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Review: Class and Power in American CitiesAuthor(s): Manuel CastellsSource: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May, 1984), pp. 270-273Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2067556

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270 REVIEW ESSAYSClass and Power in American CitiesThe Urban Real Estate Game: Playing Monopoly with Real Money, by JOE R. FEAGIN.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1983. 214 pp. $7.95 paper.Power and Crisis in the City: Corporations, Unions, and Urban Policy, by ROGER FRIEDLAND.New York: Schocken Books, 1983. 248 pp. $19.95 cloth.Restructuring the City: The Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment, by SUSAN S. FAIN-STEIN, NORMAN I. FAINSTEIN, RICHARD CHILD HILL, DENNIS JUDD, and MICHAEL PETERSMITH. New York: Longman, 1983. 296 pp. NPL cloth.MANUEL CASTELLSUniversity of California

At first sight, the readingof the three booksunder review is like the rerunof an old movie.The questions they address are classic in thesociological literature. Who holds power inthe city? Whose interests are fulfilled byurban redevelopment and whose are under-mined by it? Is business the dominant eliteresponsible for urban decay and uneven de-velopment? Have we not already gonethrough hese questions again and again, withthe only apparent result a broadeningof theranks of those who think cities are shaped byclass interests?What is common to these three books isthat they signal the striking change in per-spective that has occurred in urbanpoliticalsociology in the last decade:they ask, in fact,a very different research question from thatposed many years ago by Dahl, Hunter, orPolsby. The matteris not who has power inthe city, but who controls (and whose inter-ests are fulfilledby) what happenson the city.The city is no longer seen as an autonomoussocial system whose politics have to be de-ciphered, but rather as a social product re-sulting from larger societal forces and pro-cesses. Instead of studyingthe city's politicaloutputs, the seven authors of these bookstreat the city itself as an output of social pro-cesses. In so doing, they also explicitly rejectthe economisticassumptions requently nderly-ing recent analyses of the urbancrisis. Localgovernments do not go bankruptas financialinstitutions do; they are far more complexthanaccounting systems; they are sociopoliti-cal entities, and therefore their crises, theirexpansion,and their variationshave to be un-derstood as a social process of structurallyconditionedconflicts. Between social ecologyand public economics these books, represen-tative of a growingintellectual rend,reaffirmthe need for and the specificity of urbansociology.So what is the answer to this fundamentalquestion: how is the city socially produced?

The three books propose different, thoughbroadlycomplementary,answers based eitheron originalresearch or on secondary sourcesin the evolutionof Americancities and urbanpolicies in the period 1960-1980. For JoeFeagin, "The corporaterich-the employers,builders, industrial and commercial execu-tives, and construction companies-greatlydetermine the economic course of U.S. citiesbecause they control many important nvest-mentdecisions"(x). For RogerFriedland, hestate (both local and national) is the crucialagency for directingurbandevelopment, butits policies are shaped by corporateeconomicpower and by the unions'politicalpower. Forthe Fainsteins and their co-workers, the keyelement is the local politicalregime, itself theproduct of the dynamics of a state subjecttothe structuralpresence of capitalist interestsand to the demandsand struggles of popularmovements.To some extent, it is difficult to comparethe relative weight carriedby each argumentbecause the books are so different n style andin research methodology. Joe Feagin's TheUrban Real Estate Game is deliberately pro-vocative, political, and written for a largeaudience, with little use of sociological ter-minology. It takes its place in the great tradi-tion of advocate sociology exemplifiedby C.WrightMills. Whilerelyingon a vast amountof information,gathered romrecenturban it-erature as well as from journalistic sources,the book's purpose, unlike most of Feagin'spast work, is not to provide new empiricalknowledge,but to organize available nforma-tion so thatwe realize how capitalists(andnotjust capitalism)are the key actors in the pro-duction of urbanforms.

We read how profit-searchingor the largecorporations, subsidized and supported bygovernmentsat all levels, is the overarchinglogic for industrialshifts, for land develop-ment and housingfinancing,for the "manhat-tanizationof America,"for the gentrification

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REVIEW ESSAYS 271of centralcities, for the empireof the auto andits highway system of urban transportation,for the development of peripheral shoppingcenters and industrial parks, for suburbansprawl, and for urban renewal. Feagin thinksthat people can also affect the urbanprocessby mobilizingaroundtheirown interests, andhe cites Santa Monica as an example. Yet,most of his stories end with the unchallengeddominationof the powerfulcoalitionof bank-ers, developers, industrialcorporations, pub-lic officials, and politicians.Though much of his argument undeniablycorresponds to the reality of cities in theUnited States, particularlyn the sunbeltcitiesthat provide much of his information (he iscurrentlystudying Houston), it is also clearthat to go beyond denunciation oward expla-nation,we mustrefine the analysis, as Feaginhas done in other works. For instance, tocharacterize this process as a class strugglebetween the growth coalition and "thepeople" (sometimes redefined as "the poorand minorities,"or "the working people") isto extend the notion of class beyond itstheoreticalusefulness. We must differentiatebetweendifferentclass positions (andnotjustlevels in the scale of stratification)betweendifferent actors in the process of urbancon-flict, in order to understandtheir dynamicsand the potential spectrumof their alliances.Accepting Feagin's hypothesis of a capitalistdominanceof the urbanprocess, we still haveto distinguish different capitalist logics anddifferent capitalist segments to understandreality. Furthermore, we must be able toimaginea non-class basedconflict (or series ofconflicts) that could oppose different socialgroupsto a class actor (the capitalists)in theurban realm. The richness of the urbanstrug-gles is preciselythat they mobilizeagainstthedominantclass(es) a varietyof social groups,interests,and values, on a much broaderbasisthan their social class-specific interests.Whileone can understandFeagin'sattempttosimplifythe pictureso as to convey his mes-sage to a large public,we should bewareof anoversimplified image of reality. Betweenspeculators and people, there is society, asFeagin himself has remindedus consistentlyover the years.Roger Friedland's Power and Crisis in theCity proposesa morecomplexcausalmodel toexplain the extent of urban renewal, socialexpenditures,public jobs creation, and fiscalstrain n Americancentral cities between 1964and 1975.Implicitlyrelyingon JimO'Connor'stheory, Friedlandsees the state (local, state,and federal governments) as implementing

policies to accomplishboth economic growthand social control. Thus, urban and localpolicies will be conditioned by the economicand social trends characterizing each city.But-unlike the structuralist approach,Friedland argues-he introduces the com-plexity of social dynamics nto the picture andshows that structural conditions interact (inthe statistical sense) with his two key vari-ables, corporatepower and labor union powerin the city, to determine policies and policyoutputs.Friedland classifies the 130 largest centralcities in the United States by means of twodichotomies (high/low corporate power andhigh/low union power), using as indicators henumber of national corporate headquartersand the number of national labor unions ineach city. He then runs, separatelyfor eachgroupof cities, a series of regressionsbetweenbasic economic and demographic variablesand measures of urban renewal, "war onpoverty" expenditures, iscal strains, etc., andhe measures the difference in the effect ofeach variable between the two sets of citiesresulting from their classification in termsof union presence and corporate power.These differences,he considers, representthespecific effects of corporate power and unionpower on the city's policies. The results tendto show a strong influence of corporatepower, particularlyin areas related to eco-nomic growth, reinforcing he hypothesisthaturban redevelopment is motivated not byurban decay but by the opportunity to en-hance capitalist profit with public funds andprerogatives. Union influence seems to beweak on economic issues but significantonsocial policies, such as providing for morepublicjobs and social programs n those citieswith a high black presence and mobilization,while also correlatingwith higher police ex-penditure.Friedland elaborates these results by argu-ing that business' source of power lies in itscontrol of economic investment while unionsrely basically on their capacity to mobilize thegrassroots and to channel pressure throughthe Democratic party's politicalmachine.Yetit is difficult to argue that corporate businessdoes not directly intervene in the politicalscene, in an age in which the media and thecampaign machines (and therefore financialresources) have become more important hanmass movements in deciding elections. Goingeven further, one can see the Republicanparty, financed largely by business interests,engaging n grassroots mobilization, ncludingthe direct political participation of business

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272 REVIEW ESSAYSleaders. So it is incorrect o assumethat thereis a distinction in spheres of power that clus-ters economic power with business and politi-cal power with labor. Both are economic andpolitical actors.In fact, when Friedlanddescribes, in chap-ter 3, the changingeconomiesof centralcities,or when he provides the mostbrilliantanalysisto date of the sources of central city fiscalstrains, he opens up his model and allows fora moreasymmetricalanddiversifiedpatternofinfluence. But when he has to commenton theempiricalresults of his two mainvariables, heis driven to make such statements as "like anambivalent over the unions came down on theblacks with both concessions and fists" (179).What does this mean concretely? That inthose central cities with fifty or more nationalunions, the percentageof nonwhitepopulationin 1960 and the index of riot severity in1967-68 had a higher positive b coefficientwith personnel costs and with police coststhan in the other cities.The theme of the conflicting relationshipbetween unions and blacks in urbanpolicy isboth fundamentaland fascinating,and Fried-land makes his case very forcefully, but itcannotbe treatedseriouslyin termsof regres-sion equations. Friedland is constantly con-strained in his thinking and analysis by theneed to go back to his rather austere database. This book is typicalof the work of someof the best young sociologists, who do notblossom at their fullestpotentialbecause theyfeel the need to sacrifice to the rites of ill-understood scientism in the profession. Ofcourse, there is nothingwrongwith regressionanalysis. It is as legitimate a tool (not alegitimizingprinciple) as participantobserva-tion or historical case study. The problemarises when the tool comes to condition thethinking, when you have to adapt yourtheoretical framework o what you can mea-sure with a regressionequation: at this pointsociologyhas been reducedto social statistics.Because of his methodology,Friedlandhas tooversimplifyhis model and add a numberofad hoc observations. Fortunately, his sharpmindcuts through hejungle of empiricism oprovide illuminatinghypotheses on the classbasis of power in the United States.In Restructuring the City, Susan Fainstein,NormanFainstein,RichardChildHill, DennisJudd, and Michael P. Smith, adopt a morecautious, more groundedstyle of research, ina seriesof case studies of the political processsurrounding urban redevelopment in NewHaven, Detroit, New Orleans, Denver, andSan Francisco. Though the authors make an

effort, in a brilliant inal chapter, to provideatheoretical synthesis of their empirical find-ings, the richness of their case studies flowsbeyond the boundaries of the tentative ana-lytical model. What the reader perceives is aprocess of structural transformationof theurban economy, acted, and therefore funda-mentally modified, by social classes andpolitical actors, according to the institutionalenvironment and the specific local culture.For instance, while San Francisco's businesscommunitywholeheartedlysupportedgrowth,a significant segment of New Orleans' localelite opposed economic change that mightundermine its basis of power. Culture andpolitics mediate social interests and structuraltendencies, and these tendencies result fromthe actual practice of social actors, in adialectical movement.Does Restructuring the City evoke a worldof pure relativism, where the observer is un-ableto synthesize observationexcept on an adhoc basis? No, and yes, and no. No, in thesense that one needs conceptual tools thatare common to the understanding f differentprocesses. Yes, because each situation isunique in its actual historical practice. And,most importantly, no, because some basicfeaturesrecur throughout he analysis, such asthe dominance of business interests in urbanredevelopment schemes and the continuousblackmail by the private sector of local gov-ernments, in the absence of the countervailingpower of a national party relatively indepen-dent of the interests of corporate business.Precisely because of such specificity in theUnited States political system, it is crucialtounderstand he variationsof policies within acapitalist framework, something that the au-thors of the book show fully in their analysisbut seem to overlook in theirsynthesis, whenthey equate all stories to fables of capitalistdomination. Instead of idealizing WesternEuropean leftwing local politics, we shouldpay more attention to the specific processesthroughwhich policies alternative o those ofthe corporate establishment emerge in theUnited States. More attentionmust be paidtourban social movementsandto their influencein governments, and we have to account forthe municipalmini-revolution weepingacrossthe country. I think it is useful to rememberthat, by the end of 1983, Chicago, LosAngeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington,and Atlanta, among many other cities, haveblackmayors;San Franciscoand Houstonaregoverned by women, thoughon the moderateside of the political spectrum;Denver, Miami,and San Antonio have Hispanic mayors;

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REVIEW-ESSAYS 273Boston elected a populist labor leader sup-portedby the tenants'movement,in a run-offagainst a black neighborhoodactivist; andeven in the archetypeof the sunbelt,Phoenix,a liberalmayorwas recentlyelected by neigh-borhood groups mobilizing against thetraditionalprobusiness establishment. Suchevents do concern sociological researchers,since we are supposed to provide clues to achangingreality.And we cannotmix all thesedevelopments in the black box of "capitalist

urbanpolicy." Patient,well-grounded,empiri-cal research is needed to assess both the de-layed impact of the social movements of thelast decade (women, minorities, and neigh-borhoods) and the impact of currenteconomicchange, into the local political system. In thisperspective, the three books under reviewrepresent, each in its own style, importantsteps in the process of understanding he spe-cific shape of class and power in Americancities. $

The Mind of the MoralistC. Wright Mills: An American Utopian, by IRVING Louis HOROWITZ. New York:Free Press,1983. 341 pp. $24.95 cloth.CHARLES DERBERBoston College

This is unquestionablythe most importantbiographyof any Americansociologist. Biog-raphy, as Horowitz notes, is a genretraditionallydistinct from sociology, but thisvolume has much that will be appetizing andinstructiveto sociologists: a cornucopiaof in-sights and implicationsabout sociologists andtheir profession, a richly textured intellectualhistory, a latent sociology of academia, andsuggestive glimpsesof the relationof life his-tory to intellectual style and substance. Thebook indeed points to the potential fruitful-ness of what the author calls "sociologicalbiography"as a distinct mode of understand-ing the social genesis of ideas; in this sense,the book opens biography as a new specialmethodology in a sociology of knowledge.Mills is an especially felicitous subject foran inquiryof this kind. He is one of the fewcharismatic figures in postwar Americansociology, not only something of a legendwithin the discipline but one of the few toachieve celebrity outside of professional cir-cles. Moreover Mills, as nobody who readsthis book will forget, is a major intellectualfigure in American sociology who made anoriginalmark in a formidable range of coreareas including political sociology, stratifica-tion, social psychology, social theory, and thesociology of knowledge. There is thus a lifehistory of unusual social fascination o assess,in relation to an intellectual corpus of poten-tially enduringsignificance. Finally, Mills hada relation of special intensity and paradoxwith his own profession; in the unravelingofthe history of that ambivalent and conflictedrelationthere is much to learn not only about

Mills but about the politics and sociology ofsociology.Those drawnto this book primarilyby thepersonal legend are likely to be disappointedfor at least two reasons. Onthe one hand,thisis a resolutely intellectual biography, con-cerned far less with intimaterevelationthanwith the illuminationof ideas. In part, thisreflects the dominance of the mental life inMills. Yet Horowitz has also made a choice,no doubt faithfulto his own trainingand dis-position, to underplay the personal and pri-vate; revelationsemerge, but subtly, in rela-tion to intellectualevents, such as Mills's ex-quisitelyvulnerableresponseto reviews of hiswork.The glimpses of Mills that Horowitz giveswill cloud, if not tarnish,his extravagantper-sonallegend. The wildlyindividualisticTexan,celebrated for motorcycle and libido, seems,here, much more the estranged academicsophisticatethanthe intellectualcowboy withseven-league boots. Mills never returnedtoTexas after his youth andlivedhis entireadultlife within elite universities;he never foundahappy home in academe, but it was his onlyreal hunting ground. The exotic motorcyclecowboy charisma routinizes to the plaintroubles of an intellectualwho suffered en-forced marginality n his own department al-though he had tenure, Mills was not allowedto teach in the graduateprogramat Columbia)and who, in the end, was publicly excom-municated from his profession (by 1959,Seymour Lipset had written that Mills hadabandoned he field and was no longera rele-vant figure for Americansociology). His pro-