AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: The Social Control of Cities: A Comparative Perspective (Studies in Urban and Social Change) by Sophie Body-Gendrot ISBN: 0-631-20520-9 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: January, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $74.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: Useless for average person/student
Comment: Our entire class read this book as part of an Urban Anthropology class. The whole class thought this book would only be appropriate in a doctoral program or among colleages for this particular topic. She must have been paid according to word count. Her writing style is overly complex and she contradicts herself on many points throughout the book. Her language is above even most college students' vocabulary. Some of her words are not in an average or collegiate dictionary. She is also very reptitive. 25 sets of thumbs way down on this one.

Rating: 5
Summary: A comparative study of violence: France and the USA
Comment: Sophisticated observers have realized for a long time that the United States and France have much to learn from one another when it comes to combatting violence. But discussions on this topic very often are based on very traditional and reified concepts of what constitutes youth violence and with rather stereotyped ideas about the social structure of the urban scene in Paris, New York, Chicago, Lyons and Marseilles. In this book by Sophie Body-Gendrot, the well-known professor of political science at the Sorbonne, there is no room for such cliches or conventional thinking. The author dares to tackle the complex relationship between the youth violence one sees today in the inner-cities of New York or certain suburbs of Paris and the overarching social-political reality of contemporary society: world economic globalization whose sites are often concentrated in these very cities. But the ordinary observer rarely if ever connects the two phenomena. Body-Gendrot's careful reading of a very large body of prior research and her analysis of these data is unflinching as she attempts to look at "the specificity of socio-cultural forms through which the general dynamics of urban violence and the state's management of social disorder" operate differently in various large U.S. and French cities. Her unique contribution to the literature is to add the all-important variable of globalization to the mix in attempting to explain urban violence. The book takes a detailed look at the French approach to crime prevention -- both historically and contemporaneously -- which puts high emphasis on a search for equality, social prevention, welfare, and state intervention for the treatment of marginality and as a check on uprisings as well as the American one which relies on individualism, self-help, deterrence and punishment. . . nad, of course, capital punishment. In seeking to understand the choices both societies are making towards the goal of public safety at both the local and state levels, Body-Gendrot never descends into a simplistic anti-Americanism, despite all of our current malaise and youth school massacres. Neither does she chauvinistically privilege the French approaches. Both societies are treated with respect and with a cool scientific eye that attempts only to discern the best results from the quantitative and qualitative studies she examines. By way of a meaningful conclusion she narrates the 1990s story of Cite des Poetes, a housing project in the town of Pierrefitte, Seine St-Denis and the residents co-production of safety, partnering with the authorities, the youth and other available organizations. This highly believeable narration is an important contribution to violence prevention studies. It is not just another "success story" but a compendium worthy of meditation by public officials and all who are involved in constructing a safe society. She holds out the hope that cities may appear more and more as sites for the modernization of institutions and for innovative practices in social control. Her words have application not just in France and the USA but in Brazil and any other nation struggling with these problems. The more one contemplates her eminently believable and pragmatic approach, the more one feels one is in the presence of a reincarnation of Tocqueville, equally at ease discussing France or the United States. This book should be on the "required reading list" for any university course (graduate or undergraduate) concerned with the issues of violence and violence prevention -- in any conceivable discipline.