CUES is happily housed in a Sociology Department because cities and urbanization have been central to sociology as a discipline since its founding. As a favorite site for the study of “modern society,” through material connections between colony and metropole, and in inspiring distinctions such as nature/society and Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft, the city shaped sociology’s classical foundations. Yet despite generations of critiques, these binary categories continue to shape (and constrain) much contemporary urban sociological research. Instead, through our research and ongoing Critical Urban Studies (CUS) working group, CUES draws on critical traditions in social theory and geography–including historical materialism, regional planning, and de- and anti-colonial ecological thought–to contribute to the ongoing project of expanding the “epistemological unconscious” of urban sociology and to engage in interdisciplinary thinking in geography and the social sciences. Our methodological and theoretical commitments include:
- A historical, multi-spatial, and materialist approach to urban questions;
- Sensitivity to urbanization’s historical and contemporary entwinements with racial capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy and other large-scale processes; and
- Attention to intersections of culture and political economy in the production and inhabitation of urban space.