Abstract
I am flattered that Michael Borer used my Urban Villagers as an example of “culturalist” analysis but it does not belong there. According to Prof. Borer, “Boston's redevelopment agency underestimated, or disregarded, the emotional value the residents had invested in their home turf and bulldozed the neighborhood against the residents’ better wishes” (p. 188).
For Prof. Borer, “this is a good example of the ‘costs’ of not taking the meaning (his italics) of places seriously” (ibid). In reality, however, Boston's city fathers were not interested in the West Enders’ wishes; they sought to help a faltering CBD by replacing them with the more affluent shoppers living in a luxury housing project. In addition, the city needed the federal funds flowing from urban renewal for its depleted tax coffers. That the CBD landowners were powerful and that the developer was politically very close to the mayor did not hurt either. As for the West Enders, they lacked the political power to be considered in the decision making process.
Actually, Prof. Borer's misinterpretation of my analysis is, like too much of the rest of his article, an attempt to force a dubious choice between culture and structure on empirical reality. Common sense alone would suggest that the recurring social relations we call structures cannot exist without their participants expressing sentiments, making meanings, “practicing” culture, etc., and, humans not being free–floating, doing so in one or another place.
Thus, demonstrating that every social action involves culture and place is obvious and by itself unlikely to yield new insights or research ventures. Why not combine cultural and structural analyses to look at how urban cultures and places are shaped by economic, political, and other power structures and by class, status, racial, gender, and other hierarchies?
Or does culturalism seek to keep economic and political concepts out of sociology? That may help to explain why we are still arguing about culture versus social structure.