Analyzing neighbourly relations in multicultural societies, this book develops a concept of good neighbourhood and argues that cultural capital in various forms is the determining variable in building good-neighbourly relations. This work breaks new ground by offering a conceptual integration of different, mutually interdependent forms of capital: intercultural capital, cross- cultural social capital and multicultural capital. These forms of capital are linked to different educational and cultural policies of the state as well as to civil society involvement at different levels of implementation. Grounded in extensive fieldwork, the book not only provides critical insights into neighbourly relations in culturally diverse border regions of East Central Europe, but the concept developed through a rich theoretical base can be usefully adapted and widely applied to other contexts. Scholars and graduate- level students in geography, international relations, political science, social anthropology and sociology as well as policy practitioners with an interest in the negotiation of coexistence, minority issues and social and political cohesion in multicultural societies will find this an illuminating read.

The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, rules of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings. This work explores how encounters among neighbours create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture.

Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of citizens deeply involved in public life. Today Americans are lamenting the erosion of his ideal. What happened in the intervening centuries? Daniel Kemmis argues that our loss of capacity for public life (which impedes our ability to resolve crucial issues) parallels our loss of a sense of place. A renewed sense of inhabitation, he maintains —of community rooted in place and of people dwelling in that place in a practiced way—can shape politics into a more cooperative and more humanly satisfying enterprise, producing better people, better communities, and better places. The author emphasizes the importance of place by analyzing problems and possibilities of public life in a particular place— those northern states whose settlement marked the end of the old frontier. National efforts to “keep citizens apart” by encouraging them to develop open country and rely upon impersonal, procedural methods for public problems have bred stalemate, frustration, and alienation. As alternatives he suggests how western patterns of inhabitation might engender a more cooperative, face-to-face practice of public life. Community and the Politics of Place also examines our ambivalence about the relationship between cities and rural areas and about the role of corporations in public life. The book offers new insight into the relationship between politics and economics and addresses the question of whether the nation-state is an appropriate entity for the practice of either discipline. The author draws upon the growing literature of civic republicanism for both a language and a vantage point from which to address problems in American public life, but he criticizes that literature for its failure to consider place. Though its focus on a single region lends concreteness to its discussions, Community and the Politics of Place promotes a better understanding of the quality of public life today in all regions of the United States.

What makes an urban neighborhood tick? Why do some of a city's poorest neighborhoods have cleaner streets and less vandalism than many of its more affluent areas? The public services that make certain neighborhoods stand out are often provided by the local residents themselves -- but what makes them take action? The setting for Matthew Crenson's book is Baltimore. In this surprising, powerful work, he finds that such neighborhood action does not arise from a strong sense of neighborliness or community feeling. Instead, it is precisely when neighbors dislike one another that some features of informal self-organization emerge. Residents' efforts to maintain public order, health, and safety frequently spring from social chaos and discord rather than from homogeneity. In fact, Crenson discovers that in many cases community polities arise not from the cohesiveness of close-knit "urban villages" but from the social diversity, inequality, and conflict that are associated with urbanism itself. In an era when the inability of government institutions to solve the difficulties of city living is starkly apparent, understanding unofficial neighborhood government is critically important, and it can also clarify the foundations of political order itself Crenson's achievement is to redefine neighborhood problem -- solving as the true "grass roots" urban politics, and in doing so he reveals why Baltimore is one of the few big cities that really work in America today.

Using the example of Eichstatt, this book challenges current witchcraft historiography by arguing that the gender of the witch-suspect was a product of the interrogation process and that the stable communities affected by persecution did not collude in its escalation.

Interviews and theoretical discussion on the subject of community art from an (art) sociological perspective. What is the political and critical potential of this art form, and just how much change really is initiated? With various interviews with artists and policymakers on their stake and ambitions.