In this ground-breaking study, Sophie Body-Gendrot provides a comparative analysis of new types of welfare and social maintenance policies of states and o cities in charge of strategic functions in the global economy. Focusing on concrete urban settings in the USA and in France, the book examines the relationship between national and local decision-makers, including their policy rhetorics meant to check moral panics over juvenile crime and violent events. Beyond such institutional responses, it examines the production of alternative norms and of new forms of politics displayed by the powerless in marginalized neighborhoods.
This work provides an important contribution to the study and interpretation of urban violence, the changing role of the state in an era of deregulation, the growth of inequalities and power conflicts over space and citizen participation. It calls for a decoding of local-global, national-local concepts and for a new theorization of these issues. The text is informed by extensive fieldwork, including interviews with mayors, judges, police officers, community leaders, youths in jail or on probation, and grassroots organizations, unveiling insights into such timely questions as:
What innovations do cities display to maintain social control in these settings and what is their leverage to do so?
Will the established order break down in violence and disorder?
How serious is the threat?
What is the challenge for the "post-city"?
How do American and French global cities compare on such issues?
The Social Control of Cities draws from a wide range of disciplines, including political sociology and history, and links urban studies to broader questions regarding the criminology of exclusion.
