Recommended Reading for Urban Sociology Comprehensive Exams

Last Updated: Summer 2011

Classical Foundations

  1. Engels, Friedrich [1845] The Condition of the Working Class in England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  1. Tonnies, Ferdinand. [1887] Community and Society. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc, 2002.
  1. Simmel, Georg [1903] “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (pp. 30-45) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Weber, Max [1921] “The City (Non-legitimate Domination)” (pp. 1212-1374) in G. Roth and C. Wittich (eds.) Economy and Society.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
  1. Benjamin, Walter [c. 1935] “Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century” (pp. 46-57) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.

The Chicago School

  1. Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess. [1925] The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.
  1. Short, James. 1971. The Social Fabric of the Metropolis: Contributions to the Chicago School of Urban Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. (edited volume, read introduction and all 20 chapters.)
  1. Wirth, Louis [1938] “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (pp. 58-97) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Whyte, William Foote. [1943] Street Corner Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
  1. Drake, St. Clair and Horace Clayton. [1945] Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  1. Walter Firey. 1945. “Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables,” American Sociological Review, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 140-148.

The Community Question

  1. Gans, Herbert J. [1962] The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans. New York: The Free Press, 1982.
  1. Whyte, William H. [1956] Organizational Man, Parts I and VII (pp. 3-62, 267-404). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
  1. Jane Jacobs [1961] “The Uses of Sidewalks” (pp. 111-129) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Gans, Herbert [1968] “Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life: A Reevaluation of Definitions” (pp. 170-195) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Kasarda, John D. and Morris Janowitz. 1974. “Community Attachment in Mass Society,” American Sociological Review, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 328-339.
  1. Wellman, Barry and Barry Leighton. 1979 “Networks, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Approaches to the Study of the Community Question.” Urban Affairs Review. vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 363-390.
  1. Fischer, Claude S. 1982. To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
  1. Fischer, Claude. 1995. “The Subcultural Theory of Urbanism: A Twentieth-Year Assessment,” American Journal of Sociology, vol.101, no.3, pp. 543-577.
  1. Hampton, Keith and Barry Wellman. 2003. “Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb.” City and Communityvol.2, no.3, pp. 277-311.

Political Economy Approaches

  1. Castells, Manuel. 1977. The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977.
  1. Bluestone, Barry and Bennett Harrison. 1982. The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
  1. Friedman, John and Goetz Wolff. 1982. “WorldCity Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. vol.6, no.2, pp. 309-344.
  1. Mollenkopf, John H. 1983. The Contested City. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
  1. Gottdiener, Mark. 1985. The Social Production of Urban Space. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985
  1. Logan, John and Harvey Molotch. [1987]. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
  1. Zukin, Sharon. 1989. Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
  1. Stone, Clarence N. 1989. Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989.
  1. Walton, John. 1993."Urban Sociology: The Contribution and Limits of Political Economy," Annual Review of Sociology. vol. 19, no.1, pp. 301-320.

Urban Poverty and the Ghetto Underclass

  1. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
  1. Wacquant, Loic [1989] “The Ghetto, the State and the New Capitalist Economy” (pp. 413-449) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. New York: NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
  1. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
  1. Bourgois, Philippe. 1995. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Bario. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  1. Jargowsky, Paul A. 1997. Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.
  1. Small, Mario Luis and Katherine Newman. 2001. “Urban Poverty after The Truly Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood and Culture” Annual Review of Sociology.vol.27, no.1, pp. 23-45.
  1. Venkatesh, SudhirAlladi. 2000. American Project: The Rise and Fall of the Modern Ghetto. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
  1. Small, Mario Luis. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
  1. Patillo, Mary. 2007. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
  1. City & Community, Volume 7, Number 4, 2008: “Symposium on the Ghetto” (p.347-398):
  • Haynes, Bruce and Ray Hutchinson. “The Ghetto: Origins, History, Discourse”
  • Gans, Herbert. “Involuntary Segregation and the Ghetto: Disconnecting Process and Place”
  • Beveridge, Andrew. “A Century of Harlem in New York City: Some Notes on Migration, Consolidation, Segregation, and Recent Developments”
  • Vigil, Diego. “Barrio Geneology”
  • Blokland, Talja. “From the Outside Looking in: A “European” Perspective on the Ghetto”
  • Monteiro, Circe. “Enclaves, Condominiums, and Favelas: Where Are the Ghettos in Brazil?”
  • Chaddha, Anmol and William Julius Wilson. “Reconsidering the Ghetto”
  • Small, Mario Luis. “Four Reasons to Abandon the Idea of “The Ghetto””
  1. Sampson, Robert. 2008. “Moving to Inequality: Neighborhood Effects and Experiments Meet Social Structure” American Journal of Sociology. vol. 114, no. 1, pp. 189-231.
  1. Dominguez, Silvia. 2011. Getting Ahead: Social Mobility, Public Housing, and Immigrant Networks. New York: NYU Press, 2011.

The Post-Industrial City

  1. Fishman, Robert [1990] “Megalopolis Unbound” (pp. 395-412) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Sassen, Saskia. [1991]The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
  1. Davis, Mike [1992] “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” (pp. 355-368) in P. Kasinitz (ed.) Metropolis: Center and Symbol of our Times. NYU Press, 1995.
  1. Neil Smith. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. New York: Routledge, 1996.
  1. Janet Abu-Lughod. 1999.New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global Cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
  1. Dear, Michael (ed.) 2002. From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory. Sage Publications, 2002.
  1. Lloyd, Richard. [2006]Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City. Routledge, 2010.