"In this innovative book, David Smith ultimately links what happens on the ground in the neighborhoods where people live to the larger political and economic forces at work. He takes the emerging polit"
In this innovative book, David Smith ultimately links what happens on the ground in the neighbourhoods where people live to the larger political and economic forces at work, putting these connections in a historical framework and using a case study approach.
In this innovative book, David Smith ultimately links what happens on the ground in the neighborhoods where people live to the larger political and economic forces at work, putting these connections in a historical framework and using a case study approach.The societies of the world's underdeveloped countries are now undergoing an urban revolution that is drastically altering the fabric of their predominantly rural agrarian societies. Smith takes the emerging political economy perspective on urbanization, with its focus on global inequality and dependency, as the context for city growth in the Third World.This perspective allows Smith to critique the conventional ecological view of the city, not by rejecting traditional analyses out of hand, but by reformulating the crucial questions. The conventional ecological perspective assumes an equilibrium model, where very rapid city growth and the various types of urban imbalances are transitional phases on the path to modernity; in contrast, the comparative political economy approach conceptualizes uneven development and inequality as an inevitable result of the expansion of the capitalist world-system.
List of Tables and Figures, Preface, Introduction, Urbanization Theory,
Developing an International Political Economy Approach, Dominance and
Dependency: A Theoretical Reprise, Cities in the World-System: Previous
Research, World-System Hierarchy and Vertical Linkages: Beyond Core and
Periphery, Summary and a General Model, Global Patterns: A Cross-National
Analysis of Urbanization, Measuring Urbanization and World-System Status,
Urbanization and the World-System: Results, Conclusion, The Logic of
Comparative Historical-Structural Analysis, Sociology Reaches for History,
Theoretical Methods for Comparative History, The Logic of Regional and
National Case Studies, Organization of the Case Studies, Dependency,
Development, and Urbanization in West Africa, West Africa: Uneven
Urbanization and Inequality, Politics, Power, and the Form of Urban Growth,
Dependent Urbanization in West Africa, Conclusion, Nigerian Urbanization: A
Semiperipheral Case?, Indigenous Urbanization: Towns and Trade, Colonial
Urbanization and Peripheralization: A Drift Toward Primacy, Lagos and The
Open Economy, Dependent Urbanization and Incipient Primacy, Indigenous
Regional Centers and Counter-Primacy, Present and Future: Semiperipheral
Urbanization?, Concluding Note on Conjunctural Causation, Urban Diversity in
East Asia: Toward a Political Economy Approach, East Asia: Divergent Urban
Trajectories, Southeast Asian Cities: The Search for a Theory, Dependent
Urbanization in Southeast Asia, Disclaimer, South Korean Urbanization and
Semiperipheral Development, Indigenous Urbanization: Cities and Agrarian
Kingdoms, Japanese Colonialism: Imperialism and Rational Planning, U.S.
Domination and Dependent Development, Urbanization in the Late 1980s: Some
Unexpected Changes?, Present and Future: Semiperipheral Urbanization,
Conclusion, Urbanization in Global Perspective: Summary, Synthesis, and
Policy Recommendations, Building Synthetic Urban Theory, Practical
Implications, Global Urbanization: A Research Agenda, Notes, References,
About the Book and Author, Index
David A. Smith is professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine.
