ERIC Number: EJ900938
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Jul
Pages: 32
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0037-7732
EISSN: N/A
Scenes: Social Context in an Age of Contingency
Silver, Daniel; Clark, Terry Nichols; Yanez, Clemente Jesus Navarro
Social Forces, v88 n5 p2293-2324 Jul 2010
This article builds on an important but underdeveloped social science concept--the "scene" as a cluster of urban amenities--to contribute to social science theory and subspecialties such as urban and rural, class, race and gender studies. Scenes grow more important in less industrial, more expressively-oriented and contingent societies where traditional constraints fall and self-motivated action around consumption, leisure and amenities is a more important feature of social cohesiveness and interaction. Scenes contextualize the individual through amenities and consumption-based expressions of shared sensibilities as to what is right, beautiful and genuine. This framework adds to concepts such as neighborhood and workplace by specifying 15 dimensions of the urban scenescape. Like neighborhood and workplace, scenes reduce anomie, but because of their focus on consumption and the use of specific amenities, they are more consistent with today's ethos of contingency, moving beyond traditional ideas of the fundamental power of social, family and occupational background. We introduce a new amenities-focused database to measure and analyze scenes and their dimensions for each of 40,000 U.S. zip codes. We illustrate the framework by applying it to one distinct type of scene, bohemia, and analyze its position in the broader social system. (Contains 4 tables, 5 figures and 19 notes.)
Descriptors: Urban Areas, Social Environment, Quality of Life, Neighborhoods, Social Theories, Urban Planning, Cultural Activities, Community Characteristics
University of North Carolina Press. 116 South Boundary Street, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288. Tel: 800-848-6224; Tel: 919-966-7449; Fax: 919-962-2704; e-mail: uncpress@unc.edu; Web site: http://uncpress.unc.edu/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A