Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban NeighborhoodOne of the most striking characteristics of urban protest and social conflict in the United States, Britain, and other nations of the West over the last three decades is the frequency with which these political events have been organized not where people work, but where they live. The residential communities in which people have their homes, raise their children, and relate to each other more as neighbors than as co-workers have become veritable seedbeds of collective action. Contested Ground provides a new approach to understanding how and why such community-based action occurs. Drawing critically and selectively from Marxian theories of conflict and neo-Weberian theories of "housing classes," John Emmeus Davis argues that the political life of residential communities can be explained largely in terms of the competing interests that groups possess by virtue of different and distinctive ways of relating to their community's "domestic property"land and buildings that are used for shelter. In Part I of his book he proposes domestic property interests as the cornerstone of a theoretical framework for exploring the appearance and disappearance, the development and decline, and the cooperation and conflict of the organized groups of the "homeplace." Davis's concluding chapters evaluate the theoretical and practical implications of his approach. He believes that his analysis may complement neo-Marxian theories of urban development and capitalist reproduction and also provide new insight into ways in which planners, activists, and policy makers can influence the internal politics of the urban neighborhood. |
Contents
Groups | 62 |
Group Formation and Intergroup Conflict in the Urban | 80 |
Building and Bulldozing 1800 | 99 |
Property Interests and Property | 175 |
Intergroup Conflict 1980 | 216 |
Toward a Theory of Localitybased Action | 257 |
Theoretical Implications | 285 |
Neighborhood Politics and Planning | 307 |
Appendix A Sources and Methods | 325 |
Bibliography | 333 |
347 | |
Other editions - View all
Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood John Emmius Davis Limited preview - 2018 |
Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood John Emmeus Davis,John Edward Davis No preview available - 1991 |
Contested Ground: Collective Action and the Urban Neighborhood John Emmeus Davis No preview available - 1991 |