Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization

Transnational Urbanism is a profound work of theoretical synthesis. Moving deftly across disciplines, urban theorist Michael Peter Smith criticizes the one–sided nature of globalization theory that has influenced urban studies scholars in the past two decades. Smith treats globalization not as an accomplished fact, but as an unfinished project of social and political practices.
Central questions posed in this book explore how and why transnational migrants, refugees, diasporas, ethnic formations, entrepreneurs, political activists, and institutional networks locate and actively maintain social relations, as well as how transnational practices relate to the neo–liberal project of corporate globalization. The book foregrounds the continuing significance of cities as mediators of power and as the human foundation of contemporary transnationalism.

Spis treści:
1. Introduction: The Social Construction of Transnational Urbanism:.
Why Transnational Social Practices?.
Why "Transnational Urbanism"?.
Why Agency–oriented Urban Theory?.
On Social Constructionism.
The Architectonics Ahead.
Locating Globalization.
Reconstructing Urban Theory.
Part I: Locating Globalization: .
2. The Local as Globalism′s "Other": The Confines of the Master Narrative of Time–Space Compression.
Beyond Technological Determinism.
Cultural Reductionism.
Postmodern Subjectivity, Political Fragmentation, and Identity Politics.
Essentializing Class and Marginalizing Gender.
The Political Geography of Difference.
An Alternative View of Urban Politics.
Beyond Binary Dualities.
3. The Global Cities Discourse: A Return to the Master Narrative?.
Reconsidering the Global City Thesis.
The Limits of Global Economism.
Historicizing the Global City.
The "Global Governance" Agenda.
Transnational Urbanism: Beyond Reification.
4. Reimagining Los Angeles from the Ground Up.
Mexi can Transmigration to Los Angeles
The Legacy of Empire.
The Social Construction of "Local Economic Development".
Transnational Urbanism and the Ethnic Economy.
Constructing and Reconstructing "Koreatown".
Beyond Victimization.
Part II: Reconstructing Urban Theory:.
5. Re–presenting the "Local": Beyond Communitarian Metaphors.
Localities as Defensive Community Formations.
Rethinking the Boundaries of Locality.
Localities and the Politics of Difference.
The Social Construction of Space as Place.
Rethinking the Politics of Everyday Life.
Transnational Place–Making.
6. Beyond the Postmodern City: Rethinking Ethnography for Transnational Times.
Social Constructionism and Postmodern Social Inquiry.
Questioning the Knower and the Known.
Constructing the Subject.
The Uses and Limits of Postmodern Ethnography.
Hybrid Subjects in Patterned Networks.
The Border Crossings of Transnational Ethnography.
7. Transnationalizing the Grassroots.
The Rise of Transnational Grassroots Politics.
Transnationalizing Urban Research.
Beyond the Global–Local Duality.
Thinking Locally and Acting Globally.
Bifocal Border Crossers.
The Politics of Simultaneity.
The Production of Political Space.
8. From Globalization to Transnational Urbanism.
The Agency of Transnational Networks.
The Rise of Translocalities
Questioning the Post–national Discourse.
Towards a Transnational Urban Studies.
Comparative Transnationalisms.
Summing Up.
Epilogue.
9. Epilogue: The City as Crossroads.
Index.

Nota biograficzna:
Michael Peter Smith is Professor of Community Studies and Development at the University of California, Davis, and a Faculty Associate of the Center for California Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published numerous books on cities, global migration, and urbanism including The City and Social Theory (19 79), The Capitalist City (1987), City, State, and Market (1988), The Bubbling Cauldron (1995), and Transnationalism from Below (1998).

Okładka tylna:
Transnational Urbanism is a profound work of theoretical synthesis. Moving deftly across disciplines, urban theorist Michael Peter Smith criticizes the one–sided nature of globalization theory that has influenced urban studies scholars in the past two decades. Smith treats globalization not as an accomplished fact, but as an unfinished project of social and political practices.
Central questions posed in this book explore how and why transnational migrants, refugees, diasporas, ethnic formations, entrepreneurs, political activists, and institutional networks locate and actively maintain social relations, as well as how transnational practices relate to the neo–liberal project of corporate globalization. The book foregrounds the continuing significance of cities as mediators of power and as the human foundation of contemporary transnationalism.