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This paper draws on on-going work on Hong Kong's socio-spatial structure to explore the extent to which it fits the dominant image of the global city. While there is a considerable literature on Hong Kong's changing social structure, there is relatively little on the spatial dimensions of social difference and division. The paper situates the available commentaries and analyses of Hong Kong's income, class and employment structure within the global cities debates. It then analyses census data at the tertiary planning unit level (TPU) to explore the spatial dimensions of social distance in Hong Kong. The conclusion focuses on the distinctive mediations which have shaped the socio-spatial structure of the territory. The integrative role of public housing is argued to be of particular importance in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents patterns of racial change in the non- metropolitan South during 1950-1980. Based on population counts from the 1950-1980 decennial censuses, our results reveal considerable racial change in southern nonmetropolitan counties, although the magnitude of change pales in comparison to recent shifts in racial composition in northern central cities and suburbs. Moreover, there is little evidence of widely fluctuating differences between nonmetropolitan counties in changes in racial composition. Finally, racial change in the nonmetropolitan South, unlike that in northern cities, has occurred largely in the context of overall growth rather than population decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper departs from reviews of urban sociology that juxtapose competing Marxist and ecological theories, arguing instead that over the last 25 years a venerable social organization paradigm has been superseded by a fertile political economy paradigm that continues to orchestrate current research. The contributions of political economy are reviewed under six headings: historical explanation, comparative studies, socioeconomic processes, spatial relations, ethnicity and community, and political movements. The conclusion argues that urban sociology is currently in need of new directions, Some criticisms and alternatives are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several abstracts for articles on international social science featured in the September 2004 issue of the "International Social Science Journal." "Four Hundred Giant Cities Atop the World," by Mattei Dogan; "Regionality in the World City Network," by Peter J. Taylor; "Cities and Nested Hierarchies," by Richard Child Hill; "Immigration and Ethnic Economies in Giant Cities," by Ivan Light.

The article presents a reply to the comments made by sociologist Burton B. Silver, on a paper written by the author, discussing the notion that nighttime social life in urban areas resembles social life on former land frontiers. In reply to the charges of using inadequate evidences, the author argues that he never said that he will use archival evidences to support his view. About the adequacy of tests, and especially of the historical evidence offered: it is opined that the more general a hypothesis, the greater the variety of potential disconfirmation or support for it. There is more information to scan, more diverse tests to apply, more chances for battering the hypothesis with inconsistencies among the findings. On the issue of using a wide span of fifty years for studying the U.S. western frontier, the author clarifies that he sought to characterize a land frontier, and to summarize its features fairly and generally enough so that he could reconceptualize the idea to fit a space-time container of living rather than only a spatial one.

This article explores the relationship between activism, sociality and place. It analyses a case-study of selected social relations produced through activities related to an urban social movement - the UK network of the international Cittaslow (Slow City) movement. It specifically examines how social relationships contribute to the human agency that Cittaslow activism involves. In a recent Cultural Studies analysis of the Cittaslow movement, Wendy Parkins and Geoffrey Craig (2006) have suggested that Cittaslow 'communities' drive processes of change. Here, following social anthropologists (Creed 2006; Amit in Amit & Rapport 2002) who call for an interrogation of the concept of 'community' in its local and academic uses, I propose a different analytical route. I suggest that Cittaslow activism is better understood by analysing how agency is produced through actual local embodied social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to re-examine the thesis regarding the disruptive effect of rapid urbanization on support for political authority in the context of recent Jamaican experience. A number of studies of a macro level and aggregate data character have suggested a positive link between rapid and extensive urbanization and political and social disorder. Recently, however, these findings have been challenged by survey research and anthropological studies of Latin American societies. The central theme of this body of analysis has been that adaptation and integration of marginal rural-to-urban migrants within large metropolitan and increasingly ghettoized urban centers containing large metropolitan huge areas of impoverished squatter settlements. Urban squatter settler form an integral part of the urban social structure who are no less integrated into the urban social and political environment than are the urban born city population. Some of the analysis advanced to account for this level of adjustment to the urban environment includes the migrants' easy cooptation into urban patro-client politics; their low levels of material and social expectations; and the preservation of their strong integrative social institutions such as the extended family and religious activity.