Anthropological perspective are not often represented in urban studies, even though many anthropologist have been contributing actively to theory and research on urban poverty, racism, globalization, and architecture. Theorizing the City corrects this omission. Following a brief history of urban anthropology, emphasizing developments in the field during the 1990s, this volume presents twelve ethnographies of major cities in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Five images of the city-the divided city, the contested city, the global city, the modernist city, and the postmodern city-serve as frameworks for the essays. Each section highlights current research trends such as poststructural studies of race, class and gender in the urban context; political economic studies of transnational culture; and studies of the symbolic meanings and social production of urban spaces.

Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text examines the ways in which culture, ethnicity, languages, traditions, governance, policies and histories interplay in the creation of the urban experiences in contemporary Southeast Asian cities. It focuses on the ways in which urban spatial forms are textual experiences, subject to interpretative strategies and the influence of other discourses. In addition it also analyzes the experiences of modernization in such cities, but also in terms of the strategies of containment, refurbishment, and loss which this has occasioned.

Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text examines the ways in which culture, ethnicity, languages, traditions, governance, policies and histories interplay in the creation of the urban experiences in contemporary Southeast Asian cities. It focuses on the ways in which urban spatial forms are textual experiences, subject to interpretative strategies and the influence of other discourses. In addition it also analyzes the experiences of modernization in such cities, but also in terms of the strategies of containment, refurbishment, and loss which this has occasioned.

This innovative publication maps out the broad and interdisciplinary field of contemporary European social theory. It covers sociological theory, the wider theoretical traditions in the social sciences including cultural and political theory, anthropological theory, social philosophy and social thought in the broadest sense of the term. This volume surveys the classical heritage, the major national traditions and the fate of social theory in a post-national and post-disciplinary era. It also identifies what is distinctive about European social theory in terms of themes and traditions. It is divided into five parts: disciplinary traditions, national traditions, major schools, key themes and the reception of European social theory in American and Asia. Thirty-five contributors from nineteen countries across Europe, Russia, the Americas and Asian Pacific have been commissioned to utilize the most up-to-date research available to provide a critical, international analysis of their area of expertise. Overall, this is an indispensable book for students, teachers and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, politics, philosophy and human geography and will set the tone for future research in the social sciences.

This book underlines the growing importance of knowledge for the competitiveness of cities and their regions. Examining the role of knowledge - in its economic, socio-cultural, spatial and institutional forms - for urban and regional development, identifying the preconditions for innovative use of urban and regional knowledge assets and resources, and developing new methods to evaluate the performance and potential of knowledge-based urban and regional development, the book provides an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of both theoretical and practical aspects of knowledge-based development and its implications and prospects for cities and regions.

Since Papua New Guinea¿s Independence in the 1970s, Port Moresby has been transformed from a colonial administrative centre to a distinctively Melanesian city. In this book, experts from the fields of anthropology, ethnomusicology and human ecology seek to represent Port Moresby as Papua New Guineans experience it rather than as outsiders perceive it, often from unsympathetic media accounts of violence and corruption. Considering groups of migrants, long-term residents and the traditional landholders of the territory on which it has grown, the contributors offer intimately informed perspectives on the vibrant, dynamic, exciting, hybrid environment that is `Mosbi¿.