Product Description: In this concise history of expropriation of land for the common good in Europe and North America from medieval times to 1800, Susan Reynolds contextualizes the history of an important legal doctrine regarding the relationship between government and the institution of private property...read more

Product Description: Research on gated communities is moving away from the hard concept of a 'gated community' to the more fluid one of urban gating. The latter allows communities to be viewed through a new lens of soft boundaries, modern communication and networks of influence...read more

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How do we go about imagining different and better worlds for ourselves? Collective Dreams looks at ideals of community, frequently embraced as the basis for reform across the political spectrum, as the predominant form of political imagination in America today. Examining how these ideals circulate without having much real impact on social change provides an opportunity to explore the difficulties of practicing critical theory in a capitalist society. Different chapters investigate how ideals of community intersect with conceptions of self and identity, family, the public sphere and civil society, and the state, situating community at the core of the most contested political and social arenas of our time. Ideals of community also influence how we evaluate, choose, and build the spaces in which we live, as the author’s investigations of Celebration, Florida, and of West Philadelphia show.Following in the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Keally McBride reveals how consumer culture affects our collective experience of community as well as our ability to imagine alternative political and social orders.Taking ideals of community as a case study, Collective Dreams also explores the structure and function of political imagination to answer the following questions: What do these oppositional ideals reveal about our current political and social experiences? How is the way we imagine alternative communities nonetheless influenced by capitalism, liberalism, and individualism? How can these ideals of community be used more effectively to create social change?

Product Description: In Communities and Networks, Katherine Giuffre takes the science of social network analysis and applies it to key issues of living in communities, especially in urban areas, exploring questions such as: How do communities shape our lives and identities? How do they foster either conformity or innovation? What holds communities together and what happens when they fragment or fall apart? How is community life changing in response to technological advances? Refreshingly accessible and built on fascinating case examples, this unique book provides not only the theoretical grounding necessary to understand how and why the burgeoning area of social network analysis can be useful in studying communities, but also clear technical explanations of the tools of network analysis and how to gather and analyze real-world network data...read more

Product Description: For close to a century, the field of community criminology has examined the causes and consequences of community crime and delinquency rates. Nevertheless, there is still a lot we do not know about the dynamics behind these connections...read more

Product Description: Community Without Community in Digital Culture presents the view that our digital culture is determined not by greater connection, but by the separation and gap that is a necessary concomitant of our fundamental technicity.

Product Description: In the different versions of multiculturalism that have re-shaped English-speaking societies and political systems, identities appear more plastic than in societies which have constructed their national narratives on more stubborn denials of their colonial and patriarchal pasts; yet, the myth of purity (or authenticity) and separatist temptations remain very real parameters of identity politics...read more