Publisher's Synopsis
The relationship between space, place and race, and sociology's contribution to that, is the theme of this ebook. When Urry argued that 'place (and space) should be central to sociology' (Urry 2004: 30) he was clearly signalling that was not the case; his essay examines some of the reasons why that is so, especially sociology's uneven engagement with them. While space was largely under-explored in classical sociology, Urry shows that space and place made a comeback in the 1970s and 1980s, through the works of Castells, Massey and Harvey. Significantly two of these three are primarily known as geographers rather than sociologists and this reflects the ways in which sociology has ceded space and place to geography in its exploration of dichotomises between urban and rural ways of life and forms of community life. Hence it appears that sociologists 'have given the appearance of not being interested in place-perhaps preferring to leave the matter to geographers.' (Gieryn, 2000: 464). Drawing on Massey's progressive sense of place in particular Urry goes on to make a case for a sense of place that is dynamic and mobile, not static; as spaces characterised and made up flows and networks, rather than any neatly bounded notion; and as spaces where difference, particularly gender and ethnicity are central. To an extent, the latter, especially through the interest in diaspora communities and multiple meanings of home, fuses all of Urry's elements of place as made up of flows of people and things across borders that also reflects his critique of the 'container' model of society (Urry 2000, 2001).
