Dwa typy dyskursu w amerykańskiej socjologii miasta

Abstract

The paper means to familiarize leading currents within the city theory. There are at least two approaches or two types of discourse about the city to be distinguished. The first one, represented by the class accumulation theory of David Harvey, stems from a neo-Marxian understanding. This approach studies city as the physical embodiment of social, political and economical relationships and leading argumentation is that city itself is result of more fundamental forces and that it is shaped by social powers that affect all aspects of human existence. Those forces are understood on the basis of the process of production of physical and social environment, including the operation of capital circulation, the spatial organization of production, exchange, the transformation of time-space relations, and political conflicts between territorially based class alliances. The socond approach represented here as Mark Gottdiener’s Sodo-spatial Perspective refers to the Weberian way of thinking. His analysis deals more with people’s experiences, in cities and cultural aspects of urban life. It explains how people react to living in the urban arena and how city influences and organizes their life. It includesvarious resources and conditions (economic, political and cultural), organizations and factors that form the urban milieu.