https://revistatransilvania.ro/the-unknown-michael-cernea-at-90/

This paper is written for Professor Michael Cernea’ 90th birthday. However, I did not perform an in-depth analysis of his work as a sociologist of development because his contributions are worldwide known. What is less known is his activity before his employment at the World Bank, in 1974. He did his studies during a period when sociology was banned in Romania. Despite this, he became one of the pioneers of the process of rehabilitation of sociological field research in Romania. First, he dealt with industrial and urban sociology. Then, under the influence of interwar sociological traditions, he turned to rural sociology. The activity after 1974 cannot be fully understood without knowing the Romanian background of this sociologist who has recently turned 90.

Region as a Territory in the Management Practices of Interaction With Sociocultural Senters

The key research interest of this paper is focused on identifying the presence and nature of opportunities for interaction between the region as an integral entity and its urban territories, represented by specific socio-cultural centers in the field of management practices. The author identifies the conceptual components of interactions of the region as a whole and its urban settlements, at the institutional level and in the views of the leaders: “moral region”, “neighborhood effect”, “cultural potential of the city”, which allow to identify contradictions in the studied object and outline further research prospects. Transformation of basic social institutions – family, education, culture, religion at the level of the region makes this property is transitive, which requires the use of nonlinear analysis approach to study its Genesis, identify the key approaches to understanding that in the future will allow us to build an integrated research program. The methodological model of the study is based on the integral approach of the founder of American urban sociology R. Park and the Russian urban scientist V.L. Glazychev. This allows us to generalize the existing data on the issue of interest to us and to find common patterns in the development of urban socio-cultural centers, as well as to analyze management practices. The empirical basis of the research is based on (1) semi-structured interviews with the heads of socio-cultural centers of urban settlements (libraries, museums, galleries, theaters, etc.) (n=10) conducted by the author in 2020; (2) data from the territorial body of the Federal state statistics service for the Kursk region for 2019; (3) secondary data from studies conducted in the socio-cultural centers of the Tobolsk, Ulyanovsk regions, the North Caucasus and Yakutia. As auxiliary methods, the study uses such General scientific methods as comparative analysis and comparative analysis of secondary sociological data. A descriptive method was also used to determine the degree of knowledge of management practices in the development of urban socio-cultural centers. For a comprehensive assessment of regional urban communities as an object of management influence, the analysis of statistical data for recent years was used.The author’s conclusions can be formulated as follows: first, the interaction of urban territorial entities with the region as an integral system is currently presented as an institutionalized reserve for the development of its socio-cultural potential, establishing intra-and interregional relations; second, the main contradictions found in the results of the study were recorded in the twentieth century, and still remain unresolved: at the regional level and at the level of individual territories, managers measure the effectiveness of their work by heating up resources, increasing volumes and formalizing activities, while the population prefers a qualitative transformation of reality with elements of innovation and filling existing voids in the architectural and symbolic sense.

The conviviality of the overpoliced, detained and expelled: Refusing race and salvaging the human at the borders of Britain

Paul Gilroy’s theorisation of conviviality has proved exceptionally generative in (urban) sociology. But any announcement of a ‘convivial turn’ should be approached with caution. In much of the literature on ‘everyday multiculture’, racism is insufficiently theorised, structural relations of hierarchy and inequality fade from view, and culture loses its unruly potential. This article seeks to rethink and reclaim the radical potential of conviviality, by working with the narratives of people deported from the UK to Jamaica. The article first argues that the social and political implications of conviviality can be better registered when placed in relation to state violence and state racism. The article then analyses the accounts of deported people who show that conviviality is about much more than getting along across difference, but can represent a wider ethics of ‘refusing race and salvaging the human’. Indeed, when people subject to extraordinary forms of state racism – overpoliced, detained and then expelled – still reject all defensive investments in racial categories, proving themselves not only against racism but ‘against race’, they reassert the normative, ethical and prefigurative character of convivial cultures.

Development, Responsibility, and the Creation of Urban Hazard Risk

Scholarly attention has recently shifted to the creation and redevelopment of urban hazardscapes. This body of work demonstrates how housing is deployed in close proximity to hazards, and how the attendant risks have been communicated—or not—to potential residents. Utilizing the case of Calgary, Alberta, this article uses interview data collected from flood-impacted residents, and looks at their perceptions of development and risk creation. The analyses focus on how people attribute responsibility for development in flood-prone areas, and their views on future development in these areas. Results reveal that many residents argued for more government regulations preventing new development in floodplains. Moreover, they viewed developers as narrow-interested capitalists who fail to protect public safety and work to conceal risk from the public. Others wished to see large structural mitigation projects—dams, levees, or floodwalls—or insisted that homebuyers be informed of flood risk prior to purchase. The article concludes by addressing the implications for scholarly work in urban sociology, environmental sociology, and the sociology of disaster—all of which grapple with tensions between place-making and risk creation.

Luiz Antonio Machado da Silva: an intellectual of the most “refined demeanor” in Brazilian Social Sciences

In this article, we recall the legacy of Luiz Antonio Machado da Silva, a victim of COVID-19 in 2020, for Brazilian Social Sciences and, more specifically, Urban Sociology. This was the field to which Machado had dedicated himself during more than 50 years of research and studies, opening new paths and analytical perspectives for the study of life on the “margins” (favelas and peripheries of large cities - contemplated through the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he lived and conducted his research). Within different contexts, Machado analyzed the State production of “urban marginality”, seeking to understand the life experiences, survival strategies, political struggles and challenges of the urban popular strata. As of the 1990s, he also dedicated himself to analyzing the effects caused by the erosion of the world of work and by state regulation that erstwhile accompanied it, thereby guaranteeing a minimum of rights and some social integration. Thus, within this context, he directed his analytical efforts towards understand both the meaning and the uses of the category of informality, and above all, was attentive to and concerned with the effects brought by the emergence of violent crime from within an urban structure torn apart by the labor crisis, as the social foundation to the times of deconstruction of our institutional and political paradigm of social integration. Since it would be impossible to gauge the true grandeur of his work, we have sought to reconstruct just a part of his research trajectory and his analytical contribution to Urban Sociology within the different contexts. We also emphasize a lesser known aspect of Machado: that of a public intellectual who always sought to intervene in the public debate regarding the place of the urban popular classes within the city.

Street smarts and org charts: Professional expertise and the production of urban integration

Sociologists have shown causal effects of the community presence of organizations on connectedness, crime, entrepreneurship, and crisis resilience. But city- and community-level studies conceal how organizational features shape the production of urban integration. We contend that organizations may produce social integration, creating social ties among constituents, as well as systemic integration, connecting constituents to institutional resources. We argue that organizations’ ability to produce social and systemic integration is principally due to whether organizational members draw on suite-level expertise (“I know the system”) or street-level expertise (“I know the people”) when they relate to their constituents. Representative survey data of nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area collected over 15 years shows that nonprofits’ production of urban integration depends on these forms of expertise. Comparative interviews explain why professional staff and managers boost systemic integration, whereas volunteer staff and members foster social integration. The paper contributes to scholarship in organizational and urban sociology by examining the organizational production of social and systemic integration and by shedding light on unintended consequences of professionalization. Our results challenge the stylized fact that nonprofits necessarily create community and suggest alternative ways to understand and operationalize how organizations are embedded in their urban environment.

The European Societies and Jihadism

The introductory chapter gives insight into the major topics of the book. It stresses the fact that the major actors of jihadism were of Muslim immigration origin but also include a minority of middle-class converts from secular Europe. The notion of “total social fact,” coined by Marcel Mauss, a major French anthropologist, is used to give a comprehensive picture of jihadism as a social phenomenon involving urban sociology (many came from the so-called poor districts, but also some came from some middle-class districts), ethnic relations (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Moroccan, Algerian), national political culture (in France Laïcité, in Great Britain multiculturalism), family (the crisis in family among many jihadis), gender (a significant minority), and generation. From my viewpoint, all these aspects are to be taken into account in order to make sense of jihadism in Europe.

Urbanization and Ageing: Ageism, Inequality, and the Future of “Age-Friendly” Cities

Two major forces are set to shape the quality of daily life in the twenty- first century: population ageing and urbanization. Both have become major concerns for public policy, with significant implications for all types of communities. Cities are now regarded as central to economic development, attracting waves of migrants and supporting new knowledge-based industries. However, the extent to which the new “urban age” will produce what the World Health Organization have termed “age-friendly” cities and communities, creating opportunities for older people as well as strengthening ties across different age and social groups, remains uncertain. This article examines the relationship between ageing and urbanization through the application of the concept of ageism. It argues that urban development, especially that operating over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, has both consolidated and introduced new inequalities in the lives of older people. This is examined in three main ways: first, in the context of research on urbanization and the field of urban sociology in particular; second, through examining a range of examples where ageism may be said to operate within the urban environment; and third, outlining the basis for promoting an “anti-ageist urbanism” focused upon challenging inequality and spatial injustice.

Rikollisuus ja sosiaalisen disorganisaation teoria Chicagon sosiologisen koulukunnan tutkimuksissa 1918-1948

Artikkeli tarkastelee sosiaalisen disorganisaation käsitteen ja teorian alkuperää ja kehitystä aatehistoriallisesta näkökulmasta. Lähdeaineistona ovat keskeiset Chicagon sosiologisen koulukunnan julkaisut vuosien 1918 ja 1948 välillä. Kirjoittajien erityishuomio on kohdistunut ensinnäkin sosiaalisen disorganisaation käsitteen esille tuloon ja varhaiseen soveltamiseen William I. Thomasin, Robert E. Parkin ja muiden Chicagon sosiologien kirjoituksissa, ja toiseksi käsitteen ja teorian hyödyntämiseen Clifford R. Shaw’n ja Henry D. McKayn merkittävässä kriminologisessa tutkimuksessa Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1942). Artikkelissa esitetään, että sosiaalisen disorganisaation teorialla oli keskeinen osa Chicagon sosiologien tutkimuksissa, joissa yhteiskunnallista muutosta ja sosiaalista kontrollia käsitteellistettiin nopeasti kasvavan Chicagon kaupunkielämään keskittyvän empiirisen havainnoinnin pohjalta. Teoria oli laajassa käytössä yhdysvaltalaisessa kriminologiassa ja muissa yhteiskuntatieteissä siksi, että sen avulla kyettiin antamaan uskottavia sosiologisia selityksiä (suur)kaupunkien kasvun ja muutoksen tuomista ongelmista. Teoria joutui suurelta osin marginaaliin 1960-luvulla, mutta 1980-luvulla kriminologinen kiinnostus sosiaaliseen disorganisaatioon alkoi jälleen kasvaa, ja nykyisin teoriaa käytetään kriminologian lisäksi aluetutkimuksessa, kaupunkisosiologiassa ja psykiatriassa. Vilma Niskanen and Petteri Pietikäinen: Crime and the theory of social disorganization in the studies of the Chicago School of Sociology between 1918 and 1948. This article examines the origin and development of the concept and theory of social disorganization from the methodological perspective of intellectual history. Based on the study of publications of the main representatives of the Chicago School of Sociology between the years 1918 and 1948, the article analyses the ways in which social disorganization was first discussed by William I. Thomas, Robert E. Park and other Chicago sociologists, and how the concept and theory was later used in Shaw’s and McKay’s influential criminological study Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1942). At the outset, the notion of social disorganization was central to the Chicago sociologists’ conceptualization of social change and social control that they observed first-hand in the streets of the rapidly growing City of Chicago. The authors argue that theory was widely used in American social science, including criminology, between the 1920s and 1950s, because it had strong explanatory force in the study of social problems in urban areas undergoing changes and re-organization. After becoming marginalized as a theory in the 1960s, a criminological interest in social disorganization increased through the 1980s, and at present it is used not only in criminology but also in area studies, urban sociology and psychiatry. Keywords: social disorganisation – Chicago school of sociology – history of sociology and criminology – urban sociology

Reclaiming Hong Kong through neighbourhood-making: A study of the 2019 Anti-ELAB movement

Set in the context of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protest movement in Hong Kong, this study focuses on selected material and social appropriations of space including community-focused events held in shopping malls, the establishment of networks connecting consumers to suppliers with like-minded political values, and human chains. Drawing on popular concepts such as scale, network and place-frames found in the literature on contentious politics, we argue that the place-making practices observed during the period of study became claim-making practices that effectively framed movement aims and projected movement claims beyond the neighbourhood scale into a dynamic contestation at the city and national scales. Adopting key elements of neighbourhood as defined by Jenks and Dempsey, we highlight that the socio-spatial practices of the Anti-ELAB protests not only re-cast city spaces into neighbourhood spaces but also redefined traditional understandings of neighbourhood as a socio-spatial construct. We argue that during the Anti-ELAB movement an ‘ideological neighbourhood’ emerged in which spatial relationality is not borne out through physical proximity. Instead, connections between functional and social units were established through ideological affinity. These new connections and the replication of neighbourhood-based practices reinforced the construction of a socially and politically distinct Hong Kong identity. We extend the literatures on contentious politics and urban sociology by showing that the ideology and the imaginaries of movement participants can become spatially manifest and thus defensible in the physical world through new territorialities such as the neighbourhood.