From the margins to the centre

The title of this book, From the Margins to the Centre, refers to three related themes that have run closely together in the debates on the city in the 1980s and 1990s. Firstly, a process of restructuring in which activities previously deemed peripheral to the 'productive' city have now moved centre stage: that is, a concern with culture, consumption and image. Secondly, the notion of gentrification, whereby a reversal of the movement out of the city centre by the affluent classes results in a re-centralisation of previously marginal areas of the city centre. Thirdly, a process whereby previously marginal groups and their activities have been made central to the city - and have made the city centre central to themselves.

Each of the chapters in this volume derives from recently conducted research grounded in an attempt to examine some of the issues posed in what can be described as postmodernist theorising on the nature of the contemporary city. Implicit in the very conception of the book, and running through each of the contributions, is the view that contemporary popular culture is crucial to the understanding of the transformations to which we refer, and that the investigation of this popular culture needs to move beyond the parameters of cultural studies to include sociological, political and economic analyses. In addition to students of popular cultural studies, the book will be of interest to all those studying sociology, urban studies and cultural studies, as well as those with a desire to have contemporary social theorising more firmly located in empirical investigation.