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Molotch takes us on a fascinating exploration into the worlds of technology, design, corporate and popular culture. We now see how corporations, designers, retailers, advertisers, and other middle-men influence what a thing can be and how it is made. We see the way goods link into ordinary life as well as vast systems of consumption, economic and political operation. The book is a meditation into the meaning of the stuff in our lives and what that stuff says about us.
In "Toilet," noted sociologist Harvey Molotch and Lauren Noren bring together twelve essays by urbanists, historians and cultural analysts (among others) to shed light on the public restroom and how it reflects and sustains our cultural attitudes towards gender, class, and disability.
"Twenty years after publication, Urban Fortunes remains the best book on urban sociology around. Starting from a political economy analysis, Logan and Molotch develop a picture of the formative processes creating the contemporary American city while managing to avoid the pitfalls of determinism."—Susan Fainstein, Harvard University
How security procedures could be positive, safe, and effective The inspections we put up with at airport gates and the endless warnings we get at train stations, on buses, and all the rest are the way we encounter the vast apparatus of U.S. security. Like the wars fought in its name, these measures are supposed to make us safer in a post-9/11 world. But do they? Against Security explains how these regimes of command-and-control not only annoy and intimidate but are counterproductive. Sociologist Harvey Molotch takes us through the sites, the gizmos, and the politics to urge greater trust in basic citizen capacities—along with smarter design of public spaces. In a new preface, he discusses abatement of panic and what the NSA leaks reveal about the real holes in our security.
Cities of the Arabian Peninsula reveal contradictions of contemporary urbanization The fast-growing cities of the Persian Gulf are, whatever else they may be, indisputably sensational. The world’s tallest building is in Dubai; the 2022 World Cup in soccer will be played in fantastic Qatar facilities; Saudi Arabia is building five new cities from scratch; the Louvre, the Guggenheim and the Sorbonne, as well as many American and European universities, all have handsome outposts and campuses in the region. Such initiatives bespeak strategies to diversify economies and pursue grand ambitions across the Earth. Shining special light on Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha—where the dynamics of extreme u...
Two decades after Harvey Molotch’s “city as a growth machine,” this book offers a unique, critical assessment of his thesis.
In 1955, Levitt and Sons purchased most of Willingboro Township, New Jersey and built 11,000 homes. This, their third Levittown, became the site of one of urban sociology's most famous community studies, Herbert J. Gans's The Levittowners. The product of two years of living in Levittown, the work chronicles the invention of a new community and its major institutions, the beginnings of social and political life, and the former city residents' adaptation to suburban living. Gans uses his research to reject the charge that suburbs are sterile and pathological. First published in 1967, The Levittowners is a classic of participant-observer ethnography that also paints a sensitive portrait of working-class and lower-middle-class life in America. This new edition features a foreword by Harvey Molotch that reflects on Gans's challenges to conventional wisdom.
This sociological classic is updated with a new preface by the authors looking at developments in the study of urban planning during the twenty-year life of this influential work.
Since the 1960s, radical sociology has had far more influence on mainstream sociology than many observers imagine. This book pairs seminal articles with new reflective essays written by the founders of progressive sociology, including Fred Block, Edna Bonacich, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Val Burris, G. William Domhoff, Richard Flacks, Harvey Molotch, Goran Therborn, and Erik Olin Wright. The book highlights the wider impact of radical sociology and shows how the work of these and other writers has continued to influence sociology's continuing interest in capitalism, class, race, gender, power, and progressive social change. It also describes future directions for a critical sociology relevant to a multicultural and global world.
New York is rapidly changing in response to a new economy, but startups, tech workers, and venture capital are not visible unless you know where to look for them--in old industrial neighborhoods, on the waterfront, and at events like hackathons and meetups. In The Innovation Complex, Sharon Zukin shows the people and places that shape the urban tech economy, making cities more successful for businesses yet in some ways less livable.