Ideas and Intervention (RLE Social Theory) by Joe Bailey

Author:Joe Bailey [Bailey, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317651789
Google: HjNHBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-08-13T05:57:33+00:00

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5

Planning and social theory

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Urban planning is a form of interventionist practice which has already made a subtle use of sociological theory.1 It has been struggling since the last war for both professional status and for a disciplinary foundation which would justify an academic position. These recent circumstances provide only the most organized and dramatic examples of the repeated embrace and subsequent rejection of a variety of sociologist-provided theoretical positions. Since its inception in philanthropy, utopianism and in organized legislated civic control, planning has either been explicitly guided by theoretical convictions or its apparent pragmatism has concealed less evangelistic but none the less theoretical commitments. At the least this has taken the form of assumptions about both how individuals act socially and thus what a desirable society might look like in relation to present constraining circumstances ; at the most a theoretically informed urban planning has recast its own activity from attempting to control or inspire physical development to a form of social action which is actually created by a sociological vocabulary (for instance a concern with social movements or a concern with particular kinds of population which are first made apparent or ‘invented’ by sociologists’ theorizing activities). It is the increasing willingness of young planners over the last decade to have their professional and disciplinary vacuum filled by sociologists which makes an appraisal of the contribution of sociology particularly pertinent now. Like social workers their organizational and occupational uncertainty has made them open to conviction and conversion in an almost religious sense. The purpose of theorizing is educational and scientific, not religious, and the closure necessarily following the reification of particular theoretical approaches is the opposite of what we should hope for from sociological education.

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