Page 227 - Cultural Studies Dictionary
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DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES
binary. However, when Derrida deconstructs the binaries of Western philosophy
and attacks the ‘metaphysic of presence’ (that is, the idea of a fixed self-present
meaning) he must use the conceptual language of the very Western philosophy he
204 seeks to undo. In Derrida’s view there is no escape from reason, that is, from the
very concepts of philosophy, and to mark this tension he places his concepts ‘under
erasure’.
To place a word under erasure is to first write the word and then cross it out,
leaving both the word and its crossed-out version, for example, Reason Reason. This
procedure indicates that the word is inaccurate or unstable but is nevertheless
necessary. The use of accustomed and known concepts ‘under erasure’ is intended
to destabilize the familiar as at one and the same time useful, necessary, inaccurate
and mistaken. Thus does Derrida seek to expose the undecidability of metaphysical
oppositions, and indeed of meaning as such. He does this by arguing within and
against philosophy and its attempts to maintain its authority in matters of truth.
Links Deconstruction, logocentricism, meaning, poststructuralism, representation, text,
truth
Urbanization The idea of urbanization refers to the social, economic and cultural
practices that generate metropolitan zones and involves turning parts of the
countryside into a cityscape as one of the features of capitalist industrialization.
Urban life is both the outcome and symbol of modernity and is indicative of the
ambiguity of modernity itself. Thus, Durkheim, Marx and Weber, the so-called
‘founders’ of sociology and students of the nineteenth-century urban developments
of modern capitalism, all regarded urbanization with ambivalence. Durkheim
hoped that urban life would be a space for creativity, progress and a new moral
order while fearing it would be the site of moral decay and anomie. For Weber,
urban life was the cradle of modern industrial democracy whilst also engendering
instrumental reason and the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucratic organization. Marx viewed
the city as a sign of progress and the great leap of productivity which capitalism
brought about while also observing that urban life was a site of poverty, indifference
and squalor.
The development of urban studies owes much to the Chicago School of the
1960s, who advanced a functionalist urban ecology approach to the study of city
life. The typical processes of expansion of the city can best be illustrated according
to the Chicago School by a series of concentric circles that radiate outwards from
the Central Business District (CBD), with each zone said to be inhabited by a
particular type or class of people and activities. A more contemporary emphasis in
the study of urbanization is on the political economy of cities, especially as it
operates as an aspect of globalization. Here the stress is on the structuring of space
as a created environment through the spread of industrial capitalism. The
geography of cities is held to be the result of the power of capitalism in creating
markets and controlling the workforce. In particular, capitalism is sensitive to the
relative advantages of urban locations, including factors such as labour costs,
degrees of unionization and tax concessions.