Communication, Culture, and Making Meaning in the City: Ethnographic Engagements in Urban Environments

(Hardback)

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As communicative, cultural, and political spaces, cities present a vast array of racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and socioeconomic experiences around which human communities take shape. This shaping forms a germinal point of mass cultural life. City planners decide where buildings and neighborhoods are developed, which ultimately affects who residents interact with, how they get there, and why they choose city life. From these experiences, boundaries and possibilities arise that define cultures of the city. In Communication, Culture, and Making Meaning in the City: Ethnographic Engagements in Urban Environments, contributors focus on theorizing the notion of the city as a communicatively constituted cultural space, drawing on situated, reflexive ethnographic examinations of the city to show the complex and varied ways in which cities produce social meaning.

Reviews

Atay and Brower have brought together compelling ethnographic accounts from a variety of fascinating cities. The communicative dimensions of urban spaces are revealed through the interpretation and critique of human existence where planning and order meet improvisation and fluidity. -- Alberto Gonzlez, Bowling Green State University
Atay and Brower's Communication, Culture, and Making Meaning in the City is a one-of-a-kind treat for readers who desire conscientious inquiry on complicated yet vital cultural issues on the city. Situated as a reflexive examination of the quotidian particularities of city spaces and life, this accessible book invites readers to encounter city experiences likely new to us. Yet the book also works in ways that prompt readers to reflect on our own interactions in/with city spaces, digging deeplyperhaps for the very first timeinto what they have meant, or could come to mean, to us and others. -- Keith Berry, University of South Florida
A comprehensive and compelling collection about cities; an innovative assemblage of chapters that exemplify how to study space; and an essential text for researchers interested in the residents, relationships, temporalities, and trajectories of urban life. -- Tony Adams, Bradley University

Author Bio

Ahmet Atay is associate professor at the College of Wooster. Jay Brower is associate professor and chair of communication at Western Connecticut State University.