Anton Zijderveld

A theory of urbanity : the economic and civic culture of cities

Cities provide for people, not just functionally in terms of jobs, obligations and practical pursuits, but also, and above all, emotionally. We like some cities and detest others. Despite shared rationalizations and common modes of administration and design, each city has its own culture. A culture is typically human in that it contains all dimensions of the human, personal condition--from the lowest to the most sublime. Urban culture comprises both economic and civic culture, and is the source of a citys vitality. For todays urban sprawls, which have a weak and failing economic and civic culture, the task of the urban administration and various economic and civic organizations is to strengthen conditions that can prevent the emergence of urban anomie. With suburbanization, the edge city, and the emergence of cyberspace, some argue that cities, as integrated places of working and living, are things of the past. Zijderveld argues that people are and remain social animals, who like and need one anothers company, particularly in their economic, socio-cultural, and political activities. Throughout the ages, cities have provided the environment in which people fulfill these needs. Anton Zijderveld discusses urban preferences, the organizations and ramifications of urbanity, the modernization of urban culture, the uneasy alliance between urbanity and the interventionist state, and the cultural dimensions of urban renewal. Zijderveld sees the economic and civic culture of the city as the centerpiece of contemporary urban management and contemporary urban democracy. In this sense, the new technology is an ally of the new urban renewal. Most postmodern treatises on the end of the city are impressionistic and unsystematic. In contrast, Zijderveld puts the qualitative dimensions of city life into focus, catching its pulse and cultural rhythms in a systematic context that prior studies have lacked. As such, it will be of great interest to urban administrators, planning experts, and students of urban studies.

Humor, laughter, and sociological theory

Murray Daviss Whats So Funny? The Comic Conception of Culture and Society is a welcome occasion to reflect on a field of sociological research that has gained momentum during the past couple of decades: the sociology of humor. This is, in fact, quite a late development. Laughter has amused, and puzzled, philosophers since Plato and Aristotle, and received thorough analyses in modernity from Hobbes to Bergson and Plessner. Very few sociologists picked up the sociological content of Bergsons celebrated essay Le Rire (1983). Like philosophy, psychology has a respectable tradition of humor research. Many psychologists have been inspired by Freuds psychoanalytical treatise on Der Witz (1916) that he, of course, linked to the unconscious. Experimental psychologists have also focused their research on humor and laughter. In the wake of Radcliffe-Browns descriptions of joking relationships, cultural anthropologists have often limited themselves to the ceremonialized banter in kinship systems, but a few also provided fascinating insights into the considerably different worlds of humor and laughter among non-Western civilizations. Until recently sociology lagged behind all this, and that is quite remarkable because if there is a phenomenon that is truly social and solidly entangled in culture, it is humor. One of the main reasons may be the fact that sociology has been predominantly social problem oriented. Its main focus has always been-consciously or unconsciously-on misery and tragedy. Anomie, alienation, inequality, the underclass, structural injustice, drug addiction, crime, and other shady components of human societies have been the primary preoccupation of most sociologists. It was hoped that sound