American Democracy and the Pursuit of Equality

Merlin Chowkwanyun is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Randa Serhan is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. She graduated with high distinction from the American University of Beirut.

“This collection of fourteen essays on democracy and modern society examines recent trends in American politics, economics and culture in relation to their effects on the disenfranchisement of citizens and the destruction of cherished, if largely fictional, democratic principles. The papers focus on five key contemporary issues: urban form, public policy, immigration, ethno-racial stratification and mobility, mass media and social movements. Contributors are important academics in a variety of fields, including sociology, history, political science and urban planning, from major US universities.” —Eithne O’Leyne, June 2011 Reference and Research Book News "What an amazing collection of writers and ideas! Leading figures in the study of cities, poverty, education, media, immigration, and politics build on decades' worth of research to speak to the policy challenges of the present. Together, the contributors make a powerful case for an engaged sociology that refuses to be limited to small questions. To the contrary, they remind us that rethinking what a city is, what a community is, what poverty is, and what an American is may be essential to good policy." —Francesca Polletta, Professor of Sociology, University of California-Irvine, Author of It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics and Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements "This volume is a solid and robust renewal of the sociological vision at its very best. The authors insist on relevance, criticality, conceptual rigor and substantive clarity. American Democracy and the Pursuit of Equality will become a classic, and because authors reveal their hopefulness about social change, it is an excellent text for the classroom." —Judith Blau, Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Co-Author of Sociology and Human Rights: A Bill of Rights for the Twenty-First Century and President of Sociologists Without Borders (US).

• Introduction The Social Scientist as a Human Being 1 on Getting People to tell you more than they Want to 2 fact and fiction: sociology and the novel Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life 3 What is an American city? 4 American community in transition 5 Building the American Way: Public subsidy, Private space 6 towards an “Active socioplastics”. People, Plans, and Policies 7 the right hand and the left hand: contradictory social Policies in the lives of the Working Poor 8 understanding the emergence and Persistence of concentrated urban Poverty 9 ignoring Justice in Disaster Planning: An Agenda for research on 9/11, Katrina, and social Policy, The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America 10 the Battle over Assimilation 11 Assimilation’s Bumpy road, Democracy and the News 12 the concept of Politics in contemporary united states Journalism 13 convergence: news Production in a Digital Age. More Equality14 movements and reform in twentieth-century America