the world, and the changing philosophical and methodological disputes in geography. Good s