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In the past two decades gay neighborhoods have become familiar parts of the urban landscape. Although these areas may include lesbians, gay men dominate their distinct subcultures, their businesses and their residences, their street life and their political activities. In the book " The City and the Grassroots," author Manuel Castells argues that the predominance of gay men in the creation of distinctly homosexual urban neighborhoods reflects a profound gender difference. In relationship to space, gay men and lesbians, he says, behave first and foremost as men and women. The main purpose of the paper is to clarify the ambiguities surrounding the existence and significance of spatial concentration among lesbians in urban communities. In order to do so, the paper attempts to replicate Castells' method of analysis as closely as possible in a study of lesbian community in the U.S. city. While the paper rejects Castells' characterization of the gender differences between gay men and lesbians, there are important dimensions along which gay men and lesbians may relate differently to urban space and urban politics. These differences do reflect the fact that lesbians are women.

The concept of 'identity' is central to much contemporary sociology, reflecting a crisis that manifests itself in two ways. Firstly, there is a view that identity is both vital and problematic in this period of high modernity. Secondly, while this awareness is reflected in sociology, its accounts of identity are inconsistent, under-theorized and incapable of bearing the analytical load required. As a result, there is an inherent contradiction between a valuing of identity as so fundamental as to be crucial to personal well-being, and a theorization of 'identity' that sees it as something constructed, fluid, multiple, impermanent and fragmentary. The contemporary crisis of identity thus expresses itself as both a crisis of society, and a crisis of theory. This paper explores the diverse ways in which 'identity' is deployed before turning to case-studies of its use by Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells. This strategy demonstrates the widespread and diverse concern with identity before exploring how problematic it has become, even in the work of two of the world's leading sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, under the perception of increasing transformations brought about by globalisation, scholars started investigating what happened to the notion of place. Among others, the views of Manuel Castells, Robert Sack and Doreen Massey contributed to construct an opposition between a parochial, bounded, and reactionary notion of place versus a global, unbounded, and relation one. This latter view, under the label of 'progressive sense of place', has since become a dominant paradigm in geography. This paper aims to ground these theoretical arguments in relation to how people understand place today. Qualitative empirical information collected in four different regional contexts in Western Europe confirms the discursive existence of the above opposition. Yet, it also challenges the ways in which notions of thickness/thinness and boundedness/unboundedness relate to the regressive or progressive character of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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New Urban Sociology began in Europe at the beginning of the 1970s and then spread to the United States. It also influenced urban studies in Japan. This article examines the changing debates that have occurred in New Urban Sociology since its introduction to Japan in the late 1970s. The twenty years since its introduction from the West can be divided into three stages. The first covers the period from 1977 to 1985, when French urban sociology, particularly Manuael Castells’ theory of the state, was highly influential. The second stage, from 1986 to 1992, focused on theories of urban social movements and the concept of global city in a context of urban renewal in Japan’s major cities. The third stage, from 1992 to the present, is characterized by a transformation of New Urban Sociology into a sociological theory of space under globalization that has been heavily influenced by the work of David Harvey. Née en Europe au début des années 1970, la Nouvelle Sociologie urbaine a ensuite atteint les Etats–Unis, mais elle a aussi influé sur les études urbaines au Japon. L’article examine l’évolution des débats qui ont animé la Nouvelle Sociologie urbaine depuis qu’elle y est arrivée d’Occident à la fin des années 1970. Les vingt années qui ont suivi peuvent se décomposer en trois phases. La première va de 1977 à 1985, alors que la sociologie urbaine française, notamment la théorie de l’État de Manuel Castells, faisait autorité. La deuxième, entre 1986 et 1992, s’attache aux théories des mouvements sociaux urbains et au concept de la ville planétaire (global city) parallèlement à une rénovation des grandes villes nippones. La troisième phase, de 1992 à nos jours, se caractérise par une transformation de la Nouvelle Sociologie urbaine en une théorie sociologique de l’espace soumis à la mondialisation, concept largement inspiré des travaux de David Harvey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manuel Castells (1996) famously argued that human processes are increasingly operating according to the logic of flows and it has now become commonplace to analyse movements of people, information and commodities in terms of flows. However, scholars have been slow to capture the dynamics of border enforcement practices in these terms. In this article, we argue that 'deportation' can best be understood, not as a discrete practice that is unidirectional, territorial and wholly controlled by individual states, but as a range of diverse practices used by states (and sometimes undermined by other parties) to try to control the circulation of people within a dynamic supra‐national space. By focusing on 'mobility control continuums' operating in selected countries at the peripheries of Europe, we capture the dynamics of state intervention in trans‐border flows and thereby contribute towards developing concepts and methodologies for the criminological study of border controls that are 'sensitive to the complexities of the global' (Aas 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing numbers of women with children living in western cities are entering the labour market, raising new questions about changes in the allocation of the tasks of social reproduction between household members and others and about the effects of the increasing time women now spend in the workplace. As Manuel Castells noted over 25 years ago, women’s unpaid labour has long been essential, not only in the domestic arena, but also in patching together facilities separated in space. The spatial layout of cities, with its specialized and segregated land-uses, only works, he argued, if women’s unpaid labour is available to connect urban locations. But many women now spend many more hours in the labour market, replacing their former domestic labour with a range of commodified goods and services as well as by help from a range of related or unrelated others, sometimes but not always remunerated and/or by state-provided or supported services. This article examines the consequences of the growth of women’s employment in Britain and the concomitant decline of the old breadwinner family, the growth of workfare policies that assume all individuals are available for waged work and the rise of commodified caring. The arguments are illustrated by empirical examples from interviews undertaken with middle-class mothers in waged work in London and Manchester in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the debate on urban politics and the legacies of writer Manuel Castells' book "The City and the Grassroots." His book presents a series of historical accounts of urban social movement based on primary data-gathering. Castell has been appreciated for his enthusiasm and willingness to engage with the commentators of his work during a panel session organized for the Association of American Geographers Conference in Philadelphia. The book's contribution to the current era of global neoliberalization has also been discussed.

In The City and the Grassroots, Manuel Castells recentered the city as the site of distinctively urban social movements and reaffirmed the role of purposive social action in constructing a distinctively urban space. Although Castells’ recitation of five centuries of urban political activism documents the consistent failure of such movements to achieve their goals, his account is persistently optimistic on at least three counts. First, recentering the city reminds us that, despite the failure of transitory political movements, the city endures as an opportunity for renewed political activism. The continual possibility of change offered by the city’s ontological persistence is separate from the fate of any given political intervention. Second, regardless of its specific success or failure, each episode of urban activism establishes a new context for the next encounter, its legacy persisting in the collective memories — the stock of mnemonic capital — of which the city is the repository. Third, Castells’ emphasis on political agency affirms that, while all action is ephemeral, its constitutive re-enactment ceaselessly provides openings for insurgency and transgression. This optimistic message is worth repeating today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the role of the local in globalization and particularly the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in this process: what are the spaces and flows that have the most significance in integrating the local culture and economy into the global flows and what are the possibilities and risks of this economic integration to the local economy and history? It seems when discussing the role of ICT in development of economies and societies, an important domain is often excluded: the local culture. Further, according to Manual Castells and other social scientists, the construction of individual identity in this process is important. Castells uses the Net as a representation of the global, and the self, the people we are as individuals, as a representation of the culture, the local. The term for postindustrial economies is knowledge-intensive economy or knowledge-based economy. This refers to the central role of information and knowledge, often education, research and development and expert knowledge, in the economy. In the production process this means a change from the Fordist model of mass production to flexible production. It also means increasingly customized production.

The article discusses issues related to squatting and its political effects on private property rights. Sociologist Manuel Castells has put forth various propositions regarding the relationship between state and local political movements. The state is an intermediary between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Although there are direct economic relations and conflicts between the bourgeoisie and the working class, these are now accompanied by the political conflicts between the state and the working class. Squatting in the public sector is characterized by a high degree of organization, the use of explicitly political tactics and the pursuit of political objectives. All this substantiates Castells' proposition that the intervention of the state evokes a political response in those with whom it comes in contact. The characteristics of squatting on public sector empty property do not amount to real politicization of the issue of right of landlords to keep their property empty at a time of homelessness. Instead the issue becomes one of local government efficiency.