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Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism
Abstract
Wirth's (1938) theory of urban life has been eclipsed in recent years by a perspective that denies the importance of ecological factors. This view, though more accurate than Wirth's, fails to account for the pervasive "unconventionality" (deviance, invention, etc.) of urban life. A model is presented here to remedy that problem; it reintroduces the variable of size but in a manner distinct from Writh's. Population concentration produces a diversityof subcultures, strengthens them, and fosters diffusion among them. Together, these three mediating variables account for urban unconventionality. The four propositions of the theory and three others deducible from it are examined against existing research.
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Citations
Cited by
Muniz, A. M., & O'Guinn, T. C. (2001) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/319618 · Cited by 3,998
Comparative Urbanism: New Geographies and Cultures of Theorizing the Urban
Robinson, J. (2016) · International Journal of Urban and Regional Research · doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12273 · Cited by 432
Patterson, O. (2014) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043123 · Cited by 399
Environmental Design, Crime, and Prevention: An Examination of Community Dynamics
Taylor, R. B., & Gottfredson, S. (1986) · Crime and Justice · doi:10.1086/449128 · Cited by 174
Disproportionate Minority Contact in Canada: Police and Visible Minority Youth
Fitzgerald, R. T., & Carrington, P. J. (2011) · Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice · doi:10.3138/cjccj.53.4.449 · Cited by 57
Metadata
- Authors
- Fischer, C. S.
- Venue
- American Journal of Sociology
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1975-05
- Volume
- 80
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1319-1341
- ISSN
- 0002-9602 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5390
- OpenAlex
- W2009747771
- Cited by
- 729
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 43.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Fischer, C. S. (1975). Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism. American Journal of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1086/225993
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
