Surrounding all major cities in the United States are numerous smaller communities collectively known as suburbia. The most popular place of residence in America, the suburbs are peaceful and tranquil environments, where civility prevails and disturbances of the peace are uncommon. Drawing on research, observation, and hundreds of in-depth interviews conducted during a twelve-month study of an affluent New York City suburb, M.P. Baumgartner reveals that the apparent serenity of the suburb is caused by the avoidance of open conflict. She contends that although nonviolence, nonconfrontation, and tolerance produce a superficial social harmony, these behaviors arise from disintegrative tendencies in modern culture--transience, fragmentation, weak family and communal ties, isolation, and indifference--conditions customarily viewed as sources of disorder, antagonism, and violence. A kind of moral minimalism pervades the suburbs, a disorganized social order that, with the suburbs' rapid growth in America, promises to be the moral order of the future. A valuable contribution to the literature on social control, this study of conflict management should attract general readers and scholars alike.

Explores how the suburban imaginary, composed of the built environment and imaginative texts, functions as a resource for living out the "good life"

This ethnography of teenage suburban drug dealers “provides a fascinating and powerful counterpoint to the devastation of the drug war” (Alice Goffman, author of On the Run). When we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening in disadvantaged, crime-ridden, urban neighborhoods. But drugs are used everywhere. And teenage users in the suburbs tend to buy drugs from their peers, dealers who have their own culture and code, distinct from their urban counterparts. In Code of the Suburb, Scott Jacques and Richard Wright offer a fascinating ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. Drawing on fieldwork among teens in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, they carefully parse the complicated code that governs relationships among buyers, sellers, police, and other suburbanites. That code differs from the one followed by urban drug dealers in one crucial respect: whereas urban drug dealers see violent vengeance as crucial to status and security, the opposite is true for their suburban counterparts. As Jacques and Wright show, suburban drug dealers accord status to deliberate avoidance of conflict, which helps keep their drug markets more peaceful—and, consequently, less likely to be noticed by law enforcement.

Most social geography undergraduate textbooks are structured around different social categories, splintering the discussion of gender, class, race and increasingly now sexuality and disability, into separate chapters. This has the effect, firstly, of making social relations rather than space (the raison d'etre of human geography) the focus of undergraduate books; secondly of ignoring the way that social relations are negotiated and contested in different space. Rather than reproducing this conventional social geography format the aim of this proposed text is to make space the focus of analysis. In doing so the intention is to make complex theoretical debates about space more accessible to students and encourage them to look at their own environments in new ways.

This book describes and analyzes authority relationships in classrooms through explorations of theory, prior research, and contemporary qualitative studies. The emphasis is on the social construction of authority and the crucial role authority plays in K-16 teachers' pedagogy and students' academic engagement and achievement. The introductory chapter grounds the reader in social theory on authority; presents groundbreaking qualitative studies of classroom authority; describes ideological debates over authority in schools; and discusses implications for research, practice, and policy. Six field-based qualitative studies illuminate the dynamics of authority across a spectrum of K-12 and college settings. These studies feature a variety of methodologies, theoretical lenses, and interpretive perspectives that the authors use to gather and analyze data. The emphasis in all the chapters is on the nature, negotiation, and implications of authority relations between teachers and students. The epilogue pulls the book together by elucidating new findings and vital themes that expand the reader's vision of what classroom authority means, how it is constructed, and why it is so important. This book seeks to revitalize dialogue and research on classroom authority with attention to the contextual factors that bear on its social construction. It is aimed at teacher educators, scholars, policymakers, students of education, and practitioners who seek empirically based understanding of authority that is inextricably connected to classroom life and ultimately to the larger issues of educational quality and democracy in schools and society.

Like an ecosystem, cities develop, change, thrive, adapt, expand, and contract through the interaction of myriad components. Religion is one of those living parts, shaping and being shaped by urban contexts. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Cities is an outstanding interdisciplinary reference source to the key topics, problems, and methodologies of this cutting-edge subject. Representing a diverse array of cities and religions, the common analytical approach is ecological and spatial. It is the first collection of its kind and reflects state-of-the-art research focusing on the interaction of religions and their urban contexts. Comprising 29 chapters, by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into three parts: Research methodologies Religious frameworks and ideologies in urban contexts Contemporary issues in religion and cities Within these sections, emerging research and analysis of current dynamics of urban religions are examined, including: housing, economics, and gentrification; sacred ritual and public space; immigration and the refugee crisis; political conflicts and social change; ethnic and religious diversity; urban policy and religion; racial justice; architecture and the built environment; religious art and symbology; religion and urban violence; technology and smart cities; the challenge of climate change for global cities; and religious meaning-making of the city. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Cities is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and urban studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as sociology, history, architecture, urban planning, theology, social work, and cultural studies.

The urban world is an exciting terrain for investigating the central institutions, structures and problems of the social world and how they have transformed through the last 200 years. This Reader comprises sections on urban social theory, racial and social difference in the city, culture in everyday life, culture and the urban economy, globalization and transnational social relations and the regulation of urban space. Drawing together seminal selections covering the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, this Reader includes forty-three significant writings from eminent names such as Simmel, Wirth, Park, Burgess, DuBois, Zukin, Sassen, and Harvey. The 2nd edition illuminates more recent urban issues such as sprawl, sustainability, immigration and urban protest. Selections are predominantly sociological, but some readings cross disciplinary boundaries. Providing an essential resource for students of urban studies, this book brings together important but, till now, widely dispersed writings. Editorial commentaries precede each entry; introducing the text, demonstrating its significance, and outlining the issues surrounding its topic, whilst the associated bibliography enables deeper investigations.